At the beginning of his first term in office in 2019, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi vowed to make his country `the Germany of Africa`.

He promised to grow the economy and create jobs for the people, in a country with massive resources but whose population was living in poverty.

In his first four years in power, he did not achieve his ambitious goal of transforming such a vast country, but now he has a second chance after he was declared the winner of a chaotic election. He is due to be sworn in for a second term on 20 January.

Mr Tshisekedi first came into power in unusual circumstances.

He was declared the surprise winner of a disputed presidential election, which some, including the influential Catholic Church, had challenged.

His main rival Martin Fayulu alleged that outgoing President Joseph Kabila had engineered a secret deal for Mr Tshisekedi to succeed him - charges that were strongly denied.

Mr Fayulu and other opposition candidates have also said the 2023 election was marred by fraud and demanded a rerun. The electoral commission has dismissed such claims as sour grapes.

Until a few years before the 2018 election, Mr Tshisekedi was largely untested in high-level DR Congo politics.

He was more known for who he was related to - he is the son of the veteran late opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi.

He however did not simply cash in on his father`s name and was immersed in politics from a very young age, and worked his way up through the party ranks.

He also had to suffer the consequences of his father`s political activism.

When Tshisekedi senior founded the Union for Democracy and Social Progress party (known by its French initials UDPS) in 1982, the family was forced into internal exile in their home town in the central Kasai province.

Étienne Tshisekedi founded the UDPS in 1982, turning it into the country`s largest opposition party

They stayed there until 1985, when Étienne Tshisekedi`s long-time rival, autocratic leader Mobutu Sese Seko, allowed the mother and children to leave.

Félix Tshisekedi then moved to the Belgian capital, Brussels. After completing his studies there he took up politics, working his way through his father`s party to become national secretary for external affairs for the UDPS.

His father`s former chief of staff, Albert Moleka, told the BBC in 2019 that Mr Tshisekedi `made powerful friends and allies among the diaspora there, but he was sometimes overlooked - and so it wasn`t easy for him`.

Mr Tshisekedi`s inauguration in 2019 inspired some hope, as it was the first peaceful transition of power in the country since independence in 1960.

At his swearing-in ceremony, he told the crowds that he wanted to `build a strong Congo, turned toward development in peace and security - a Congo for all in which everyone has a place`.

Mr Tshisekedi said he would make the fight against poverty a `great national cause`, reduce unemployment and tackle corruption.

In his first term, President Tshisekedi introduced free primary schooling, with enrolment increasing by more than five million students.

The programme has however been criticised for the overcrowding of classrooms in some areas, while teachers remain poorly paid.

The president also introduced free health services for mothers giving birth in preselected heath centres and hospitals in the capital, Kinshasa, which he has promised to extend to the rest of the country if he is re-elected.

He has pushed for a review of the country`s mining contracts with China so it can keep a larger share of its vast mineral wealth.

In a state of the nation address last month, he said the economy had improved, with the national budget having grown nearly three-fold from $6bn (£4.7bn) at the beginning of his tenure to $16bn this year.

`We have come a remarkable way since 2020, overcoming the challenges posed by the pandemic to achieve rates of economic growth that inspire confidence in the future,` he said.

In spite of the growth, many Congolese have been complaining about the depreciation of the Congolese franc which is having a serious impact on their daily lives.

Despite its vast mineral wealth and huge population, life has not improved for most people, with conflict, corruption and poor governance persisting.

In his re-election campaign, he made some of the same promises he made five years ago, such as creating more jobs, making the economy more resilient and promising to tackle the insecurity that has wracked the east of the country for three decades, leading to the deaths of millions of people.

Mr Tshisekedi`s supporters point to his investment in schools and healthcare

Much of the country`s natural resources lie in the east where violence still rages despite Mr Tshisekedi`s attempts to deal with the situation by imposing a state of siege, ceasefire deals and bringing in regional troops. 

These included a force from the East African Community, which DR Congo joined last year, hoping to improve trade and political ties with its eastern neighbours.

However things have not worked out as planned and Mr Tshisekedi has ordered them to leave, saying they had been ineffective. He has said he wants to replace them with troops from a different trade bloc of which DR Congo is also a member - the Southern African Development Community (Sadc).

But there is little sign of them coming any time soon.

Mr Tshisekedi has also demanded the end of the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo. After more than two decades, it will take some time for the thousands of troops to leave, but it has raised fears of a security vacuum as the army is in no position to take on the numerous rebel groups which operate across eastern DR Congo on its own. 

DR Congo`s membership of the EAC is complicated by the fact that Mr Tshisekedi, as well as UN experts, say fellow member Rwanda is backing one of the most active rebel groups in eastern DR Congo, the M23. 

Rwanda`s government has strongly denied this but it has led to a souring of relations between Mr Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, that has defined the end of his first term.

It was not always that way. At the beginning of his term, Mr Tshisekedi initially tried to mend relations with neighbouring countries including Rwanda.

In a surprise gesture, he invited President Kagame to the funeral of his father in May 2019.

In the latter years of his presidency, however, the relationship has become so frosty that Mr Tshisekedi recently compared Mr Kagame to Germany`s World War Two dictator.

While addressing a campaign rally in Bukavu, close to the Rwandan border, Mr Tshisekedi last week said of Mr Kagame: `I promise he will end up like Adolf Hitler.`

Hitler, responsible for the deaths of millions, including six million Jewish people in the Holocaust, ended up taking his own life in a bunker in the German capital, Berlin, in 1945.

The Rwanda`s government described the Congolese president`s comments as `a loud and clear threat`.

In his final rally before the election, he even vowed to declare war on Rwanda if he was re-elected. While he was hoping to whip up nationalist sentiment, most Congolese will be hoping he does not follow through on this pledge.

They would prefer him to stick to his previous goal of creating jobs and transforming the economy, even if turning the country into the `Germany of Africa` remains a distant dream.

An immigration law expert says that the number of visa applications blocked due to inefficiencies at Home Affairs is likely worse than the department lets on and added it has little intention of addressing the issue because of bureaucratic attitudes towards foreigners.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi noted in a recent parliamentary Q&A that the backlog in temporary residency visas remained at over 74,309 unchanged from the department’s last report at the end of October 2023 adding that an additional backlog of 43,944 in permanent residency permits also remains.

South Africa has long been facing a significant skills shortage, and businesses have been struggling to attract much-needed skills to the country, with their efforts having been hindered by the failures at Home Affairs.

Companies have reported that visa applications can take up to 48 weeks to be accepted, which poses a threat to expansion plans, investment, and job creation in a country with a 33% unemployment rate.

A point of how bad the backlog is, a report prepared for the presidency noted that between 2014 and 2021, only 25,298 skilled work permit visas were approved.

Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, immigration lawyer Gary Eisenberg said that the backlog crisis is probably much worse and that the numbers provided by the department are somewhat misleading.

“It’s unclear whether the numbers given by the department include application appeals and those under review, and that number is likely far higher than the 74,000,” said Eisenberg.

“Even if some foreigners with the means are able to get a court order to force the minister to make a decision on their applications, many of those orders are being ignored,” he noted.

Eisenberg added that skilled foreign professionals who are needed to fill the gaps on the critical skills list are simply walking away. “They cannot wait a year for a visa or spousal visa, so they are going elsewhere.”

He also noted that the department has little intention to fix the issues, and this is being of bureaucratic attitudes towards foreigners. “If a foreigner doesn’t want to sit and wait, then it’s fine; they must go. That’s the attitude we’re sitting with at Home Affairs,” he said.

Eisenberg also notes that he has little faith that the department will fix it anytime soon or even have the will to address the issues. 

Potential evidence of this is the fact that in a parliamentary Q&A near the end of November, Motsoaledi noted that the time frame to fix the backlog has been pushed back to November 2024 from June 2024.

Eisenberg also added that his partners have been Home Affairs officials, and the issue has been part of all the work he’s done in his professional career. 

“I have seen the department explain to the public repeatedly over the past 25 years that they are in the process of improvement spending millions on turnaround projects in the process and the department has done very little if anything,” he said. 

Despite Eisenberg’s comments, there seems to be some movement by the department to address the visa crisis in South Africa.

Recently, the minister signed planned changes to work permit regulations aimed at fixing a bureaucratic morass that’s frustrating the country’s biggest investors and exacerbating a skills crisis, people familiar with the situation said.

The changes may include a range of measures suggested by a government study, including the creation of a remote worker visa category.

South Africa’s home affairs minister signed planned changes to work permit regulations aimed at fixing a bureaucratic morass that’s frustrating the country’s biggest investors and exacerbating a skills crisis, people familiar with the situation said.

Now that the changes have been signed by Aaron Motsoaledi, they’ll be gazetted in the coming days and released for public comment, the people said, asking not to be identified as the decision hasn’t been made public. The changes may include a range of measures suggested by a government study, including the creation of a remote worker visa category.

Companies operating in South Africa struggle to find skilled workers, a result of a dysfunctional education system and exacerbated by emigration. That, they said, is hindering growth.

Still, between 2014 and 2021, only 25,298 skilled work permit visas were approved, according to a report prepared for the presidency. 

More than half of the applications were rejected on grounds including errors in the complex application process and the inability of the Home Affairs Department to process them.

The department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Industry bodies, including the Southern African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which represents owners of factories in the country, such as Volkswagen and BMW, have warned the skills shortage may halt their members’ expansion plans and threaten 100,000 jobs.

A chamber representing European Union companies operating in South Africa collated complaints that showed that some companies are considering moving their African headquarters to other countries on the continent because of their frustration.

Eight recommendations in the study, which was released by the presidency in April, include a points-based system, where applicants who meet a minimum education and salary level would be granted work permits. It’s unclear whether all or some of them will be included in the changes.

While processing a work visa in South Africa can take 48 weeks or more, the process in Kenya is a maximum of 12 weeks and just eight weeks in Nigeria, the authors of the report wrote.

Thirty days will be allowed for public comment before the changes can be passed into law.

The centre was the applicant in the case which took aim at sections of the Act, which provided that an asylum seeker was automatically deemed to have abandoned their asylum application if they did not renew their visa within one month of its expiry. 

In the unanimous ruling handed down on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court categorised refugees as an `especially vulnerable group`, adding that `their plight calls for compassion`. 

JOHANNESBURG - The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town has welcomed a Constitutional Court ruling setting aside sections of the Refugees Act stating that it’s going to make a marked difference in the lives of those fleeing persecution.

The centre was the applicant in the case which took aim at sections of Act, which provided that an asylum seeker was automatically deemed to have abandoned their asylum application if they did not renew their visa within one month of its expiry.

In February, the Western Cape High Court ruled in Scalabrini’s favour, and on Tuesday, so too did the Constitutional Court.

The centre’s head of advocacy and legal advisor James Chapman said: `It’s going to be very, very impactful, very meaningful, because in 2020 when the amendment came out, it meant an asylum seeker who had been struggling with the backlogs and challenges of accessing asylum was routinely cut out of the asylum process, and subjected to arrest, detention, deportation and being returned to a persecutory environment`. 

`So, now they have the solace, they have the protection that they`re not going to face being returned to their country where they wouldn`t be safe, where their life, liberty, fundamental human rights would be at risk,` he added.

LANDMARK JUDGEMENT

In the unanimous ruling handed down on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court categorised refugees as an “especially vulnerable group”, adding that “their plight calls for compassion”.

And it found the sections in question were “directly at odds” with this approach, as well as with the principle of ‘non-refoulement’, which provides that refugees or asylum seekers should not be made to go back to a country where they’re liable to be subjected to persecution.

It also found these sections “fly in the face” of the Refugees Act’s own provisions barring the return of individuals to countries where they’re under threat, as well as that they “infringe the right to dignity, unjustifiably limit the rights of children and are irrational and arbitrary”.

The Department of Home Affairs was ordered to pay costs in the matter.