White South Africans Head for Home

Mail & Guardian
Thomas Donzel
November 20, 2011.

After 10 years in London, the Short family packed their bags and moved back to South Africa, part of what experts say is a growing trend of white expatriates returning home.

"London was very good to us but it was never home," said Julie Short, who met her husband Wallis in the British capital, where their two young daughters were born.

The couple were among the estimated 800 000 white South Africans who moved overseas, mainly to Britain, Australia and New Zealand, between 1991 and 2001, according to census data.

The exodus amounted to about 15% of South Africa's white population. Some fled fearing the often gratuitously violent crime that erupted across the nation during the mid-1990s. Nearly 27 000 people were killed in 1995, the year after Nelson Mandela became president.

Others feared that in the new post-apartheid South Africa, they could be passed over for jobs or business opportunities as the government embarked on a programme of black economic empowerment.

But now the exodus appears to be slowing -- and even reversing.

Census figures show the white population is at 4.5-million, the highest level since 1991.

Read the rest here.

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Comment: White emigration from South Africa has always been a matter of quality of life issues (read economic) rather than a matter of political principle.  

If it was the latter most whites would have left during apartheid as a stand against injustice.

According to the article 800 000 whites left in the decade after 1991 when the writing was on the wall and in political terms, things seemed to be improving with the impending end of apartheid.

The emigration number above is an underestimate and is likely to be greater if one considers that many whites held onto dual citizenship status even while they lived here through five decades of apartheid, and more.

Makes me wonder if whites knew/expected that the apartheid bubble would eventually burst.

And, when it did, the usual Afro-pessimistic attitude that grounds white identity became the push-factor.

But whiteness is also mostly a hunter-gatherer identity and it makes sense that whites are returning to South Africa now that their economic fears are greater in the countries where they are immigrants.

F*ck all that sh*t about "home is where the heart is" ... it's all about economics boet.

Even with Affirmative Action and the deplorable crime situation in South Africa, it is better to be here than unemployed in Britain, the US, and soon Australia.

If this trend is about economics, and it is, then don't be too surprised when whites leave (again), when economic things start to sour here in the delusional rainbow.

Right now it is not the sunshine and happy/welcoming niggas that are bringing YT home.  

Naaa boet, it is mostly because it makes more economic sense to be here than in the warmongering (also read declining) West.

And, most of these folks are coming with foreign currency reserves that allow them to live very nicely, and better, in the leafy suburbs of their privileged youth. 

But not all of this must be read as bad for South Africa.  These folks are bringing skills home and cash too (though they will leave most of it overseas just in case - Afro-pessimism never disappears). 

But sh*t is not easy here hey.  Wait till they try to get a job and then try to work in an environment inclined towards colonized dysfunction.

A happy time will not be had by all and I can guarantee that - don't be fooled by all the German cars driving around.  Those folks are on the take inside the grubment.

South Africa is a hurry-up-and-wait country where corruption is the norm and sh*t costs way more than it should and service is non-existent.

Add to that some of the most ignant muthaz (forget all that Ubuntu sh*t) anywhere and you will be, like me, making sure your other passport does not expire.

And I'm not white - and no longer black, or African, according to the new political rules.

Oh I should offer a "welcome home" anyway.  Suckers.  :0)

Onward!

Ps. Not sure which of the racial binary will be more pissed-off by this post.  Perhaps both, since neither exist without the sanction and support of the other.  

Ummm no, I am not in a bad mood.  Deconstruction is a critique, no?