The Department of Home Affairs says it is under extreme pressure from President Cyril Ramaphosa to implement the proposed remote working visa, but officials are reluctant to commit to a deadline, having already missed their June 30 date.
Appearing before the Western Cape Standing Committee on Finance, Economic Opportunities and Tourism recently, Provincial Manager for the Western Cape Department of Home Affairs, Yusuf Simons, outlined the reasons for the delay and the updated regulations that still need to be gone through before being promulgated.
Ramaphosa first announced changes to the visa regime aimed at promoting tourism and trade, under the banner of Operation Vulindlela in his 2021 State of the Nation Address. In his 2022 address, he announced two new visa categories, including a start-up, and a remote work visa. In his 2023 speech, he said “we will move quickly” to implement the recommendations from a “comprehensive review of the work visa system”.
Simons said the changes to the regulations had been submitted to the Office of the State Law Advisor (OSLA) on June 10, who had come back in August requesting changes. This latest round of changes, including inputs from the Presidency, was due to be re-submitted to OSLA by September 30.
“We need to wait for them (OSLA) to come back; we don’t know whether they are going to accept all the changes we have made,” Simons said. Once all the regulations have been approved by the State Law Advisors, they will be returned to the Minister of Home Affairs, who will then gazette them for public comment, a process that takes a minimum of 30 days.
“Maybe we were ambitious,” he said of the original June 30 deadline.
He said while they were not obliged to start a public participation process, they ran the risk of being challenged further down the line, due to the substantive nature of the changes.
No tax policy
Simons also said there was no tax policy that dealt with remote work yet, but the department had received a legal opinion on the tax implications. This had been forwarded to SARS, and Simons said the Home Affairs Director General Livhuwani Makhode had recently met with the SARS Commissioner to discuss the matter.
Questioned by the Committee Chairperson Cayla Murray as to when they expected the regulations to be promulgated, Simons said he could not commit to a deadline.
“I am not sure when the promulgation will be. If I put in a date to the committee now, you will ask me the same question you asked about June and I have learned my lesson once.”
But, he said they were under pressure from the highest level.
“What I can say is you are asking the question. The Presidency asks it even harder and harsher because, for them, the State of the Nation Address comes next year. The President must make an announcement on this, so the pressure is on us. It’s in the Minister’s performance agreement as well,” he said.
Murray said in a statement: “The endless delays are holding back the Western Cape’s potential growth and our residents should not have to carry the burden of inefficient National Government bureaucracy.”
‘Beyond exasperating’
Rosemary Anderson, Chairperson of FEDHASA said: “This is beyond exasperating and begs one to wonder why it has taken us three years to still not know how to go about this when there are so many successful digital nomad visa examples that SA could look to and follow best practice regarding length of visa, visa fees, income tax liability, income minimum and proof of health insurance.”
South Africa’s neighbour, Namibia, has recently introduced a six-month remote working visa, joining dozens of countries around the world looking to attract digital nomads.
Anderson said: “ABrotherAbroad.com research and data provided by Worldometer.info and the World Bank indicated that in 2022, there were over 35 million digital nomads with a collective economic value of approximately US$787 billion each year. If the global digital nomad community was a country, it would be the 38th most prosperous based on gross national income per capita.”
The average digital nomad also spent US$1 875 per month during their travels, and research has shown that they are generally willing to pay a substantial additional charge for a hotel, guesthouse or B&B that is equipped with adequate facilities for work, such as fast, reliable Internet and a conducive work environment with desk, comfortable chair and electrical sockets, she said.
