The higher education sector has no shortage of problems. Foreign academics isn’t one of them. Yet that hasn’t stopped parliament’s portfolio committee on higher education from whipping up a storm over the supposed displacement of South Africans from jobs at universities and technical and vocational education training (TVET) colleges.
First it demanded the minister of higher education and his officials provide data on the proportion of foreign nationals employed by tertiary education institutions. Then it instructed the department to provide it with a list of the foreigners working at all 26 universities who do not have critical skills, and have supposedly been hired in breach of South Africa’s immigration laws.
And as if that wasn’t enough, committee chair Tebogo Letsie then told Newzroom Afrika that he would ask the president to set the Special Investigating Unit loose on any higher education institution that doesn’t comply with parliament’s demands for information.
There is an ugly air to all of this. Letsie and his fellow committee members may protest that they have nothing against foreigners and maintain that they are all for the internationalisation of higher education, but their actions speak otherwise.
In a country in which the currents of xenophobia run deep and anti-foreigner rhetoric has all too frequently turned deadly, it is no small thing to cast the spotlight on the foreigners who work and study at South African universities and TVET colleges. Let us not forget that they occupy positions on campuses that are no stranger to violent protests.
The data provided so far is hardly alarming: in 2024 just 7.7% of university staff were foreign nationals, the vast majority (83%) of whom held teaching or research positions, according to the department. The number is even smaller when one considers permanent staff — just 3022 (4.61%) of the 66,585 permanent hires were foreigners.
Rather than complaining about them, parliament should be asking why it is so difficult for universities to hire world-class researchers, and why it takes so long for suitably qualified candidates to obtain work permits.
International university rankings place value on the proportion of foreign academics and foreign students for good reason: these are centres of learning designed to generate knowledge and exchange ideas, a process made all the richer by attracting people from all over the world. This has been the way of universities for hundreds of years, as they evolved from centres of religious learning into the institutions we know today — from Egypt’s Al-Azhar University to the Sorbonne in Paris.
In an increasingly interconnected world, hostility to foreigners is not only xenophobic but also foolhardy. During the Covid-19 pandemic scientists in South Africa were at the forefront of global efforts to understand the novel coronavirus and develop safe and effective vaccines. That work directly benefited the citizens of this nation. But it would not have been possible without South African universities’ long history of collaborating with researchers around the world and attracting international talent to their ranks.
Instead of castigating universities and TVET colleges for hiring people who are not South African, and casting international scholars as threats rather than the contributors they are, parliament should be asking what can be done to ease the entry of skilled professionals and expand the research enterprise.
The US has become an increasingly hostile place for academics, and the war in the Middle East is disrupting the lives of many more: parliament should be positioning South Africa as a safe haven for such people, not putting up barriers to their entry.
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