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FENLEY: Much
is made of the brain drain from Africa to the
West. It is estimated that
ten-thousand South Africans emigrate every year.
But often overlooked are the
increasing numbers of highly skilled Africans who choose to
settle here.
UPS: -
VOICER - It could be downtown
Kinshasa, Nairobi or Lusaka.
But it's actually Johannesburg, which
has become a cosmopolitan home-from-home to Africans from all
over the continent. Kin Malebo is a
Congolese restaurant, which provides African food, fellowship
and news of home to its mainly ex-patriate
clientele. At one of the tables is a group of professionals who
see themselves as citizens of a continent that is at last going
places. Andy is an engineer from the DRC.
UPS: ANDY - We
were perceived as people who are coming here to steal
opportunities, but over the years, things have changed. South
Africans, I think are more open to the outside world.
More accepting than they were before.
UPS: - VOICER - John, seated next
to him, is a doctor. Andre is an international trader, as is his
colleague, Peter.
UPS: - PETER - For me it is a very
good place to do business. South Africa
is well developed in terms of
infrastructure. You can do a lot of
things phones, roads, flights out of Johannesburg things you
might not be able to get in other countries.
UPS: - VOICER - Claude is an IT
business manager.
UPS: - CLAUDE IBALANKY; DRC - The
breed of African that you are seeing in this country are one day
going to be the pride of the continent in the face of the world
PRE-TITLE THE NEW AFRICANS
UPS: - VOICER - On your average
week day, Claude
Ibalanky can be found at Hewlett Packard's head office in
Rivonia, Johannesburg. He is
the software global business unit manager for HP South Africa.
He is also learning to play golf and sometimes spends time at a
local driving range. His roots are firmly in the Congo, but he
was forced to leave while at
university because of political upheaval there. He decided to
continue his studies in South Africa and today has a Masters
Degree in Commerce.
UPS: -
CLAUDE IBALANKY; DRC - Why
South Africa?
I think because in 1990 former president Mandela visited Congo.
We all lined up the streets to welcome him and it was this big
man just having come out of jail Robben
Island and all that. It was exciting. Previously in school, we
were following closely what was happening in South Africa.
So to have seen Mandela was a
motivating factor. So I decided I
will move to South Africa and make a new start.
UPS: - VOICER - His first home was
in Kagiso, a township near
Krugersdorp.
UPS: - CLAUDE IBALANKY; DRC - I
lived in townships from almost the first week of my visit to
South Africa. So integration
for me was not a major issue. I quickly integrated with the
people. Today I do speak Zulu. I do speak Afrikaans my French
accent put aside, when I tell people I am from Congo, they say
no! Hayi khona,
unamanga wena
UPS: - VOICER - It has not been as
easy as he makes it sound. It took him almost 14 years to attain
South African citizenship. His friend from the DRC, Dr John
Mulumba, is still struggling to get
a work permit even though South Africa desperately needs health
professionals.
UPS: - DR JOHN MULUMBA; DRC -
South African should look at positive immigration
skilled people, qualified people,
those who can contribute. Put down a policy that allows
to give them required papers so that
they can get papers to work.
UPS: - ANDY TAMBWE; DRC - It is
actually quite difficult for an African person to get the proper
immigration papers to work or study in South Africa.
So if that process could be managed
and looked at closely, I am sure the brain drain could be
covered by the brain influx from Africa.
UPS: - CLAUDE IBALANKY; DRC - the
government needs to put plans and a program in place to say: how
can we use this foreign community and the
community also needs to say: how do we contribute to our
host country?
UPS: VOICER - His contribution has
been his involvement in setting up a bilateral Business Forum
between South Africa and the DRC.
AD BREAK 1
UPS: - VOICER - In many remote
corners of South Africa, doctors from all over the developing
world provide a vital service to the community. It is widely
believed that if foreign doctors left, our health system would
collapse.
UPS: - NOMBUYISELO TSHUMANE;
NEHAWU - They are really appreciated. We are having a crisis of
shortage of doctors. We really need them because mostly in all
these hospitals you will find they are in the majority.
UPS: - VOICER - Dr Richard
Osinjolu works at the Nelson
Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha.
Many of his medical colleagues left Nigeria in the early 80's to
gain experience in the west. But when
they returned, they found there was no technological base to
support their skills.
UPS: -
DR RICHARD OSINJOLU - So they ended up back to America and
Britain. That
brain drain should have been anticipated.
So the beauty of South Africa is the
fact that the technology is here, the expertise is here and
there is a political will to revive the African culture.
UPS: - VOICER - Being in South
Africa affords him the opportunity to explore his major interest
the contribution Africa can make to world medicine. Traditional
healers, for instance, often rely on the halo or aura, to make
diagnoses.
UPS: - DR RICHARD OSINJOLU - The
beauty of it is that before a disease affects a human body, it
will first manifest in the electro-magnetic field. To make that
step from reliance on physical management of illness to the next
stage, which is the spiritual stage.
It is more viable, it is cheap and that is
the direction in which the human race has to be moving.
UPS: - VOICER - He has no feelings
of disloyalty about leaving Nigeria and bringing his experience
to South Africa.
UPS: - DR RICHARD OSINJOLU - I see
myself as a global citizen primarily and secondly, I feel I am a
Nigerian. But I have been here for a
long time. This is my home. And it's
my home not because I stay here but because of the level of
acceptance I've seen from the community and amongst people I
work with.
UPS: - VOICER - But like all
Africans who immigrate to South Africa, he has something to say
about the immigration policies.
UPS: - DR RICHARD OSINJOLU – What
home affairs needs to do a system needs to be put in place to
integrate legal legitimate immigration amongst brothers.
Technology is making us become a global village and as a global
village, there has to be movement amongst people.
UPS: - VOICER - There has been a
lot of movement from Zimbabwe to South Africa over the past few
years. The situation is so bad, it is said
that soon the country will be without certain professions.
UPS: - BEV JACK; PAG EMPLOYMENT
AGENCY - We are seeing Zimbabwean qualified CA's and financial
specialists and Kenyans who fit very comfortably into the South
African market place, so we are particularly seeing that type of
talent coming into this country.
UPS: - VOICER - One of those who
has left Zimbabwe is Dr Mary-Catherine
Madekurozwa, who has a PHD in
veterinary science. She studied in Scotland,
then returned to teach at the University of Zimbabwe.
But there was little incentive to
stay there.
UPS: -
DR MARY-CATHERINE MADEKUROZWA; ZIMBABWE - As a lecturer, we
don't only teach, we also research, and for research, you need
money and in Zimbabwe, we had a link with the European Union
which was great, but when the trouble started then that money
became less and less, so it became more and more difficult for
me to do research and since I am pretty young, I need
publications, so without research money, I basically will go
nowhere.
UPS: -
VOICER - Now she is going somewhere at the University of
Pretoria.
UPS: - DR MARY-CATHERINE
MADEKUROZWA; ZIMBABWE - When I first came it was very
difficult. I did not feel welcome because of the language
difference. The Afrikaans this is a
very Afrikaner sort of place, so I felt a bit left out.
But now I am fine. Once you get to
know people on a one-to-one sort of basis, it is okay. The first
18 months were really difficult, now
I am good. Zimbabwe will always be home.
There is something about Zimbabwe that keeps you there.
But this is becoming home.
UPS: - VOICER - Most of the
students she teaches at Tukkies will
probably leave South Africa because their degree is
recognized in other parts of the world.
UPS: - DR MARY-CATHERINE
MADEKUROZWA; ZIMBABWE - These students have large student loans
when they finish and need to pay them back, so going to the UK
is the easiest way to pay that back and as South Africans they
are loyal to South Africa, so eventually they will hopefully
come back.
UPS: - VOICER - One of her
colleagues, Professor Tom Aire,
lectures in veterinary anatomy. He too found himself stagnating
because of a lack of funding in his home country,
Nigeria.
UPS: PROF. TOM AIRE;
NIGERIA - In a situation where a well-trained person sits
in the office with nothing to work with in fact he is
deteriorating is not in the interests of anybody.
Mankind is developing very rapidly,
scientific information is doubling every 5 years or so and you
just have to keep up, otherwise you are finished.
UPS: -
VOICER - He too believes that the movement of Africans should be
encouraged.
UPS: PROF. TOM AIRE;
NIGERIA - South Africa should be happy, thankful that
people are coming in here, not necessarily to remove, but to
contribute. Any country that is able to attract immigrants is a
lucky country.
UPS: - VOICER - The Nigerian
Consulate is busy conducting a census of Nigerians in
South Africa. There are about four-thousand professionals
working here officially.
UPS: - MICHAEL KUFORIJI; NIGERIAN
CONSUL-GENERAL - There is an over-production of university
graduates in Nigeria and Nigerians are very adventurous. They
travel to all parts of the world. If you go to Alaska,
you will find Nigerians there.
UPS: -
VOICER - He says South Africa must speed up the
processing of visas to Africans.
UPS: - MICHAEL KUFORIJI;
CONSUL-GENERAL - Diplomacy is predicated on
the basis of reciprocity. If we issue visas to South
Africans going to Nigeria within 48 hours, we also expect
the South Africa high commission in Lagos to issue Nigerians
within 48 hours.
UPS: - VOICER - South
Africa has taken steps to liberalise
legal immigration.
The Immigration Amendment Act,
which recently came into effect, seeks to attract scarce skills,
particularly from Africa.
UPS: -
MIKE RAMAGOMA; HOME AFFAIRS – If you were to look at most
countries in Africa had independence years before us and over a
period of time most of these countries took a decision to invest
in education and as a result developed a lot of skills, some
have become an abundance and surplus and we think we can use
that and therefore we should have an attitude that these people
are coming to assist.
We are making a specific call to professionals, particularly on
the continent, to take advantage of this opportunity to come
into the country, to assist us in rebuilding our country. There
will be regulations, there will be control, but we are trying to
make that as user friendly and as easy as possible.
UPS: -
VOICER - Not user-friendly enough, say African professionals,
who have barely heard of the Immigration Amendment Act.
UPS: - ANDY TAMBWE; DRC - Home
Affairs policies, they do not filter down to the masses. The act
you spoke about I have heard about it, but I don't know any
details, so people out there are not aware of what options they
have and it is very difficult for someone who in the first place
does not have the required immigration papers to even step into
a home affairs office.
UPS: - PETER SITAMULAHO;
ZAMBIA - They should take time to educate home affairs officials
with whatever policies that come into play. The experience of
most people is that when you go into inquire about it they would
not know about it at a local division of home affairs
UPS: - MIKE RAMAGOMA; HOME AFFAIRS
– People at home affairs are starting to understand that is not
going to be business as usual we do need to improve our levels
of service delivery, we do need to come down very hard on some
of the anti-people tendencies that are there in the department.
As leadership in the department we‘ve got a responsibility to
assist the current staff members that are there to see things in
the way that we do.
AD BREAK 2
UPS: - VOICER - Tucked away in a
suburb of Port Elizabeth is Fred Footwear.
It started off
as a small business that employed ten workers and made about 50
pairs of shoes a day. Now the number of staff has increased
tenfold and they produce a thousand pairs of shoes daily. At the
helm is Nigerian-born Fred Eboru.
He trained in
Italy and has made shoes all over Africa
from Lagos to Lusaka.
UPS: - FRED EBORU; NIGERIA
- I just felt that leaving my country to work elsewhere, earning
foreign money was a chance for me to prosper in life. With all
my experience I've got I'm able to
utilize it and I’m creating employment for the community. They
should also encourage people to come in and open their own
factories and create employment and that is exactly what the
country needs.
UPS: - VOICER - The Human Sciences
Research Council agrees that it is not just
professionals who should be encouraged to come to
South Africa. Dr Miriam Altman heads
the HSRC's Employment and Economic
Policy Research Unit.
UPS: - DR MIRIAM ALTMAN; HSRC -
There are a lot of benefits to having
people from a whole range of skill levels coming and going.
Someone may come in from Africa and he may not even have
a degree, but they've run a business
and they feel they want to come to South Africa why shouldn't
they set up - even if we have many firms that do the same thing.
They may do something slightly different, they may introduce new
competition, bring prices down. There are a
whole range of benefits. Generally
speaking immigrants in most countries have an incredibly
important impact on commercial development. That is true
everywhere.
UPS: - PROFESSOR TOM AIRE; NIGERIA
– There is no doubt I am aware that some South Africans saw
opportunities to be self-employed because they saw some
Mozambicans, Nigerians, Cameroonians doing certain things they
never thought could be done. Today many of them are employing
other people. They learned this from immigrants.
UPS: - VOICER - Home Affairs is
also planning to make life easier for informal traders from
Africa by issuing specific permits and waiving certain
visa requirements.
UPS: - MIKE RAMAGOMA; HOME AFFAIRS
- We also recognize that there are informal traders who do not
want to come and stay in this country, who want to buy stock and
go back. We have realised that the
cumbersome nature of applying for visas has also contributed to
encouraging illegal entry into the country
UPS: - VOICER - Free movement of
people would not only discourage illegal immigration, it would
also promote inter-action.
UPS: - PROF TOM AIRE - We must
learn to live together and build a united Africa. Before
colonialism, there were no hard and fast boundaries. There were
movements.
UPS: - VOICER - The important
thing is that they eventually return home to contribute to their
countries.
UPS: - CLAUDE IBALANKY; DRC - We
need to view these people, these Africans living in South Africa
as the future leaders of their countries back home. I have no
doubt that in the following few years to come, Africans living
in South Africa will lead their countries. They will lead
business in their countries because of the experience they have
benefited from South Africa. And
South Africa should pride itself in playing that role.
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