Sipho Seepe
Crossfire
In engaging government representatives on crime, HIV/Aids, job creation or corruption or on anything involving statistics one can expect to be treated to a mixed bag of obfuscation, denials, half-truths and an almost intemperate appeal to race. A debate last week on Brain Drain Versus Brain Gain, hosted by the Tribute Forum, was no different.
The presidential legal adviser, advocate Mojanku Gumbi, and officials from the Department of Home Affairs boldly asserted that there are no reliable statistics to prove either the drain or the gain an ingeniously crafted response to evade the issue.
To bolster their submission, Gumbi regaled the audience with anecdotal evidence. There were tales of persons who had publicly proclaimed to have emigrated, only to be discovered living in other parts of the country. After an unpleasant experience abroad, they had returned, quietly.
Another group was relocating to acquire skills abroad, leading us to infer that their move is not permanent. According to recruitment consultants, however, this group is in self-denial. It knows that it is emigrating. The last group mentioned, which the country can do without, is allegedly driven by racial prejudice. This group is bent on vilifying the black-led government by peddling negative images abroad and is therefore responsible for the lack of foreign investment in this country. These responses are to be expected. It would not look good for a government to accept that it is losing or sacrificing skilled people at a time when the country is in dire shortage of skills. To do so would be tantamount to acknowledging its failure to stamp out crime and corruption. Crime, corruption and uncertainty are cited as critical factors when people choose to emigrate.
While the government drags its feet and concentrates on questioning the methodology and hence the reliability and validity of various statistics, data collecting and information sites reveal that the country is losing skilled personnel at an alarming rate. For instance, the director of Pretoria-based Abacus Recruitment SA, Karen Geldenhuys, has pointed out that most IT-skilled personnel are being lost to Britain, Australia, Ireland, Canada and Scandinavian countries, where there is a higher shortage in the sector. This opinion is shared by Dexdata Technologies, an outfit formed in conjunction with Tshukudu Consulting to facilitate the transfer of IT professionals to Europe. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, between 1,1-million and 1,6-million people in skilled, professional and managerial occupations have emigrated since 1994. For every emigrant, 10 unskilled people lose their jobs.
With regard to accountants, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ conservative assessment is that nearly 22% of its 19 099 members live abroad. As if that is not enough, there are reports that Britain is on the recruitment drive and is zealously poaching some of our best teachers, doctors and nurses at a time when the country can least afford to lose them.
Neither our denial of reality nor our appeal to race will stem the exodus. The urgent task facing this country is to provide an enabling environment, to improve working conditions and to ensure that those with skills are valued. While an appeal to race may be comforting, it fails to appreciate that people will always respond to human concerns and economic dictates.
It is a point elegantly validated by experiences on the continent where race has not assumed the prominence it has in this country. Nigeria, the continent’s richest and most populous country, is potentially its most powerful. Yet more of its intellectuals, skilled personnel and professionals are to be found outside rather than inside Nigeria. In 1999 there were approximately 250000 Nigerians in the United States where, according to the Census Bureau, Nigerians are the most educated ethnic group in the country. They have left their country not because they are racist, but because of the conditions that prevailed there. It is probably the height of irony and/or idiocy that the Nigerian government spends billions seeking technical assistance from the US, but not from this very community. Phillip Emeagwali, a Nigerian living in the US and one of the pioneers of the Internet who has been described by the BBC as “America’s leading computer scientist”, argues that Africa exports not only its raw materials to the West but also its most talented human resource. “Africa spends $4-billion a year on the salary of 100 000 foreign experts. Yet African nations are unwilling to spend a similar amount of money to recruit one million African professionals working outside Africa. One in three African university graduates live and work outside Africa. In fact, we are operating one-third of African universities to satisfy the manpower needs of Western nations. One-third of the African education budget is a supplement to the American budget. In effect, Africa is giving developmental assistance to the United States. There are more Sierra Leonean medical doctors in Chicago than in Sierra Leone … it is the best and brightest that can obtain visas to the United States. What is left behind is the least educated. This means that Africa will be getting poorer while the United States will be getting more affluent.” It is this lunacy that Ngugi wa Thiongo alludes to in The Intellectual Legacy of Pan-Africanism. Ngugi notes that “the devaluation of intellect and intellectual achievement, and worst of all, the devaluation of African lives” is the distinguishing feature of post-independence Africa. In such an environment the “questioning mind has become suspect. The mind that wants to be judged against the highest possible professional standards is suspect. Originality is even more suspect. Many intellectuals have been hounded to prisons, detention camps, to exile and often into their graves.” As long as the devaluing of the intellect continues, glaringly portrayed by those we appoint as leaders, the brain drain will continue unabated. Finally, there can be no “African renaissance” without Africa’s intellectual resource.