I never thought I would say this.
In fact, there was a time when I regarded anyone who moved to Australia as a traitor, and quite possibly racist. The sort of person South Africa would be better off without, as Pallo Jordan might say. When JM Coetzee moved to Australia and learned how to smile, I felt personally affronted. I never met the man, but he was one of ours and he had betrayed us. That Nobel prize was earned off writing about our horrible history, not theirs.
The truth is that at the beginning of the month, I climbed aboard a Qantas flight to Australia — on a one way ticket.*
Oh, I am not going to talk about the E-word. Emigration is too final, too loaded — too redolent of bitter Castle Lager-fuelled conversations standing around the braai. It reminds me too much of the fabled chicken run of the early 1990s and beyond, the people to whom the usually conciliatory Nelson Mandela said “Those who have not got the courage and the patriotism to remain in their country, let them go! It is good riddance!”
My reasons for leaving South Africa for Australia are both complex and obvious, generic and personal. As they are, perhaps, for most of those South Africans who leave.
For a start, I was offered a great job, one to which I could not say no. I get to work on one of Australia’s biggest advertisers, in one of its biggest and most successful advertising agencies, with a friend I have always liked and respected. I never did take the gap year or do the London stint in my twenties, like so many other South Africans of my generation. I’ve felt for some time now that I have missed out, that I need to experience working in a different country, a different culture.
Johannesburg had become such a comfort zone, its roads rutted by memory. Even the ambient fear had become oddly comforting in its familiarity, in the rituals of panic button, locking doors, checking the street for lurkers as I approach my garage and scrabble in the dark for the opener. If I did not make the leap now, as I remind myself that in a couple of years’ time my biological clock is going to start screaming for attention, then when?
Of course, there are the attractions of living and working in a country that is for the most part without the constant possibility of personal harm; I won’t lie about that. There’s the usual whinge about Eskom and Jacob Zuma yada yada, but for me it’s the relative freedom that is a huge attraction. That, and the chance, not only to step outside of the familiar, but to enjoy an element of anonymity. I like the idea of being an observer for a while, rather than a participant.
Why write about all of this on a platform like Thoughtleader? Well, I have long been interested in the relationship between South Africa and Australia, and how both have addressed the task of nation-building in an era where nationality no longer equals ethnicity. Both are addressing the challenge of multicultural societies, albeit in different ways and under different circumstances.
Then there is the fact that Australia is regarded by so many South Africans with an awkward mixture of jealousy and resentment. If I were moving to London, nobody would bat an eyelid. But Australia — Australia is too similar to South Africa, too much an example of what might have been if … who knows? As I wrote in my first book of South African insults,
The South African rivalry with Australia is to be expected. Like us, they’re an ex-British colony, although, unlike us, they can’t get over their fetish for old women wearing crowns. They play the same sports as us, at which they beat us soundly and repeatedly. In the family of those nations that once saluted the Union Jack, Australia is the golden-haired, blue-eyed sibling who wins all the sporting and academic awards at school and can do no wrong. Meanwhile, bolshy and resentful, South Africa — the black sheep of the family — loiters in dark alleyways, dragging on a joint and scratching listlessly at a mildly Satanic tattoo.
In the weeks and months ahead, I plan to reflect on this rivalry — which is, for the most past, hopelessly one-sided — and the ways in which South Africa and Australia are similar and different. Compare and contrast, you might call it. It’s a subject that receives relatively little coverage, and those column centimetres it does score seem to laden with an overt agenda: proving the disloyalty of expats, or the ineptness of an ANC government.
I’d like to write about moving to Australia with a little less aggrieved patriotism, perhaps a little more dispassion. After all, if JM Coetzee can learn to smile for the cameras, anything is possible.
*Mainly because if you get the International Organisation for Migration to book a one way ticket for you, you get a 40kg luggage allowance, which can come in handy when transporting a winter wardrobe.
Wow, what an exhausting but fascinating read! The Social Science student in me is enraptured with these comments. And it definitely shows we might have a more-than-slight issue we need to nationally deal with (you dear emigrants & travellers & explorers included).
I posted on my blog about some of the thoughts all this stirred up in me, but still have yet to work out how to track back. So this is my trackback notification.
@Khoza (15th May comment): You do make some excellent points there, but why so defensively/ aggresively?
And was the change in political systems after 1994 not a national decision to stop facing South Africa & its issues as non-white vs white, but to face our issues as “South Africans”? So, like in a family, while I might not have the same issue, the fact fellow citizens have that issue makes it an indirect issue for me. Why can you not accept your fellow South Africans’ issues in the same manner?… If you accept SA as we now try to be – rainbowed.
Also, I think you have just landed yourself a new initiative!… get an organisation going that helps impoverished black South African children to take a “gap” year, to explore other parts of the world & bring their lessons back to help develop SA. Rotary would be a good place to start the research.
Khoza, your words are the most truthful I have read in a long time on this blog. I didn’t read anything agressive or accusion in them, only wise and honest. Unfortunately, many people like Sarah are only able to view the world from their perspective and do not understand that there is a parallel universe in SA. One has to understand the protected background someone like Sarah comes from and take this into account when reading her work. We are all very different, but your words are really those that make the most sense. Please write some more.
Khoza
I can agree with almost everything that you say in your second post.
I’m just not sure about how that message should be delivered.
I do believe, though, that the majority of whiteys in SA need to come to a realisation as you mention above.
Just wonder how to get their consciences pricked without incurring their wrath, or raising their stubborn denial, or without precipitating aggressive confrontation.
Do you blog, Khoza? I’d be interested to hear more of your thoughts…
Naah, Sean, the majority of whities in SA really don’t NEED what you happen to think they need. They just aren’t going to buy into your hair-shirt and sackcloth-wearing I’m-so-sorry Contrition Fantasy.
Get over it. And tell that to the self-pitying Khoza too. Don’t encourage him.
@ Khoza
You raise some valid issues
Two points:
1/ The ANC now have within their ranks a number of old Nats including good old Kortbroek
2/ The old Nats just happen to be the party that inflicted apartheid on South Africa
Does it strike you as strange that so many people continue to agonise about apartheid when its authors are now part of the ANC.
Are you prepared to consider the possibilty that there is a measure of inconsistency buried in there somewhere.
To my mind the biggest political disgrace this country has seen since 1994 was the integration of the old Nats into other political groupings (wait for it…….including the DA)
@Jon – I wouldn’t call deeply perceptive analysis of a very complicated situation ‘self-pity’.
This is just the issue, so many white south
africans don’t like to hear others’ truth or put themselves in others’ shoes, but prefer to stick stubbornly (and sometimes arrogantly) to their version of the story. As they have done throughout the world and the continent’s history they impose their opinions as ‘whats correct and what’s best.’
The lack of regard or consideration for the perceptions, ideas and knowledge of millions of people is what got us into the quagmire we find ourselves in now. Ridiculing opposing thoughts and opinions, and dismissing then as having no relevance or worth, is just not strong enough an argument.
Khoza’s view is just that, his view, and I’ll stick my neck out here by saying that his words probably hold the sentiments of many thousands of South Africans.
“I wouldn’t call deeply perceptive analysis of a very complicated situation ’self-pity’.”
Well, I would. And I have.
C is not very fond of hearing that South Africa is anything like his Australia….
Correction!
Contrary to what some people would like to believe, the Ngunis did not colonise any part of Africa – including what is modern day South Africa. The Khoi also originate from the northern part of Africa, does that mean they also “colonised South Africa”? The Nguni co-existed with the Khoi, intermarried (Xhosa clans with Khoi ancestory), borrowed from each other’s cultures and languages (click sounds in Nguni languages) etc. The Nguni did not come to “SA” on a boat, they were just populating their land (Africa) due to increase in population and searching for graving land etc. There was no taking over or imposing of Nguni way of life onto the “native” Khoi – it was not a colonisation, as some would like to believe.
If migratition southwards in the land of kush amounts to colonisation, then the same intepretation can used in Europe; Europe was colonised by Indo-Europeans from the Caucus mountains, and that is just utter nonsense! In the whole wide world it seems some SA whites are the only people who are in denial of the blatantly obvious, surprising?
American Indians are natives of North America (but that doesn’t make George W. Bush less American), just as Ngunis and Khoi are natives of Africa, but it doesnt make whites less “South African”.
Congrats Sarah!
A fantastic job opportunity would be welcomed by anyone regardless of race or nationality. So why all the fuss?
I have been living in the Middle East for 2yrs now and yes it does offer the “privilege” of a life lived without paranoia. I have not emigrated, just took up a job offer I couldn’t refuse.
Relocating is a complex and emotionally taxing effort. To be able to leave the comfort zone of friends, family and a system (good/bad) that you have grown up with takes a great deal of courage no matter who you are or what your background is.
I am neither black nor white, just another colour in between, I don’t understand the need to bash South Africa nor the people who choose to leave it. Life is about new experiences, how you choose to do this should be your own indaba.
Hi Sarah, great article and I look forward to hearing more of your experiences. We moved to Western Australia exactly a year ago, and the experience has been great. We loved SA – and will always enjoy a visit back to family. We are really enjoying Oz – kids riding to school on bikes, house unlocked, car unlocked – stunning scenery and great opportunity. Attitude is everything.
I have realised that for self-preservation we each view our choice as the right one and will seek out opinion that justifies our choice. While living in SA we chose to focus on the good in the country and screen out the negative. Being in Oz we stick to that choice and can embrace the wonderful opportunities that exist here.
Moving countries is a great opportunity for self-development if you allow it to be!
I am a Polish-born Saffa living in the UK.
My parents left a crappy country (Poland) for a better one (SA). When I moved and for many years after, I was never happy in SA, and I would always try tell ppl how great Poland will be and how crappy SA will become…
Now, years later, i love SA. It consider it my home. The worst thing is that my adolescent prediction are becoming true, and i do not feel vindicated, just sad…
I live in UK now… but would want nothing to go back to SA, but i cannot see it… no matter how i cut it in my head, i do not see SA as bouyant country… its not about the usual crime, BEE and so on… i just know from living in Poland what ineffiecive government looks like, and i know where it leads… i cannot help but see it in SA more and more…my paradise is lost…
FIY Khoza… SA government is running a budget surplus… the resources are not scarce… the people who allocate them are simply inept in puting them to correct use