One would presume the South Africans left when apartheid ended due to the what was to come and so much uncertainty. We left in 1994 and I moved with the family back to England after I had basically managed to organize a relocation with BAT. The companies were the same, but due to apartheid had separate identities and even though I was not guaranteed a position it was kind of a certainty. The company was not BAT, but Rothmans back then and owned by South Africa before they became part of the BAT set up. As expected it was a formality even though I had to follow the recruitment process using their recruitment agents and was offered various roles which I could select.
My exodus from SA was fairly straightforward with the normal tax clearances and prison clearances etc showing you had no criminal records. Back in 1994 and prior to 1994 the amount of people leaving the country was high and it was noticeable amongst the white population as there were less and less white people around.
Another factor prior to 1994 was that every white male was called up into the armed forces to serve their military service and many decided to leave the country than waste two years of their lives. This is what i should have done but had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and have no regrets as it taught me things like discipline and respect and was like a finishing school for myself.
More South Africans left after the ANC government came into power which is what is interesting with these stats. The people never left because there was a black government in charge but for all the other reasons no one tells you about. Our reasons for leaving in 1994 was not the change of government, but the fear of education standards dropping, the currency depreciating along with safety and security concerns.
There are various statistical numbers showing a different number with one being official in yellow and another being unofficial. The unofficial have actually been obtained from those countries who received the South Africans so they are not exactly unofficial and are the real figures. This does not go with the narrative the new SA government wanted everyone to see.
The people movement or exodus out of SA was not just white people and was all races who moved for various reasons and those are all good reasons.
Safety was the number one reason for people leaving as serious crime was rampant and is still the case today. I think the difference from then and now is we have worked a way of living with this and have added security these days with private armed response companies that you pay a monthly membership fee for their services. The police prior to 1994 were actually very good and most of the police force left when the government change over happened with many police then opening up private security armed response companies.
SA has around 10 000 registered private security companies which would include armed response and anti hijack companies. Without these private security companies I can assure you we would not have returned to SA in 2004.
Another factor was employment as the focus after the election was replacing staff with black employment especially when the BEE regulations came into place. The first 10 years was crazy as you would have two staff members doing the same work that one used to do as this was like a kind of hand over on the job training. I saw this first hand in various offices and it made no sense having two people doing one job as you are either capable or you are not.
Opportunities of work were not like they used to be and if you were not black you had a 10% chance of employment. There was a scale in place which was law at the time. The pecking order for employment went like this. Black male- black female-disabled black male- disabled black female- colored male- colored female- disabled colored male- disabled colored female- Asian male- Asian female- disabled Asian male- disabled Asian female and then you got European or white at the very bottom of the list.
This did not take into education or whether you could actually do the work or not through qualifications or experience. Blacks were even targeted if their skin was not dark enough or they were not politically connected enough and lost out on jobs to others who knew someone.
The vast majority of South Africans did not leave the country as most only had a SA passport and this allowed them no movement opportunities. This is not like today where you can just leave and apply for asylum even though at the time many Afrikaaner families had a justifiable case to do so.
When we returned to SA back in 2004 I was blocked and refused entry at the airport and took me a good few hours before I was accepted back in. All my documents were in order, but I had served in the military under the apartheid government I was not deemed welcome. I could not find any other reason for the struggle when I had a current and valid SA passport and maybe should have seen this as a signal to exit there and then.
These figures only go up to 2001 and the unofficial figures for 2001-2026 is a total of 1.1 million whites have left. There are no official figures for blacks having emigrated and this is estimated in the hundreds of thousands sighting all of the above reasons with work opportunity and security being the number one reasons.
Just another interesting point to add to this is that my school reunion year I have classmates living in the US, Australia, Canada, Israel, UK and other parts of Europe. There is at least 60% living abroad which is a rough indication of how many white people left. I would say they never did the military service and left directly after school or after they had finished university.