S.Africa Tries to Lure Its White Diaspora Home

OHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - If South Africa's campaign to lure millions of people like 20-year-old Zander Smit back home is going to work, it must convince them whites still have a future in the country.

Tens of thousands of white South Africans have left their country since the end of apartheid in 1994, citing poor job prospects, endemic violent crime and fears the country could go the way of neighboring Zimbabwe.

But dire predictions of racial trouble and economic collapse are unfounded -- the stock market is hitting record highs and the currency has strengthened for three years in a row.

South African banks and businesses now want the estimated 4 million to 5 million citizens overseas -- 1.4 million in Britain alone -- to return home.

"The country is in a make it or break it situation," he says in the South Africa-themed Bok Bar in London's Covent Garden where he works. "I want to wait and see what happens in the next few years."

Back home, Smit worked on a temporary contract for a mobile phone operator but says he was never offered a full-time job because the firm had to meet its ethnic quota -- part of efforts to give the black majority more control of the economy.

He aims to join the British Army and hopes to get a British passport "just in case."

Like many other South Africans overseas, he says that while the country looks stable, he fears it could go the way of Zimbabwe, where the white minority have lost farms and businesses and the economy is in ruins.

Others say they left South Africa because of the high levels of violent crime. Many whites live in compounds behind razor wire and electric fences.

But official statistics show the murder rate falling 9.9 percent in the year to March 2004, and few analysts predict problems in Zimbabwe will spill over into a country that has enjoyed more than 10 years of multi-racial democracy.

Although official figures are not collected, moving companies say the number of people returning to South Africa has increased.

"In the 1990s a lot of people were leaving for political reasons but now it's leveled off. It's probably about the same amount leaving as coming back," says James Paterson, marketing manager for Stuttaford Van Lines.

"Homecoming Revolution" -- a campaign funded mainly by First National Bank and supported by the government -- says the country needs its overseas citizens back, particularly if they have skills and want to start their own firms.

"That way, we'll reduce crime by creating employment," says campaign spokeswoman Martine Schaeffer, who came back to South Africa herself after the job situation in London became tighter with the end of the Internet boom.

Research shows each skilled worker who returns can create up to 10 jobs, she says -- no small feat in a country where at least a third of the population is unemployed.

"People come back for a number of reasons. Some feel they never really belonged overseas, for others it just didn't work out. Some were scared of what South Africa might become," says Schaeffer.

Now some say the climate and bright economic outlook are more than enough to tempt people back.

"People want to live somewhere where their children can play in the garden every day because of the weather," says Shaeffer. "Even if there are bars around the garden."

And in a country where half the population live on less than $2 a day, an income that cannot buy much in Europe goes farther.

"For a very mediocre income you can have a large house and a very good standard of living," says financial consultant Cornel Stander, who left for Canada in 1998 and now runs her own business in Johannesburg.

CONGRATULATIONS! You are one of the very few who know the facts of this. :-)

The only thing that I will add,is that Holland has HATED/looked down on the Afrikaaners for hundreds of years and is THE last place on the face of the earth that will take them in.

There is an immigration visa lottery,which costs money to apply for and the sum is pretty hefty,to get such a visa to America.We take only a very few,every few months.There are two ways around that...work for a company which will send you to America to work and get you a green card (this includes H1B workers too) or apply for an immigration visa proving that you have at least $100,000 American...which is a considerable challenge for most South Africans,even what is considered to be wealthy ones,over there,due to the exchange rate.

The people I know are from Cape Town. They described the crime and crime rates. Almost everyone they know has been a victim of violence in one form or another. They are not rich and do not have the luxury of a guarded neighborhood. They live in a mixed "middle class" neighborhood. I was aghast at the crime (I though Memphis was bad) but they said it was not as bad as Johannesburg! I can't comprehend what that might be like!

My family lives in Pretoria. Crime is pretty bad there too,but not as bad as it is in Joberg.

They live behind HIGH stone walls,topped with electrified razor wire and broken glass and EVERYTHING is security alarm wired too;this is in a gated community.Yet,they go on vacation and live their lives.It's a different world.

And when some of them came here (for my daughter's wedding,life here and our freedom,was hard for some of them to get used to/deal with. It wasn't only that we are so much safer,but the fact that we have so much more available to us.

The thing that everyone needs to understand,Americans and everyone else alike,is that other places and other people aren't the same.Life really IS quite different in other places.America and Americans are what they see in our T.V. shows and movies,for example.

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