Posted on 02/19/2005 4:34:21 PM PST by CurlyDave
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.
But Smit, and many others like him, are not so sure.
"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.
"The signs are there," Smit says.
ELECTRIC FENCES
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.
BETTER LIFESTYLE
"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.
I think that most who have escaped will not want to go back.
You said it! Why in the hell would anyone go back unless the were interested in "necklacing".
The whites of South Africa, like the German Jews of the 1930's, were at first unwilling to leave, then one day, found they could not leave....
The "majority" government of South Africa still tends to some excesses, much more than is actively reported, and the civil situation there is not significantly better than it was 20 years ago. There is simply a different ethnic minority in charge. Tribal warfare never went away.
Any White man that got out of that mess alive had better stay out.
I thought whitey was the problem. The black majority got what they wanted,they shouldn't complain about it now-it's unseemly. IMO
That's basically what it is. My ex left when apartheid was in full swing because he didn't want to be a goverment chemist. No money in the world will pay him to go back, and he also has relatives who rather die than move because it's their land too.
Tons of South African Jews in South Florida now, including two couples in my parent's neighborhood. No, they have NO desire to return under any circumstance.
My, Grandma, what big teeth you have!
All the better to eat you with my dear...
Seriously, I have some South African friends, and after my experiences with their morality and work ethic, we can only hope the South Africans forced to flee that dying socialist state come to America. Why are they fleeing?
Because the UN decided that apartheid was raciest and boycotted and sanctioned a thriving free democratic country to death. Now everyone is fleeing the financial ruin and something much more wicked than apartheid, the UN replacement, Genocide and Socialism.
Yep, the UN fixed South Africa but good.
For later
Actually, I'd say it was another disaster foisted on the American public by the Old Media.
If we had been told the truth, we never would have allowed it to happen.
The same for Rhodesia.
I think the Old Media, or the MSM is in bed with the Marxist Democrats of the USA and the UN. All part of the same Harem.
You are correct. May our anger at the horror they have caused be directed toward exposing their depravity.
2 points:
1) Apartheid WAS racist, and it wasn't only the UN that decided that. Basing "separate but equal" access to opportunities on race alone is rooted in the idea of race, as the Apartheid government freely demonstrated. The fact that there was little "equality" in what was available to people of different racial categories means that it was not just racialist, but racist.
2) A "thriving free democratic country" does not automatically disenfranchise 70% of its citizens because of the color of their skin. SA elections before 1994 were competitive but South Africans were not free to participate in them unless they belonged to the "correct" tribe -- the one in power.
It sure was, and the new government that was put in place is a hundred times more racist. Then UN sure fixed South Africa, but good. Now instead of ride in the back of the bus, you can get killed in the back of the bus. People have their lands taken from them because of the color of their skin, or raped, and or beaten to death in the police stations. Rape, murder, and racial killings are a hundred times worse, you take your life in your hands just walking some places.
But since it is whites at the bottom now, It is a success. Never mind that violence against blacks is also much worse, but it was never about Blacks was it?
South Africa, once the flower of Africa is now just a squashed cactus, once a the bread basket, now an importer. Property rights gone, justice gone, prosperity gone, peace gone, but hey, at least there is not Apartheid, just brewing Genocide.
South Africa is a disaster of Continental proportions for Leftists, so suddenly not news worthy anymore. Face it Apartheid would be one helluva step up from where it is now. By the way, I have never met a South African that was FOR Apartheid. What happened to South Africa was like shooting your neighbor because he had a broken wrist. He's so much better off now...
I've got a friend from high school whose family came the US in '94, right as apartheid ended. Under no circumstance has "going back" ever been something he's talked about. He's far happier here, and occasionally talks to old friends there who tell him to stay away.
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