The department of public service & administration says about 0.44% of public servants in South Africa are foreign nationals.
Of the estimated 1,390,216 public servants, there were 6,333 foreign nationals employed in the public service at the end of April, and the department wants to tighten the strings on their employment.
The number of foreign workers was particularly concentrated in the education and health sectors, where 3,305 and 2,625 workers, respectively, were employed at national and provincial levels combined.
Acting deputy director-general Anusha Naidoo said the two sectors have the “highest concentration” of foreign nationals because South Africans are not open to the idea of working in far-flung areas.
“Do we keep the skill vacuum — that is, leave the schools without teachers — or do we advertise and if a foreign national applies, we take them through the recruitment process, and if they qualify we appoint them?” Naidoo said.
Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube told parliament last week that more than 30,000 teachers had either resigned or been dismissed from public schools over the past five years.
Gauteng had the highest number of teachers who had resigned at 8,333, followed by KwaZulu-Natal at 5,994 and the Western Cape with 4,700. The reasons for resigning included retirement, career changes, workload pressure and burnout.
Naidoo was speaking to Business Day on the sidelines of a media briefing in Pretoria on Tuesday, where public service & administration minister Mzamo Buthelezi and his deputy, Pinky Kekana, launched International Anti-Corruption Day, a UN programme aimed at highlighting the need to prevent and fight corruption globally.
Naidoo said integrity and fairness are observed in employing foreign nationals. Labour recruitment processes, including checking if they are fully compliant with immigration laws, are observed in hiring foreign nationals.
She said: “We are not employing undocumented foreign nationals.”
However, the government’s recruitment processes always “prioritise South Africans”. Foreign nationals are employed only in areas where there are verified skills shortages.
The cabinet recently approved the white paper on the national labour migration policy and the Employment Services Amendment Bill, both of which aim to ensure the prioritisation of local workers and set clear guidelines for the hiring of foreign workers.
The policy introduces quotas for the employment of foreign workers in major sectors such as agriculture, hospitality, tourism and construction, and complements existing measures such as sector restrictions on foreign business visas and limitations on foreign-owned small businesses.
Opposition parties, including the Patriotic Alliance and ActionSA, and organisations such as Operation Dudula, have often spoken against foreign nationals who are in the country illegally, owing to porous borders and corruption at the border gates.
During the media briefing, Buthelezi noted that corruption remains a “deeply entrenched challenge” in South African society and manifests itself through the misappropriation of funds, nepotism and a lack of accountability. This affects service delivery and leads to economic stagnation, which deprives South Africans of economic opportunities.
South Africa’s public service is dogged by entrenched corruption, cronyism, nepotism, fraud, malfeasance, little to no consequence management, and the ANC’s discredited cadre deployment policy. The latter has often led to underqualified and inexperienced people being deployed to senior government positions based on their political affiliation.
The government is implementing a national framework for the professionalisation of the public service to improve service delivery, address poor performance among senior staff and improve retention.
The framework, approved by the cabinet in October 2022, focuses on meritocracy, competency, impartiality and accountability, aiming to build a capable, professional and ethical government.
The public service & administration minister said corruption is a threat to international competitiveness, vowing it “will be dismantled and uprooted from our system ... by closing historical loopholes in our system ... We are building a public service culture that is anchored in ethics.”
He said the fight against corruption, which has involved whistle-blowers being killed in recent months, is long term.
Kekana said there is a strategy in place to deal with crime and corruption in the civil service, including eradicating ghost workers by making government departments embark on an employee verification process by the end of the 2025/26 financial year.
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