Not only should South Africa drop most of its recent additions to visa regulations but it should play an urgent role in establishing a Southern African Development Community (SADC) univisa that will allow foreign visitors to travel through the 15 SADC states on the same visa. But instead of playing the leadership role that it should, South Africa is dragging its feet and allowing other countries to carry on without it.

In 2014, tourism spending in the SADC region reached $41.4 billion (R678bn). Leisure tourism accounted for 68.4% of spending while business tourism accounted for 31.6%.

In total, 24.5 million foreign visitors entered the SADC countries and generated $19.8bn worth of spending – 7.9% of the region’s total exports.

Tourism supported 2.4 million jobs directly – 3.1% of total employment. When indirect and induced impacts are accounted for (such as jobs in the industries that supply the travel industry) total employment supported by tourism surges to 6 million jobs.

The most telling statistic, however, is that 52% of total tourism spend was accounted for by domestic tourism. In other words, $21.5bn was spent by people travelling within their own country – the vast majority of this spending taking place in South Africa.

The potential for economic growth and job creation through domestic and intra-regional tourism is not something to be overlooked. Unfortunately, South Africa is making it harder for this potential to be realised.

Not all areas are lagging. Zimbabwe and Zambia have recently ended the first trial period for the Kavango-Zambezi visa launched in November 2014. The visa allows for tourists from 40 countries to travel between Zimbabwe and Zambia on one visa without having to process applications separately.

The programme has now entered its second trial period to address the problems uncovered in the first. Once the creases have been ironed out, the visa will be extended to Angola, Namibia and Botswana. In east Africa, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have come together to offer their own univisa allowing travel across all three countries.

The SADC protocol of 1998 already makes provisions for a univisa to allow foreign visitors to move freely between the SADC members – much like the Schengen visa does in Europe. The initial pilot group includes Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Angola, Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The univisa will be especially beneficial to South Africa. As the most developed economy in the SADC region, it will become the main point of entry. A univisa will also encourage intra-regional trade opening up new markets for South African businesses.

Regions that have a high level of intra-regional tourism are more resilient to sudden depreciations of their domestic currencies. All SADC currencies have depreciated against the dollar over the last year, making it relatively more expensive for residents to travel outside of the region and relatively cheaper for foreigners to come in. If these changes in choice of destination can quickly translate into demand then the increased spending will partly protect the local economy from the losses caused by a weaker currency.

The South African government fears that a univisa will give way to an influx of immigrants – that other countries in the region will be looser with their processing and pave the way for immigrants to legally enter South Africa.

It’s partly valid and visa processing must be homogenous across all members for the system to work well. But most SADC residents with a valid passport can already get into South Africa temporarily without a visa and threats of a flood of immigrants are being exaggerated.

Instead of using resources to keep illegal immigrants out, we should be promoting policies that eradicate their need to come here in the first place.

The South African government needs to be a leader in promoting regional economic development and South African civil society needs to play a strong role in making the business case for them to do so.