LETTER: Accelerating emigration illustrates government’s failure

Many Business Day articles over the past month have highlighted rapidly accelerating emigration. The National Assembly’s failure to analyse and find ways to counteract this trend boggles the mind.

Holding the government accountable means understanding emigration numbers. There are few better indicators of executive government failure than net emigration flows.

Specific questions that should be investigated include:

• The effect on tax revenues, domestic savings and SA’s ability to fill critical positions in technical, academic and business fields;
• The profile of emigrants in terms of age, qualification and economic activity; and
• Key decision drivers leading to emigration, and what the government is doing to address these.

Racist legislation excluding whole groups of people from jobs in the government and corporates, excessive taxation for no services and more than 500,000 murders since 1994, are likely key determinants.

Add the lack of prospects for SA’s turnaround given the ANC’s catastrophic 1950s ideological policy on property rights, energy, labour law and public service, mining, health, merit and accountability, foreign policy and trade, and Bob’s your uncle.

Rolf Endres

Craighall Park

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