What is a general work visa and who qualifies?

For a decade the general work visa had a reputation among immigration practitioners as the one nobody got. Anything written about it before late 2024 describes a system that no longer applies, and that includes a great deal of what is still online.

What it is for

South Africa has several work visa routes. The critical skills work visa is for occupations on a published list. The intra-company transfer visa is for an employee moved here by a related company abroad. The general work visa is the residual route: you have a job offer from a South African employer and your occupation is not on the critical skills list.

Because it is residual, it is the visa most ordinary job offers fall into, and that is why the difficulty of obtaining it mattered so much.

What changed in October 2024

The old requirement was a certificate from the Department of Employment and Labour confirming, in substance, that the employer had advertised the position, that no suitably qualified South African citizen or permanent resident was available, and that the terms offered were not inferior to the prevailing standard.

In practice that certificate was the visa. Employers found the process slow and opaque, and the certificate was refused or simply never issued in a great many cases.

New regulations and a Ministerial Waiver gazetted on 9 October 2024 waived that certificate requirement for general work visa applications. In its place the Department of Home Affairs applies a points-based assessment.

If you are reading guidance that tells you to start by approaching the Department of Employment and Labour, you are reading guidance written for the previous system.

The points system

An applicant must reach a minimum of 100 points to qualify.

Points are awarded across several criteria:

• Qualifications, with more points for higher levels of formal education
• Annual gross salary, with higher offers scoring more
• Years of relevant work experience in the occupation
• Language proficiency
• Whether the job offer comes from a Trusted Employer, under the scheme Home Affairs operates for employers with a compliance record

The practical significance of a points system is that weakness in one area can be made up in another. Under the old system a missing certificate ended the application regardless of how strong the candidate was. Under a points system a candidate with moderate qualifications but substantial experience and a strong salary offer can still reach the threshold.

It also means the employer's conduct matters in a new way. An offer from a Trusted Employer carries weight, which gives larger and more compliant employers a real advantage in recruiting foreign staff.

Because the points table is set administratively and can be adjusted, confirm the current allocation before you build an application around an assumption about where your points come from.

The SAQA evaluation

Foreign qualifications must be evaluated by the South African Qualifications Authority, which assesses them against the National Qualifications Framework so that Home Affairs can see what a foreign degree corresponds to locally.

This has historically been a bottleneck, because SAQA evaluations take months and the visa application needs the outcome.

There is now a sensible accommodation. An applicant who can show that foreign qualifications have been submitted to SAQA for evaluation may be issued a general work visa for 12 months, pending the outcome. The visa can then be extended once a positive SAQA evaluation is produced within that period.

Two consequences follow. Start the SAQA evaluation before you start the visa application, because the submission receipt is itself useful. And treat the 12-month visa as a deadline rather than a reprieve: the extension depends on producing the outcome within the period, and SAQA delays do not extend your status.

Duration and its limits

A general work visa may be issued for a period not exceeding five years, or for 12 months where the SAQA outcome is outstanding.

The important limitation is that the visa is tied to the employer and the position. It is not a general permission to work in South Africa. Changing employers requires a new application, and working for a different employer before that application is granted puts your status at risk. Our guide on changing employers on a work visa covers the employer side of the relationship.

If you lose the job, the basis for the visa falls away, which is why a work visa holder facing dismissal has an immigration problem as well as a labour one, and they run on different timetables.

What the employer has to do

Even with the certificate requirement waived, the employer is not a bystander.

The employer provides the offer of employment and the job description on which the occupation is assessed, and undertakings about the terms and conditions. Where the Trusted Employer scheme is relevant, the employer's own status affects the application.

Employers should also understand their exposure. Employing a foreign national without valid authorisation is an offence under the Immigration Act, and the fact that an application is pending is not the same as a visa being granted. An employer who allows someone to start work on the strength of a submission receipt is taking that risk knowingly.

Timing, and the thing that goes wrong

The single most common disaster in this area is not refusal. It is a lapse in status while waiting.

Applications take months. Where a renewal or a change of status application is submitted in time and simply not decided, the applicant's existing visa can expire while they wait, and an overstay follows. The consequence is a declaration of undesirability with a ban attached, and the reason for the overstay does not prevent the declaration being made. Our guide on what happens if you overstay your visa sets out the bans, and the difference between a 30-day and a 31-day overstay is the difference between twelve months and five years.

The practical rules that follow are unglamorous and they matter more than the legal analysis:

Apply early. Months before expiry, not weeks.

Keep the submission receipt and every reference number. They are the evidence that supports an appeal if a declaration is made.

Follow up in writing and keep the correspondence. An undecided application is far easier to argue about with a dated paper trail.

Take advice before your visa expires, not afterwards. The options available while you still have status are much better than the options afterwards.

Where it leads

A general work visa is not a dead end, and people on it frequently do not realise what it builds towards.

Continuous employment in South Africa on a work visa is one of the routes to permanent residence, and the qualifying period is measured in years of holding the visa rather than years of being in the country. That makes continuity the thing to protect: a gap in status, a period working without authorisation, or a lapse between one visa and the next can interrupt the very continuity you are accumulating.

It is also why the overstay risk is more expensive for a work visa holder than for a visitor. A visitor who overstays loses a holiday. A work visa holder who overstays can lose a declaration-free record, a job, and several years of progress towards residence at once. Our guide on getting permanent residence in South Africa sets out the categories, and our permanent residence and citizenship checker works out roughly where you stand.

Keep a personal file: every visa, every application receipt, every employment contract and every letter from Home Affairs. A permanent residence application some years from now is an evidentiary exercise about a period you will not remember in detail, and the people who assemble it easily are the ones who kept the paper as they went.

Worked example

This example is illustrative. Grace is offered a position as a logistics manager in Durban. The occupation is not on the critical skills list, so the general work visa is her route.

Under the old system the employer would have had to obtain a Department of Employment and Labour certificate, and the application would in practice have stopped there.

Under the current system the assessment is on points. Grace has a bachelor's degree from Zimbabwe, nine years of relevant experience, an offer at a salary well above the median for the role, and English proficiency. Those combine to take her over the threshold.

Her practical sequence is: submit her degree to SAQA for evaluation immediately; lodge the visa application with the offer, the job description and the SAQA submission receipt; and, if the evaluation is still outstanding when the visa is issued, accept the 12-month visa and diarise the extension well inside the period.

What she must not do is allow her current visitor's visa to expire while the application sits undecided. That single mistake converts a straightforward application into a five-year ban, and it is the most common way people in her position lose the right to be here at all.