Migration and the Brain Drain

Abstract

A democratic South Africa brings with it new challenges and opportunities to the political and economic relations that have prevailed for decades in Southern Africa. The nature of inter-state alignments during the apartheid years reflected both the general political determination of the region’s states to isolate the minority-ruled South Africa and, ironically, the economic realities that obliged the less developed economies to maintain closer economic ties with the despised regime in Pretoria. With respect to labour migration, considerable numbers of people, mainly unskilled, had traditionally trekked to the South African mines for wage employment. Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Zambia maintained this type of relationship with South Africa both before and after their political independence.