Talk is cheap, particularly in an election year

South Africa has no shortage of motor-mouths who, wittingly or not, continue the country’s long history of rhetoric and dubious oratory.

In parliament as much as in the city halls and school halls across the country, as well as in florid prose duly printed in the government gazette, we hear so much about what our society should be, but very little about what is being done to get there.

A case in point is the recently-published White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, which talks earnestly about the need to restructure the current shambolic state of visa processing. But why waste more time restating the problem? The time for plaintiff explications of system challenges is over; nobody is listening. The energy and resources needed to produce the White Paper would have been better spent issuing critical scarce skill visas to grow the economy.

The Cape Chamber continues to campaign around the issue of visas and immigration reform. We are talking to experts, identifying chokepoints, and making specific recommendations for reform. As such we hope our own contribution will go beyond another round of sound bites at a time when South Africans demand more than tone deaf platitudes.

John Lawson
CEO of the Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry