South Africa

Has anti-immigrant xenophobia reached new lows in South Africa? Attacks on migrants have increased in recent months and many worry that this marks a disturbing trend. IRIN has a report.

IRIN has two stories about the movement of human capital in Southern Africa that reveal a region in flux. The first shows how South Africa is trying to stanch the brain drain of skilled and highly educated workers and professionals, particularly in the healthcare profession. The second reveals beleaguered white former Zimbabwean farmers who had lost their land in Robert Mugabe’s wretchedly conceived land redistribution plans returning to Zim. Initially they left in hopes of finding options in other countries in the region, options that leaders in those countries had led them to believe would give them a chance to engage in commercial farming and important agricultural development.  

In both cases, individuals have been moving to find both opportunities to utilize skills. But the second half of the equation is that in addition to pull factors, they also experienced significant push factors, and those push factors will continue to inhibit development in the region if they are not alleviated.  

In yet another angle on the Zimbabwe crisis and the relationship between Zim and South Africa, The Mail & Guardian reports that skilled and semi-skilled construction workers are flooding from Zimbabwe to work on jobs building facilities for the 2010 World Cup. The deluge seems less problematic for South Africa, as despite its own unemployment problems skilled workers are always a rare commodity, than for Zimbabwe, which is hemmhoraging yet another segment of the economy that it can ill afford to lose but cannot afford to keep.