Skilled Migration
Work Visa South Africa: One Points Test, Two Outcomes
South Africa stopped deciding general work visas on a labour market test in October 2024. A single hundred point test now drives both the general and the critical skills routes, and how you reach the hundred decides which visa you are issued. The Department's own visa page has not caught up.
Migration rules change regularly. Treat this article as a policy snapshot and confirm current requirements with a licensed advisor before relying on it.
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The labour market test is gone
South Africa used to decide a general work visa by asking whether a suitably skilled South African was available. Since 18 October 2024 it decides it with a points test, scored on the applicant.
The instruments are worth naming precisely. The Third Amendment to the Immigration Regulations, published in Government Gazette 51366, inserted subregulations 18(12) and 18(13) to require that an application for a general work visa or a critical skills work visa be adjudicated in accordance with a points based system determined by the Minister by notice in the gazette. The Minister’s determination of that system sits in Government Gazette 51365. Immigration Directive No. 10 of 2024 governs implementation and transition. Those three instruments are the authority for the two sections that follow, and they are worth reading in the gazette rather than in summary.
One piece of history that matters if you are reading dated commentary. The original notice was published on 9 October 2024, withdrawn because of a typographical error, and reissued on 18 October 2024 under the same gazette numbers. Two things changed in the reissue: the commencement date, and the points awarded for a Trusted Employer offer, which went from 20 to 30. Treat 18 October 2024 as the operative date, and treat any source that says 9 October as one that has not read the reissue.
If you are told that your employer must conduct or document a labour market test for a general work visa, the person telling you is working from the pre-October-2024 framework.
How the hundred points are earned
The Minister’s notice sets the threshold at 100 points, and an applicant must reach it and separately satisfy every other prescribed requirement, including character checks and the evidence specific to the visa class.
The components run as follows. An occupation on the Critical Skills List scores 100 on its own. Qualifications at NQF level 9 or 10 score 50, and at NQF 7 or 8 score 30. A salary above R976,194 gross a year scores 50, and a salary between R650,796 and R976,194 scores 20. Work experience of ten years or more scores 30, and five to ten years scores 20. An offer from a Trusted Employer scores 30. Proficiency in an official South African language scores 10.
Those Rand figures come from our own record of the Minister’s determination as reissued on 18 October 2024 and we have not been able to verify them against the gazette itself, so confirm the current bands before you rely on them. They were the figures in the Minister’s determination as reissued on 18 October 2024.
Two features of that table decide most cases.
An occupation on the Critical Skills List reaches the threshold by itself. Everything else in the table becomes irrelevant, which is why the list is the first thing to check rather than the last.
And for everyone else the hundred has to be assembled. A senior professional with an NQF 9 qualification, ten years of experience and a salary in the upper band clears it comfortably. A mid career applicant with an NQF 7 qualification, six years of experience and a salary below the lower band does not get close, and enthusiasm on the employer’s side does not change the arithmetic. What can change it is the employer’s status rather than its keenness, which is the Trusted Employer point further down.
The test decides which visa you get, not just whether you get one
The points test is shared, and the route out of it depends on how you reached the hundred.
Reach 100 via a Critical Skills List occupation and a Critical Skills Work Visa is issued. Reach 100 by any other combination and a General Work Visa is issued.
So the two visas are not alternative applications you choose between. They are two outcomes of one adjudication, and the difference is which door your points came through. Note also that a merged Skilled Worker Visa has been discussed in policy documents but has not commenced: the two remain distinct grant categories sharing a single test.
The practical consequences differ. Home Affairs states that general work visas are valid for the duration of the contract of employment or a period not exceeding five years, and that a critical skills work visa may be issued for a period not exceeding five years at a time.
What the critical skills route asks for beyond the points
Home Affairs is direct on the most common misunderstanding: a critical skills work visa is not a work seekers visa. Every application must be accompanied by an offer of employment from an employer who is verifiable and in good standing with the Department of Employment and Labour.
Beyond that the evidence list is specific. You must select one occupation or critical skill from the latest Critical Skills List, and the Department asks for that selection to be made in black pen. You need your foreign qualification evaluated by SAQA and translated by a sworn translator, showing the NQF level. Where the law requires it, you need proof of application for registration with the relevant professional body, council or board recognised by SAQA, plus valid membership of that body, and written confirmation from it of your skills, qualifications and appropriate post qualification experience. University lecturers are excepted from the membership and confirmation requirements and must instead specify the classification of their education subject matter.
Two further notes from the Department’s own page are worth carrying. Corporate General Manager and Director occupations attract additional requirements set out in Table 10 of the Critical Skills Technical Report. And engineering applicants registered with a SAQA professional body as a Candidate, or similarly graded, will be considered provided they meet all other requirements and work under the supervision of a qualified professional where applicable.
All supporting documents, including employment and qualifications, are verified. An MIE report is optional and the Department says it assists with those verification efforts.
The intra-company transfer visa, and its hard stop
If a multinational is moving an existing employee from a foreign branch to a South African one, the instrument is the intra-company transfer work visa, and it behaves differently from the other two in three ways.
No proof of steps taken to obtain the services of a South African citizen or permanent resident is required. It is issued for a period not exceeding four years. And Home Affairs states plainly that it cannot be renewed or extended.
That last point is the one to plan around from day one. Four years is the whole runway, and anyone who wants to stay beyond it needs a different visa applied for well before the end.
On the six month question, be careful how it is phrased. Both the Department’s page and the Regulations require the foreigner’s contract of employment with the company abroad to be valid for a period of not less than six months. That is a test about the contract rather than a stated requirement of six months of prior service, and if you have been told it is the latter, that is a reading of a published requirement rather than the requirement itself.
The work visa routes page sets these classes out side by side, and the critical skills list post covers how to check whether your occupation is on the list that short circuits the points table.
Two 2026 changes worth knowing before you apply
The medical report requirement has been waived. By Ministerial Immigration Directive No. 10 of 2026, published in Government Gazette 55016 on 17 July 2026 and signed on 8 July 2026, the Minister granted a blanket waiver of the medical report requirements in subregulations 9(1)(c) and 23(1)(f), covering applicants for a temporary residence visa and for a permanent residence permit respectively. The waiver came into operation on the date of signature and applies both to future applications and to applications already pending adjudication.
Read the Department’s own visa page after reading that directive and you will find it still lists a medical report among the required documents for every work visa class, along with the business, study and exchange classes. The gazette is the instrument and the page has not caught up. Note also that the waiver is narrower than the regulation it touches: regulation 9(1)(c) requires a medical and radiological report, and the directive waives it only in so far as it concerns the medical report. Fortunately, the radiological report was waived by a previous directive, Directive No. 5 of 2023.
If you are already waiting, your status has been extended. Immigration Directive No. 7 of 2026, signed 30 March 2026 and effective from 1 April 2026, grants a temporary extension until 30 June 2027 to visa holders with pending waiver applications, pending long term visa applications under sections 11(1)(b) to 20 and section 22, and pending appeals under section 8(4) or 8(6) on those visas. It also allows those applicants to leave and re-enter without being declared undesirable, up to the same date.
Four limits on that concession matter. Applicants may not engage in any activity beyond what their current visa conditions permit, so the extension preserves your status rather than expanding it. It applies only to people legally admitted who applied through VFS Global and can produce a receipt verifiable against the VFS tracking system. It expressly does not cover applicants waiting on a permanent residence permit, who must keep their own residential status valid throughout. And the concessions cease immediately on receipt of an outcome, after which the terms of the decision apply. Non visa exempt nationals also need a port of entry visa before returning.
The Trusted Employer Scheme, and why it is worth 30 points
The Trusted Employer Scheme came out of the Operation Vulindlela work visa review, which found that the unpredictability of visa adjudication was undermining otherwise sound policy. It lets employers be vetted and approved in advance against criteria such as tax and labour compliance, and gives them a simplified route with reduced requirements per application.
It was gazetted in Government Gazette 49461 on 11 October 2023, and Home Affairs has since published Government Gazette 55036 inviting corporate employers to submit expressions of interest in a second phase of the scheme. In points terms an offer from a Trusted Employer is worth 30, which can close a thirty point gap that nothing else in an applicant’s profile is going to close.
If you have a choice of employers, this is a question worth asking at offer stage rather than at application stage.
How long the Department says it takes
Home Affairs publishes turnaround times, and the work visa figures are shorter than most applicants expect. A general work visa under section 19(2), including through the Trusted Employer Scheme, is listed at 4 weeks. A critical skills visa under section 19(4), also including the Scheme, is listed at 4 weeks. A business visa under section 15 is listed at 8 weeks. Permanent residence as a worker under section 26(a) is listed at 8 months.
Read the small print with them. Those are working days, excluding weekends and South African public holidays, and the Department states that the published times apply only to applications submitted inside South Africa for processing at Head Office. A file lodged at a mission abroad is not covered by them.
The mistakes we correct most often
Preparing a labour market test for a general work visa. That mechanism ended on 18 October 2024 and the adjudication is now a points test scored on the applicant. Note that the 2018 consolidation of the Regulations still contains it, so reading the regulations without the amendment gives the wrong answer.
Treating the general work visa and the critical skills work visa as a choice. They are two outcomes of one points assessment, and how you reach a hundred decides which one is issued.
Checking the Critical Skills List last. It is worth 100 points on its own, so it decides the whole application before anything else is weighed.
Selecting more than one occupation on a critical skills application. The Department asks for exactly one.
Treating the critical skills visa as a route to come and look for work. It is not, and an application without a verifiable offer of employment will not succeed.
Planning past year four on an intra-company transfer. It cannot be renewed or extended.
Assembling a medical or radiological report because the Department’s visa page still asks for one, when a directive or a gazetted blanket waiver has removed the requirement.
Assuming the concession for pending applications covers a permanent residence application. It does not.
Reading the published turnaround times as calendar weeks, or applying them to an application lodged at a mission abroad.
Where to start
Check the Critical Skills List first, because if your occupation is on it the rest of the points table stops mattering. If it is not, score yourself honestly against qualification level, salary band, experience and language before you spend anything, because the hundred either assembles or it does not.
There is no statutory licensing scheme for immigration consultants in South Africa. What we can tell you is that our South African team scores the points table before it drafts anything, and reads the gazettes rather than the Department’s summary pages, which on this topic currently disagree with each other in two separate places. If you are weighing an offer and want to know which visa it produces, that is worth a conversation before it is accepted.
Sources
- Department of Home Affairs, Types of Visas
- Department of Home Affairs, Turnaround times for visas and permits
- Department of Home Affairs, Trusted Employer Scheme
- Department of Home Affairs, Government Gazette 55016, Ministerial Immigration Directive No. 10 of 2026
- Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Directive No. 5 of 2023, radiological report waiver, in force 11 April 2023
- Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Directive No. 7 of 2026
- Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Act 13 of 2002, as updated
- Department of Home Affairs, Government Gazette 55036, Trusted Employer Scheme second phase
- Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Regulations 2014, 2018 consolidation. This consolidation predates the October 2024 amendment and still contains the superseded labour market test at regulation 18.