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Cracking the Whip
Location: Sexymama's arms...
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To be fair, the other side of the coin:
http://travel.iafrica.com/expats/299894.htm
Quote:
White South Africans are coming home
Philippe Bernes-Lasserre
Posted Mon, 02 Feb 2004
They emigrated six or 10 years ago, fearful for their security and their future or, more recently, attracted by prospects in London or Toronto.
But now some are coming back. With little fanfare, but with enthusiasm, white South Africans are returning little by little to a country "that works" and a homeland they miss.
The 'Homecoming Revolution' is on the move.
It is a vibrant new non-governmental organisation, run by two young executive women who believe in the drive to persuade South Africans to come home.
For the past year, the organisation has been the echo chamber for tens of thousands of homesick South Africans, the majority of them white, who had found what they thought were greener pastures in Canada or Australia, in Manchester or New York, but who are now asking themselves whether leaving was really the right choice.
The "Homecoming" Internet site is a revelation
It hosts a constant flow of exchanges, written by those who want to return but who haven't worked up the courage yet, and whose incomes keep them abroad — professionals, bankers and real estate agents.
There is also the occasional embittered entry, accusing South Africa of going down the same path as President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, currently in crisis.
It is difficult to quantify the number of those returning, but they certainly do not match the number of those leaving, contributing to an acute shortage of professionals and skilled artisans.
But the trend is there, the optimism as well, said Alison Melvill, a South African who returned with her IT consultant husband after six years in London.
"In the six years since we left, people's attitudes have changed a lot. The people here now are very positive about where the country is going, very gung-ho, very keen to explore."
Angel Jones, a 31-year-old creative director of an advertising agency and Marina Smithers (32) a public relations officer, "threw a bottle in the ocean" when they launched the site a year ago with a message for 27 000 South Africans across the world.
They have been overwhelmed by people writing their stories, sometimes more than 1000 a day.
"We couldn't read everything, we had no idea that we had reached so many people," said Jones, who last year won a South African Woman of the Year award.
SA cliches
The website plays on all the cliches in South Africa: sun, space, bush, biltong (dried meat), braais (barbecues), the clear skies. These are the things dear to the hearts of expatriates facing a London drizzle or a snowstorm in Canada.
Jones, who lived in London for seven years, believes that one man was the catalyst for the idea... Nelson Mandela.
During a visit in 1996, the then president spoke to a huge number of expatriates, who braved the cold to listen to him speak in Trafalgar Square.
Said Jones: "He (Mandela) just said 'I love all of you. I just want to put you in my pocket and take all of you home'.
"The whole crowd just roared. There were people in tears, and I looked around and saw all of these South Africans just yearning to come home... That's where it all began."
The obstacles preventing people from returning — crime and concerns about job losses — are often the same that still drive them away: some 9000 South Africans left during the first nine months of 2003.
"Our message is: don't wait for the country to improve. Come back and improve it. Don't wait for the jobs. Come and create the jobs," said Jones.
"From a PR point of view, the idea of returning home had to become 'cool'."
"There is not a single country in the world, where everything is so much possible, or where any individual can make such an impact difference in society," she declares.
"And then again, we don't say to people 'don't go', we tell them 'go, enrich yourselves, get a qualification, and return and invest here'."
A recruitment firm recently rang alarm bells about the new "black brain drain".
Nurses and black teachers started to leave for Europe from 1999-2000 in search of better pay, and now it is black professionals and managers who are quitting the country at an alarming rate to gain international experience.
Whites returning, blacks leaving: A looking-glass South Africa?
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis
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