South African universities have registered declining numbers of foreign nationals enrolling due to xenophobia fears and long visa delays, an academic has said.

There has been sporadic xenophobic attacks in the country in the last three years, forcing African students to shun local universities.

Prof Maxi Schoeman from the University of Pretoria warns this could affect the future rating of the country's universities.

Prof Schoeman, the deputy dean in the Faculty of Humanities, said they had received 200 fewer applications in 2017 for postgraduate studies. The faculty gets more than 1,000 applications per year.

She expressed the sentiments while addressing a seminar on the future of South African foreign policy at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria on Thursday. She told the gathering she had seen the impact of the xenophobic attacks and the backlash on the continent in a very practical way at the university campus.

“We’re very, very concerned about the drop in international students this year in enrolment, and by international students, we mean largely students from the rest of the continent,” Prof Schoeman said.

The University of Pretoria's research, she said, had shown that parents were scared to send their children to South Africa.

“A parent from Burundi, which has seen its own violent political troubles in the recent past, phoned to ask if her child would be safe on the Pretoria university’s campus,” she said.

She added that the difficult procedure for students in getting visas was also responsible for the decline.

Students sometimes have to wait for periods as long as a year for a visa after gaining acceptance into a university.

According to Prof Schoeman, this year alone, more than 100 students were still waiting for permits.

South Africa's Department of Home Affairs Director-General, Mkuseli Apleni told journalists they were making steady progress in the timely issuing of permits since the Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) were contracted to run the permit application process.

Government’s White Paper on International Migration, approved in March by Cabinet, proposes plan to allow international students to stay on in the country and work for a few years after their studies have been completed.