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Emigration is ripping South African communities apart, but silence about it in the mainstream. Economically and socially brutal what's happening.
Presentation by a bank this week revealed 1/3 of kids leaving pvt schools are doing so because of emigration. 1/3 of that 1/3 are black. Emigration is multiracial and extensive.
I believe emigration from SA has been perennially underestimated. The draining out of skilled and productive people has dealt a mortal blow to much of SA society and the economy. SA has lost hundreds of thousands of wealth creators and community builders since the 80s.
Despite Rainbow Nation euphoria, SA's best have streamed overseas. The dept of Home Affairs' White Paper on Migration (2017) claims that now whites are a minority of emigrants. Whether accurate or not, it's clear that SA can't retain good people from all cultural communities.
Using the official UN estimate of SAfricans living abroad (900k in 2017 vs 330k in 1990) it's wrong to conclude 570k people have emigrated since 1990. Why? Because you must factor annual mortality of the abroad population + emigration of SAfrican foreign passport holders.
There will also be an element of undocumented SAn immigrants in many countries. If we work on a white population of 5m in 1990 vs 4.6m now and apply realistic birth v deaths assumptions, emigration of whites alone probably higher than 1 million since 1990, ~40k/year or ~100/day.
Demographics are tricky so I'm not trying to make absolute claims. Grappling with the numbers. But there are a number of ways to corroborate, both with data and anecdotes, that emigration is a massive and damaging trend for SA. Votes with feet is extremely informative.
