LETTER: SA can’t afford to lose its skills, entrepreneurs and taxpayers

Both Bjorn Lomberg’s analysis of migration (“Global skilled migration could mitigate inequality”, May 9) and Randall Carolissen’s response (“Global skills migration could deepen the North-South divide”, May 23) allude to the perennial challenge of building and maintaining the skilled workforces less affluent countries require to drive their development.

Today, opportunities for those with in-demand skills are global, whether plumbers or programmers. Where these present hopes of a prosperous life in a wealthy society, enjoying the benefits of mature infrastructure and a secure future for one’s children, the incentives for migration are obvious.

For many of Africa’s educated and aspirant people migration to a “developed” country is simply a strategy for socioeconomic mobility. Dr Carolissen is correct that this takes its toll on the continent’s prospects. However, it must be noted that migration has been driven in no small measure by a failure of African countries to offer the fulfilling life its people seek.

This is the case for SA too. Emigration of the high net-worth and highly-skilled — now a multiracial, multicultural phenomenon — has long been a debilitating problem, doubly so because of the sophistication of its economy. The country cannot afford to lose its skills, entrepreneurs and taxpayers.

Here too a failure to secure the conditions for the future exerts a hefty push on those contemplating leaving: crime, state incompetence, corruption, race-baiting populism, sub-par education, the electricity crisis, manifesting in an economy where growth and job creation have flatlined. The future looks bleak indeed.

This course has sometimes been deliberately chosen. The recent Employment Equity Amendment Act and its draft regulations — dozens of pages of bureaucratically formulated percentages — establishes quotas (for that is what they are) backed by fines calculated to ruin companies that do not comply.

This says a great deal about the government’s priorities. There is no question that this will make doing business even more difficult than it is now. Expect the deficit of jobs to grow, and the deficit of optimism to grow even more sharply — and the incentives for exit to grow too.

Dr Carolissen correctly points to the imperative of addressing the “relevance of skills in the new job age”. However, SA is recklessly pushing itself to a point where those might never be created.

Nicholas Lorimer

Institute of Race Relations

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