Category: emigration

Gone fishin’

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That’s actually another big fat 6000 miles… lie. I haven’t.
But I did see some blokes who had.

We popped out to Gordons Bay – the current stamping ground of 6000 miles… regular Gordon (as in Bay) for child-induced chaos at the Spur, followed by an invigorating walk along the beach.
The weather was peachy, the scenery was stunning and the company was great.
All in all a lovely afternoon then.

Photos are on flickr (where else would I put them?).

Tomorrow: Valentine’s Day. I’m not worried – I can do romantic, me.

Getting six years older

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As we celebrated the sixth anniversary of my arrival upon these shores, we came to realise exactly how much we’d got through in those six years. Actually, when one takes into account what we’d done in the first five years, this last one has been pretty quiet.

Four jobs, one engagement, one marriage, three new cars, one new house, first child, second child, four trips to the UK and about three vineyards-worth of fairly decent red wine, I’m still here and still loving it. But of course that wasn’t always the case.
Settling into South Africa and the distinctly different way of life took a long while. When it did happen, it happened overnight, but that night was after a thousand other nights here. It came with a sudden change of mindset – an epiphany, if you will – that this wasn’t the UK and I couldn’t make it like the UK. And while that fact may please many (if not all) South Africans,  it was finally my declaration of a ceasefire against the system that brought peace to my life.
(Incidentally, it’s worth noting that since then, the system has actually become a very good friend and we regularly meet up for a beer and a chat about politics, religion and the World Cup.)

Which is nice.

And in those six years, I sadly seem to have crossed that line where things that would previously have bored me have become things that now excite me. Like, for example, the fact that I can’t wait to install the new irrigation system in my front garden. Now, I’m not so far gone that I don’t see that that might seem a bit sad to younger readers, but when I put it in – it will be awesome.
Seriously.

Still don’t believe me? Right, I’m going to take photos…

The curious case of the ex-South Africans

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Here’s an interesting article from Ilham Rawoot in this week’s Mail and Guardian (one of very few that actually made it in – the Christmas issue was rather thin).

Martine Schaffer, managing director of Homecoming Revolution, a non-profit organisation that encourages and aids the return of skilled expatriates estimates that two million South Africans live abroad – mostly in Australia, Canada and the United States. Each month, she says, about 200 of them contact her organisation for advice on how to come home. Emigration is not a uniquely South African phenomenon, she says, but nowhere else is the act of leaving so steeped in guilt.

Schaffer described to the Mail & Guardian the emigration trends that she has seen over the past decade. Although more black people are heading off these days, most emigrants are white, she says. She attributes earlier waves of emigration to hysteria, generated by the political situation: “The people who left in 2000 didn’t want this country to succeed. When the lights went out [in the Eskom crisis] they were celebrating.”

Schaffer says 2008 was the year of “our biggest outflow”. The people who left at that point felt they had “stuck it out and had given the country a chance. Then Polokwane happened, Zuma came into power, there was the Eskom crisis and they felt their fears became rational.”

The article doesn’t make clear whether figures are available for 2009 yet. Probably not, as there may be a huge pre-New Year exodus or something, but I’m interested to see them. Because it seems to me that the “rational” fears of those 2008 emigrants haven’t actually followed through.
While Eskom and Zuma are still a little shaiky (geddit?) around the edges, crime rates have fallen, the country has ridden out the global credit crunch and the weather is superb. There hasn’t been the widespread load-shedding of early 2008, Zuma hasn’t killed all the whities and we have the World Cup coming next year. It’s all good.

For me, the exceptionalism comes not with the guilt of those leaving, but rather with the bad-mouthing of SA once they’ve gone. Now, I know that not all SA ex-pats do this: I can name a couple from the blogroll who definitely don’t. But there’s a huge proportion that do. I’ve not really seen this in ex-pats from anywhere else. Perhaps the odd toot about how Gordon Brown has dragged the UK into Kak Creek without a paddle, but that’s really about it. Nothing so serious, so vehement and so continuous as the stuff you get here. There really is no need to feel guilty for leaving – it’s all about perception and if you really see no future here, then go – but then move on, be positive, celebrate your new home, rather than vilifying your previous one.

Last word to Hilary Alexander, who went to London from 10 years, but is now back home in Cape Town:

Being away from home was like walking for a long time with a stone in your shoe and you can’t shift it. Now it’s as if someone has taken the stone out of my shoe.

And it’s sunny.

There’s talk of emigration in the air

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Remember when we used to hear that at all the dinner parties, the braais, on the television and in the papers?
The ZumaRumas™. The dangers of another ANC government. Chasing the whites out of the country. Murdered in our beds. How South Africa was going to become “another Zimbabwe”.
I never did get a firm date for any of those unfounded scare-mongering stories.
When I asked, I usually just got a hard stare over my wors and some mumbled excuse about needing another Castle Lite.

Sure, South Africa does have its problems. Many of them, in fact. Which is surely all the more reason for not adding more silly ones that you made up on the way to the party.
But why the exceptionalism? Because nowhere is perfect and everywhere you go, you’re going to face challenges. The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence. And if it is, it’s probably because of all the s**t that’s around over there.

So – back to the talk of emigration in the air:

There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket.

That’s Jeremy Clarkson in this week’s Sunday Times. He’s fed up with the UK – particularly the way it’s being run – and he wants out:

It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else.

The rest of the piece is a wonderful rant about the amount of control and red tape that is exerted over those in the developed world. And a highly amusing list of the problems with each individual country that he considers emigrating to. And – while it is, of course, written with tongue firmly in cheek – at least Clarkson acknowledges that it doesn’t matter where you go, things won’t ever be perfect. Because that’s really not how life works.

I often think that immigrants to a country are better at seeing the good in it. I certainly think that I have a much more positive opinion of South Africa than many of those who have lived here all their lives. And that goes for a lot of the other ex-pats I’ve met here, too.
I’ve done my best to educate myself on the substance behind the stories, taking opinion from all sides – like The Political Analyst and The Guru amongst others – and I’m finding it easier and easier to recognise nonsense emails and stories earlier and earlier, because – like all lies – they really don’t stand up to any degree of scrutiny. I now regularly have friends emailing me with stories of crime and politics and the ANC, with online petitions and the like, asking me if they are true.
And they never are.

And while I’m happy to set records straight, I find it sad that people still willingly believe all that they read in their inboxes and in the newspapers. And sadder still that there are individuals who will prey on this gullibility to push their agenda across. Thabo Mbeki did some things right and he did some things wrong (and this really isn’t a post about that), but he hit the nail on the head with this line:

It seems to me that the unacceptable practice of propagation of deliberate falsehoods to attain various objectives is becoming entrenched in our country.

Ironically, it now seems that he was behind some of the propagation of those deliberate falsehoods, no matter how unacceptable he found the practice. But it’s still a great quote.

What I’m saying here is that you can’t allow yourself to be dragged down by only seeing the negative side of things and you have to make the best of what you’ve got.
Because you’re never going to have it all.
A lot of people in South Africa fall into that negativity trap and their lives, their outlook and the mood of whole country in general are detrimentally affected because of it.
Positivity costs nothing and it makes you feel a whole lot better.

As for Clarkson – his column has now been removed from the Sunday Times website – probably something to do with his plan to strap Peter Mandelson “to the front of a van and drive round the country until he isn’t alive any more”.
Fortunately, I got there first and have a nice small (35kb) PDF of it for you to read. Enjoy!

Every day…

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Every day, I am blown away by the beauty of the mountain.
(When it’s visible and not hidden behind shedloads of dark grey cloud, obviously.)

This was from my drive home tonight.

Full size with option of spankingly large desktop background size here.

Pedants (you know who you are):
This doesn’t count as a quota photo because I’ve already posted today.