AQUILA OPINION COLUMN
It’s magical thinking to believe this government will lure back people who’ve left the country—and give them plum jobs. Maybe a few, yes. But to imagine a stampede of returnees? That’s fantasy.
There are always strange contradictions in life, in business, and in the economy. One of them is what happens when politicians get involved in trying to run things.
Let’s take a recent example: this idea of luring back South Africans who’ve gone overseas to work.
Now let’s be straight—those who left did so for two reasons.
First, they found opportunities that simply don’t exist here.
Second, conditions in South Africa made staying untenable.
So how, exactly, do you persuade them to come back?
I’m not expecting you to fall off your chair in hysterics. But here’s the logic, such as it is.
How are professionals supposed to be tempted back into an economy that’s on its knees, with the same stale ideology behind it and no real economic plan? Don’t believe me? Go look for one. If you find it, please let me know.
The whole thing reminds me of people who believe a fairy comes in at night to clean the house. It’s the same kind of magical thinking.
Let’s not be harsh, but we do have to ask: who’s going to administer the funds for those returning South Africans?
That’s an interesting question.
Whenever government gets involved—take Covid, just one tiny example—money changes hands from one greasy palm to another.
And not to be funny, but what sort of profiling is going to happen in this iron-fist regime? Who, exactly, will be specially and exclusively targeted and wooed for this new campaign?
Well, if it happens, good luck to the few who make it back. And let’s wish them well as they resettle in this country.
But a bigger question remains: what about the people who never left?
These are the people keeping the economy going—albeit in a state of no growth or even outright decline. (Please don’t be foolhardy enough to believe the official growth figures—they’re nonsense.)
These are the people who’ve survived crime, hijackings, armed robberies.
These are the people who continue to finance the folly and corruption of past presidential regimes, where money was looted without shame.
These are the people who pay exorbitant prices for everything.
These are the ones accused of being “wealthy”, but who look around with heavy hearts at their fellow citizens—jobless, desperate, and abandoned.
These are the so-called wealthy who are first to open their wallets to help the poor.
These are the people who’ve seen suburbs flooded with starving, discarded humans.
These are the good-hearted South Africans running soup kitchens, rescuing lives.
This is reality.
And it’s a reality that the people with fingers constantly in the pie refuse to acknowledge.
