South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education and Training, Buti Manamela, says protecting the country’s jobs and maintaining their status as Africa’s higher education hub must go hand in hand, while warning that criticism of foreign academics should not fuel xenophobia or false claims.
Addressing Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training on Tuesday, Manamela defended the continued presence of foreign academics within South Africa’s Post-School Education and Training (PSET) sector while reaffirming that compliance with immigration laws remained non-negotiable.
Manamela’s remarks come as South Africa grapples with increasingly polarised debates around migration, unemployment and public services, with foreign nationals frequently blamed for the country’s socio-economic challenges.
The intervention also follows an increasingly heated public debate over the employment of foreign nationals at South Africa’s public universities after preliminary figures presented to Parliament revealed that more than 7 000 foreign academics were employed at higher education institutions by 2025, with Zimbabweans constituting the largest group.
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Statistics showed that Zimbabweans account for 27 percent of foreign academics employed at South African universities, followed by Nigerians at 14 percent.
The figures reignited discussions around employment, transformation, skills shortages and the place of foreign professionals in South Africa’s higher education sector, against a backdrop of growing anti-migrant sentiment in the country.
“There are legitimate concerns in this conversation, and we do not pretend otherwise,” Manamela said in a statement issued by the Ministry of Higher Education and Training.
“South Africans are entitled to expect that public institutions prioritise them for employment, that everyone who teaches does so lawfully, and that transformation is not quietly deferred. These are not xenophobic concerns, but we must be careful of the great deal of misinformation and disinformation that circulates around this debate.”
The Minister cautioned against reducing all foreign academics to a single category of suspicion, noting many individuals at the centre of the debate are either naturalised South African citizens or permanent residents who are legally entitled to employment opportunities.
“The term ‘foreign nationals’ should not be made to carry more than it can bear,” he said.
“When we collapse the citizen, the permanent resident, the holder of a critical-skills visa and the person on a temporary contract into a single category of suspicion, we are not analysing a policy problem; we are manufacturing a grievance. A great many of those at the centre of this debate are South Africans. Our own law says they too must be prioritised for opportunity.”
Manamela presented a ‘most comprehensive picture’ currently available of foreign academics employed across the PSET sector.
In the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college sector, 265 foreign academics are employed, of whom 158 are either naturalised South African citizens or permanent residents.
Most occupy scarce-skills positions and are permanently employed.
Within the Community Education and Training (CET) sector, 31 foreign nationals are employed across five colleges, mainly teaching Mathematics, Physical Sciences and other subjects where skills shortages persist.
At universities, international academics are drawn overwhelmingly from other African countries and are concentrated in senior academic positions where they supervise postgraduate students and lead research programmes.
The Minister identified two principal concerns requiring attention: compliance with immigration laws and the increasing casualisation of academic work.
He warned institutions employing individuals without valid work permits expose themselves to legal liability, while overreliance on temporary contracts raises important labour and transformation concerns.
“”The solution is building local capacity,” Manamela said, adding “South Africa cannot build a local academy by removing the foreign one, but only by producing South Africans able to take its place.”
He pointed to several initiatives aimed at strengthening the country’s doctoral pipeline, including programmes supported by the National Research Foundation and the Department of Science and Innovation, such as the New Generation of Academics Programme, research chairs, centres of excellence and postgraduate funding schemes prioritising South African citizens and permanent residents.
According to the Minister, foreign academics currently play a crucial role in sustaining supervisory capacity needed to train the next generation of South African scholars.
“Localisation cannot be achieved by subtraction. Localisation happens by building,” he said.
Manamela also framed the debate within broader continental aspirations outlined under the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which envisions science, technology and innovation driving Africa’s development.
“South Africa hosts some of the finest universities on the continent. Our destiny is to anchor a continental system of research and innovation from which all of Africa benefits and from which we benefit most of all,” he said.
“We will protect our workers, enforce our law and accelerate transformation. We will do none of those things by pulling up the drawbridge.”
To improve transparency and accountability, the department announced plans to overhaul its information management system to make sure nationality, citizenship and visa status are captured accurately and reported consistently.
A joint task team comprising the Department of Home Affairs and Universities South Africa has also been established to address visa backlogs and strengthen compliance measures.
In addition, a 19-member advisory panel drawn from the country’s 26 public universities has been appointed to develop a standardised framework governing international academic appointments, including visa pathways, skills-transfer obligations and employment equity expectations.
The framework is expected to be presented to stakeholders by the fourth quarter of 2026, while universities will be required to demonstrate in their annual performance plans how they balance internationalisation objectives with transformation commitments.
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