SOUTH AFRICA: South Africans who recently fled their homeland amid concern over rising crime rates and political upheaval are starting to return home - but at a slower rate from Ireland than from other countries, new research suggests.
In a survey of attitudes among South Africans living overseas, only a quarter of respondents in Ireland indicated a desire to return home compared to almost half of respondents in the UK.
The study coincides with renewed government and civil society efforts to reverse a decade-old "brain drain" from South Africa. According to official statistics, over 16,000 highly-skilled South Africans - almost all of them white - emigrated between 1994 and 2001.
Total emigration figures are believed to be a multiple of this, however, with 30,000 South African nationals now in Ireland alone. Ireland's healthy jobs market and perceived low crime rate were cited as key factors in the decision to stay overseas.
A quarter of South Africans in Ireland said they moved because of "reverse discrimination against whites" in their home country. Toni Joubert of Research Surveys, which carried out the study said that while only 50 people in Ireland were surveyed out of a total of 2,000 global respondents, the figures indicated "South Africans are happier in Ireland than in the UK". Some 49 per cent of respondents in the UK said they wished to return home compared to an average of 34 per cent across all countries.
President Thabo Mbeki has expressed a desire to repatriate skilled administrators for his government, mimicking efforts under way in other African states.
Liberia's recently-elected president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who studied and worked in the US for several years, is one of a number of notable returnees to governance posts on the continent.
The Homecoming Revolution, a non-governmental organisation seeking returning South Africans (but not, it says, "pessimists, racists, bigots and moaners"), visited both Dublin and The Hague last week to meet prospective returnees at the city's respective South African embassies.
The group's director Martine Schaffer said accurate migration figures were hard to come by, but "we are definitely seeing things turning around." She said expatriates in Dublin expressed concern about inflation and the health and education systems, both of which were perceived to be poor by South African standards. More emotional factors were also cited.
"One parent complained that her daughter never got to run around barefoot, but was always in socks and shoes, and she wanted her to experience that," said Ms Schaffer.