Skills leave as wealthy foreigners arrive

FED up and desperate South Africans are looking to other countries in search of better opportunities, but high net worth foreigners are flocking here for a better quality of life.

Rampant crime, corruption and, to a lesser extent the country’s ongoing electricity woes, are listed as some of the reasons South Africans are heading elsewhere. The Covid-19 pandemic is also no longer a deterrent to travelling.

Top of the lost-skills list are doctors, accountants, IT specialists and even media professionals who are looking for greener pastures, mainly in English language countries.

A survey released by infoQuest/TrendER this week indicated 5% of employed South Africans had applied for residency in another country and would be emigrating soon.

Another 14% had seriously considered emigrating and had made enquiries or submitted applications.

The organisation said a further one in three employed South Africans had thought about emigrating but had not taken any further steps.

“If we extrapolate this to the actual numbers, 5% of about 15 million working South Africans indicates a staggering number of 750 000 South Africans getting ready to leave imminently,” said Claire Heckrath, managing director of infoQuest.

Experts say New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK are perennial favourites for those seeking a better life outside the country, but Portugal and Panama are growing in popularity and have been added to the list.

On the flip side, new SA residents, mainly from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, view South Africa as their playground because of its natural beauty, open spaces and larger living areas.

But there’s a caveat: you have to be affluent to get around the load shedding, crime, health and education troubles you will encounter in your new home.

Property and immigration experts say Hermanus is the place of choice for foreigners who move to South Africa, while Cape Town and Plettenberg Bay come a close second.

Tax and immigration experts say the favourable exchange rate for people from Europe means they get more value for money when they buy property here than they would get in their own countries.

The beauty of the whales in Hermanus, its proximity to Cape Town and the top-notch infrastructure in the area are all selling points, says Annien Borg, an area manager for Pam Golding estate agency.

Borg said foreigners were willing to fork out R50m for a lavish house or even R22m for a vacant plot in the seaside town.

South Africans in new countries say it’s the safety, good education and hope for better opportunities that saw them take the plunge.

EVERYBODY knows that the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling

Like their father or their dog just died So sings Leonard Cohen on Everybody Knows.

Here in South Africa, many have realised that Captain Cyril Ramaphosa – and the captains before him – have lied about the state of the ship we call South Africa. Corruption has gored huge chunks out of the hull, and there is no power to work the pumps.

Many passengers have taken to the lifeboats, striking out for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, more recently, Panama and Portugal.

And who can blame them?

With health, public security and education all in decline, the cost of living in steep incline and near daily revelations of the rampant looting which has laid the galley bare, the passengers are seeking ships which offer stability and, more importantly, hope – hope for themselves and their children of a better future.

The problem is that many of those emigrating are taking away valuable skills, sorely needed in a country which just cannot replace them at the rate at which they are leaving.

Their departure also decreases the increasingly small pool of people on whom the government relies for 38% (9.7% of GDP) of its tax revenues, collected from personal income tax.