Financial Mail reports that Prof Mark Smith, the UK-born academic who was appointed director of the Stellenbosch Business School in 2020, had to wait more than a year for home affairs to issue the necessary visa.
Now he’s leaving early because his wife and stepdaughter cannot join him. According to Smith, they have been offered temporary visas, but not long enough for a steady home life. Consequently, he will return to France later this year, two years before his Stellenbosch contract expires. “We have to put the family first,” he explained. Prof Charles Adjasi, a Ghanaian academic who has been at Stellenbosch for more than 10 years, will become acting director on 1 November while the school looks for a permanent replacement. Smith says that when he first applied for a visa for himself in 2020, dealing with staff at the Paris embassy, where he made several trips, was a consistently frustrating experience. His experience, he says, is a “microcosm” of the bigger picture in which home affairs makes it hard for needed skills to enter SA. “It’s a constraint on the economy. Talent is being lost as skilled people leave and we can’t bring in anyone to replace them. It’s something we have to reflect on.” Smith will return to Europe, where he and his family will base themselves in the southern French city of Lyon, within manageable distance of business schools in France and neighbouring countries.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by David Furlonger at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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