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Supported by the Department of Employment and Labour, trade unions (such as COSATU and SAFTU), and domestic job seekers.

• • Prioritising South African Work Seekers:
    With unprecedented national unemployment, proponents argue that the state has a clear constitutional duty to ensure that South African citizens and permanent residents are given preference for available employment opportunities across all sectors of the economy.
  • Ending Wage Undercutting and Exploitation:
    A central pillar of the Bill is closing the corporate loophole of hiring foreign workers as exploitable, cheap labour. Section 12A(2)(d) explicitly mandates that foreign nationals must not be employed on terms inferior to citizens, while Section 12D allows unlawfully employed workers to enforce statutory claims (such as the National Minimum Wage and BCEA standards) through labour inspectors. This levels the playing field and removes the financial incentive for employers to bypass domestic workers.
  • Mandatory Skills Transfer and Domestic Capacity Building:
    Supporters argue that corporate South Africa has relied too heavily on foreign specialists without systematically investing in domestic talent. Section 12A(2)(c) mandates that employers prepare formal skills transfer plans for any post held by a foreign national, ensuring that local workers are actively trained to take over specialised roles over time.
  • Protection for Genuine Refugees and Asylum Seekers:
    The Bill carefully avoids xenophobic exclusion by amending Section 1 to explicitly exclude permanent residents, recognised refugees, and asylum seekers from the definition of “foreign national”. This guarantees that vulnerable individuals fleeing conflict and persecution enjoy the same right to work as South African citizens and are not subject to hiring quotas.
  • Support for the South African Diaspora:
    Clauses 2(2)(f) and 22(dA) establish a progressive framework to assist South Africans working abroad, establish a migrant worker welfare programme, and actively facilitate the recruitment and reintegration of skilled South African expatriates back into the local economy.

Supported by business formations (AgriSA, BLSA), multinational employers, professional bodies, technology firms, and legal analysts.

• • Direct Conflict with Home Affairs and the Critical Skills Regime:
    Opponents highlight a profound policy contradiction within government. While the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) uses the Critical Skills List under Section 19(4) of the Immigration Act and Trusted Employer Schemes to attract global expertise, the Bill introduces conflicting statutory barriers. Section 12B empowers the Minister of Employment and Labour to impose rigid quotas on specific “occupational categories” (such as software architects, electrical engineers, or medical specialists). This creates a high-risk double jeopardy where a company recruits a specialist holding a valid DHA Critical Skills Visa, yet faces statutory prosecution by the Department of Labour for exceeding a sectoral quota.
  • Crippling the Professional & High-Tech Sectors:
    Modern economies run on scarce, highly specialised technical skills across Information Communications Technology (ICT), engineering, fintech, actuaries, and specialised medicine. Opponents argue that forcing companies to prove a negative—satisfying the Department under Section 12A(2)(b) that no local candidate exists before hiring—reintroduces cumbersome labour market tests for professions the state has already gazetted as critically scarce, paralyzing high-growth tech startups and multinational infrastructure delivery.
  • Existential “Turnover-Linked” Fines (Section 49(2A)):
    The business and legal communities warn that escalating penalties for repeat quota violations—reaching up to R1,000,000 or 10% of total annual turnover—are completely disproportionate. Penalties tied to gross business turnover rather than net profit mimic severe antitrust competition fines, exposing compliant, tax-paying enterprises to commercial insolvency over administrative disputes or peak seasonal hiring surges.
  • Unworkable Skills Transfer Mandates:
    Imposing a blanket statutory requirement under Section 12A(2)(c) to produce skills transfer plans for every foreign national fails to reflect commercial reality. Highly intricate disciplines—such as sub-specialist surgery, advanced AI research, or proprietary global engineering systems—cannot be transferred within arbitrary bureaucratic timeframes, degenerating into hollow paperwork exercises that inflate operational overheads.
  • Bureaucratic Gridlock and Departmental Capacity:
    Section 49A forces employers needing quota relief to apply for ministerial exemptions. Given historical backlogs within public departments, critics caution that the Department lacks the institutional capacity to process thousands of complex commercial applications efficiently, creating recruitment gridlock that deters Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
  • Targeting the Wrong Economy:
    Industry analysts stress that the Bill places heavy compliance, audit, and penalty burdens on the law-abiding formal sector, while the vast informal and unregistered economy—where the exploitation of undocumented workers and minimum-wage non-compliance are most rampant—remains largely untouched by labour inspectors.