Minister Leon Schreiber: RMB Morgan Stanley Investor Conference

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, business leaders, and investors from South Africa and abroad.

I would like to thank the organisers of the RMB Morgan Stanley Investor Conference for the invitation to address you on a topic that is close to my heart due to the potential it has to supercharge investment, economic growth and job creation in South Africa.
That topic is my quest to reposition the Department of Home Affairs as an economic enabler through wholesale digital transformation.

For too long, the role of this department as a crucial flywheel to generate investment, tourism and economic growth, has been overlooked.

To be sure: Home Affairs sits at the heart of our national security apparatus, and we have much work to do to restore internal security after decades of neglect and, what I call, institutional vandalism.

This well-known aspect of Home Affairs’ mandate also has obvious implications for the economy, as no one wants to invest in a country that does not have control over its internal security.

As I recently told Parliament: the outdated, manual, paper-based processes at Home Affairs that allow far too much space for human discretion and corruption is a threat to national security.

Securing our immigration and civics systems through automation and digital transformation will deliver an immediate boost to confidence in South Africa’s ability to re-establish law and order.

But the role of Home Affairs as an economic enabler goes well beyond the realm of national security.

In fact, with all due respect to the other speakers at this conference, I put it to you that in the South Africa of 2024, Home Affairs stands as the single most powerful portfolio in terms of its capacity to kickstart economic growth.
Allow me to elaborate.

Research by National Treasury has found that, after loadshedding, attracting more skills to the South African economy is the second-most powerful intervention we can make to kickstart growth.

Just think about that.

Not the railways and ports, not crime, or any other of the major issues that come to mind when we think about impediments to growth.

But skills.

This is backed up by economists from the International Food Poverty Research Institute, who have found that attracting just 11 000 more tertiary-educated workers to South Africa annually will add 1.2% to annual GDP growth and increase the tax take by 1.32% per year.

In other words: bringing just 11 000 more highly skilled and experienced individuals to South Africa would triple the annual growth rate from the 0.6% the country experienced last year.

But it doesn’t end there.

Boosting tourism arrivals by 10% could add another 0.6% to annual GDP growth.
In total, it is in the domain of Home Affairs that we have the potential to triple or even quadruple this country’s annual economic output.

We can do all of this with very little additional demands on the fiscus, which is already overstretched.

To achieve this economic impact, we must address both regulation and administration as a matter of urgency.

On the regulatory side of the equation, I come bearing very good news today.

After working at breakneck speed over the past few months alongside the South Africans Revenue Service and Operation Vulindlela in the Presidency, the regulations for a new points-based work visa, as well as for the remote working visa, arrived on my desk this morning.

These regulations will bring the remote working visa to life after we were able to iron-out the tax implications of this new system.
In terms of the remote working visa, a person who is employed and paid in another country will now be able to move to sunny South Africa, to spend all of their dollars, yen, Euros, pounds or Renminbi right here.

To add to the attraction, only if someone spends more than six months out of the year in South Africa, will they even be required to register with the Revenue Service.

Our new remote working visa must be one of the best deals I’ve ever come across.

South Africa carries none of the cost of employing these nomads, yet we reap all of the benefits.

They will spend their foreign currency at South African supermarkets and restaurants, eating South African food, grown by South African farmers.

They will buy cars and clothes from South African businesses, and pay to visit South African tourist attractions.

And, yes, they will spend their money in South African sports stadiums, watching the South African rugby team beat everyone else.

In return, they get to live in the most beautiful country on earth for half of the year, without any mindless red tape or burdensome tax requirements.

My message to remote workers all around the world is simple: there is just no place like South Africa.

And with our new user-friendly remote working visa, there has never been a better time to come and spend your hard-earned salary in a beautiful country whose best days are yet to come.

But this is just the beginning.

Even more exciting than the remote working visa, is the new points-based work visa.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark my words today: the points-based work visa is going to revolutionise the South African economy.
Gone will be the days when highly skilled workers had no pathway to help build this country if their skills happened to not be included in arbitrary critical skills list.

Of course, under this new system, a person whose job is included on the critical skills list will automatically qualify for a work visa.
However, going forward, workers who have job offers in South Africa will also be able to apply based on their own unique combination of qualifications, work experience, language skills, and the salary level they have been offered.

In the process of developing these regulations, I have been very clear that it is time to acknowledge that it is the job market, and not bureaucrats, that determines who has a critical skill.

If a company offers a person a salary of R1 million per year because they cannot find the requisite skills in South Africa, they are doing so because that person has a critical skill.

The points-based system has the potential to be truly transformative for the South African economy.

The combination of all the regulatory reforms we are currently working on – including the points-based work visa, the remote working visa, the Trusted Employer Scheme and the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme, which cuts red tape for large tour groups from China and India – will, within the next year, take South Africa much closer to the additional 11 000 skilled workers and the 10% increase in tourism we need to quadruple economic growth.

But exciting as these policy changes are, they are only half of the equation.

The forward-thinking regulations we are now implementing will mean little without far more effective administration.

And it is on administration, that Home Affairs has an enormous amount of work to do in order to fulfil our potential as an economic enabler.

The reality is that, when it comes to administration, Home Affairs is at least a decade behind the curve.

The inefficiency and corruption that has maligned this department can all be traced back to the fact that it still has manual and paper-based processes.

The only way to turn Home Affairs into a department that supercharges economic growth, delivers dignified civic services and secures national security, is by urgently embracing automation and digital transformation.

However, in this domain as in the regulatory environment, our aim is not merely to catch up to the rest of the world.
My vision is to turn this much maligned department into a truly world-class institution.

That is why we are currently completely redefining the department’s strategic priorities to turn Home Affairs into a digital-first organisation where every single thing we do is automated and digitised.

When it comes to civics services, I want to enable “Home Affairs from home.”

Every single person in need of an ID or passport must be able to log into a secure platform using facial recognition or other biometrics on a smartphone or computer, from the comfort of their own home or their local library.

On that platform, they must be able to submit an application with the option of having their documents delivered to their doorstep.

“Home Affairs from home.”

Instead of you having to go to Home Affairs, we must bring Home Affairs to you.

This will also free up resources for us to use our existing physical infrastructure to better serve those members of our society who will still need to visit our offices, including the 10% of South Africans who do not use smartphones, as well as those in rural or impoverished communities.

The same must go for the visa adjudication process.

This entire process must be digitised, from beginning to end.

I want anyone who wants to come to South Africa as a tourist, skilled worker or investor, to be able to apply online.

Their application must then be adjudicated by an automated risk engine built on the latest machine learning technology.

If an application is legitimate, the outcome must be issued immediately in digital form, including in the digital wallet on your smartphone.

This must all happen without any space for human intervention or discretion, to eliminate the space for fraudsters.

At the same time, such a digital system will be able to detect fraudulent documents and cross reference information far more effectively than any human ever could.

It is through this vision for digital transformation, that we will restore national security, deliver dignified civic services, and reposition Home Affairs as the most powerful economic enabler in the country.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our vision for Home Affairs is ambitious.

But it is entirely achievable and you have my commitment to fight for this vision every day that I remain in this job.

Because I understand that unemployment and economic underperformance pose an existential threat to the future of this country – and to your willingness to invest here.

If you need proof that we are doing everything in our power to deliver on our vision of Home Affairs as an economic enabler, look no further than the fact that, in the past few months, we have cleared over 56% of the visa backlog that started at over 306 000 in April this year, and which had been accumulating for a decade.

Look no further than the regulations on the remote working visa and the points-based system that will be in operation within the next 30 days.

Look no further than the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme, which will be implemented from January to unlock the Chinese and Indian tourism markets.

Home Affairs has done all of this within the space of just a few short months under the Government of National Unity.

Imagine what we can do for this economy over a full five-year term.

And then you will understand why I say South Africa is a country whose best days are yet to come.

Thank you.