The switchboard erupted at the offices of New World Immigration following South Africa’s recent deadly unrest.
“People on calls were describing how they could hear gunshots, explosions, it was like a war zone,” Robbie Ragless, the firm’s director, said of some of the 3,000 to 4,000 pleas his team fielded for help to leave the country.
The worst bout of lawlessness since the end of apartheid makes a fresh exodus of talent seem likely. The mass departures of the early Nineties as South Africa moved to black majority rule were dominated by so-called “white flight”, but recent inquiries are split evenly along racial lines. “Mostly young and highly skilled families” looking for safe haven in Britain, Canada and Australia, Ragless said.
Before the July turmoil, which cost approximately 330 lives and at least $3.5 billion in looting and damage to property, the firm would typically send out about 15 quotes a week to clients wanting to emigrate. Hundreds have gone out in the last fortnight.
Chantal and Eugene Rensburg, who are both biokineticists — specialist physiotherapists — were already considering a move to Australia or New Zealand when President Ramaphosa ordered tens of thousands of troops to put down what he branded an “attempted insurrection”, part of a plot to “cripple the economy, cause social instability and severely weaken, even dislodge, the democratic state”.
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The proximate trigger for the violence was the jailing for contempt of court of Jacob Zuma, the former president who oversaw his own decade of widescale state plundering. The sentencing was welcomed as a triumph for the rule of law but has further exposed a ruling party at war with itself.
“It was petrol on the fire in terms of getting things done a little quicker,” Mrs Rensburg, 33, said of the anarchy that swept through the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, which is home to almost half the country’s 60 million population.
It was the state’s tardy response while the police — deliberately or incompetently — failed to curb days of attacks, ransacking and planned economic sabotage that most spooked Madie Magoro, a 32 year-old artist. He is now hoping for a new life in Canada with his wife, Nonhlanhla, a student teacher, and their toddler son.
“It was hardcore. If you are not safe in your own home where someone can come and take your stuff, I don’t see myself being here,” he told The Times.
After his narrow victory in the 2017 battle for the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), Ramaphosa, 68, committed himself to reforming its fractious and rotten ranks. Last month’s orchestrated anarchy revealed what stands in his way: pro-corruption party enemies intent on rendering South Africa ungovernable rather than face justice.
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Surveys by the polling firm Afrobarometer suggest that while public confidence in Ramaphosa personally is stable and markedly higher than it was with Zuma, 79, trust in political institutions has continued to decline this year, with suspicions lingering that they remain “captured” by the former leader’s allies.
More than half of those polled this year believed corruption still festered among politicians, officials and advisers working in the office of the president. That number has been creeping up steadily since 2002, when 13 per cent expressed distrust.
In many parts of Africa’s most industrialised economy, where municipal authorities are bankrupt and communities are left to sort their own bin collections, water supplies and security, there is little sign of the state. Analysts had long warned that mass unrest was inevitable in the world’s most unequal society, where lockdowns have deepened divisions and 22 per cent of citizens are hungry.
Yet the government was woefully unprepared to respond. Very few troublemakers have been arrested, neither have key plotters — reported to include ANC figures and rogue senior spies — so many citizens fear the edgy calm will not last.
Even more than safety concerns, the Magoros and the Rensburgs are anxious about raising children in South Africa. Mrs Rensburg is adamant that “we love our country, we’re not anti-South Africa” but frets that policies intended to right the wrongs of apartheid would mean that even if her son “was the best player ... not being the best colour” will stifle his prospects. Yet, being one of South Africa’s black majority still poses no guarantees of jobs “without ANC connections” said Mr Magoro, who specialises in designing 3D gaming characters.
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Almost half of black South Africans, and three out of four of its youth, are already out of work. Ramaphosa himself estimates his government’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns meant that two million people lost their jobs.
Beyond the death toll from the riots, it is the cost to jobs that will have the most devastating impact on affected areas, which included areas around Durban, southern Africa’s busiest port. Many factories and shops will never reopen, Business Leadership South Africa, which represents large corporations, has warned.
A new brain drain will further squeeze finances. The middle class had already been hollowed out by a slowdown in economic growth fuelled by corruption, rising government debt and crippling power cuts. National debt is forecast to rise to about 89 per cent of GDP by 2026.
The number of South Africa’s “wealthy” — those earning a household income of more than R75,000 a month (£3,700) — had already halved between 2017 and 2020, leaving just 400,000 in that bracket. During the same period, the ultra-poor, those earning below the minimum wage of £1 an hour, increased by 6.6 million, or 54 per cent, research by the University of Cape Town Liberty Institute think tank revealed.
New Zealand and Australia appeal to emigrating South Africans for their similarities to “what we have here in terms of weather, style of living and all of that”, Mrs Rensburg said. But a sizeable chunk of those who landed there in the early Nineties have returned home after deciding that navigating an uncertain future in their own country trumped stability in foreign lands.
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Among them was Mike Abel, who emigrated with his family to a good job in Sydney in 2008 “following a terrifying crime incident”. An open letter he wrote explaining why they returned to South Africa for good, which was published last week, has chimed with the feelings of many.
“What I do know about South Africa is every time we get to the very edge, the remarkable everyday people of this country pull us back from the brink. We regroup, re-evaluate and somehow recover,” the advertising executive wrote, invoking last month’s remarkable scenes of communities uniting to plugs gaps left by the state to protect properties and neighbourhoods.
South Africa is celebrated for its record of defying dire predictions. Yet its citizens’ resolve will be tested again next week by Zuma’s long-awaited corruption trial in KwaZulu Natal, the centre of last month’s violence. Now an inmate, he is refusing to appear via video link, which state prosecutors believe will be safest, insisting that he will appear in person. His allies are already calling for crowds to turn out, intent on making the most of it.
