South Africans need some immigrant “can-do.”

The story of migration is this year’s sensation.  We could learn from it. The mass movement of migrants to Europe is reputedly the largest movement of people since the Second World War.  This is so because of the number of people moving in such a short time.

Taking Thailand and South Africa as case studies, however, both might be examples of migration greater than any European country has to cope with, but with very different outcomes.

Among the most impressive things about Thailand, where I spent four years as an ambassador, is that it has the lowest unemployment rate in the world.  Official figures quoted by Bloomberg Business state that the rate was .56 per cent for 2014.

There is little in the way of social security and forty per cent of Thais engage in agriculture.  If a worker loses his job, he can always find a place in the agricultural sector or the informal sector or do something on his own, according to the Bank of Thailand, quoted by the Bangkok Post. 

The effects of immigration on Thailand and South Africa have been startlingly different.  Leaving xenophobic incidents and some ill-treatment of immigrants aside, Thailand has managed to absorb some three million immigrants, mostly employed in lower-skilled occupations, while maintaining a record low unemployment rate.

South Africa has not done nearly as well. We may also have absorbed upwards of three million migrants, most of whom have found employment, but we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, at 26 per cent and rising.

People who have come here generally have a reasonable standard of schooling but few have higher qualifications or scarce skills.  Somehow they find jobs or create them.

What of our own people?  Why is it that so many remain unemployed and perhaps even unemployable?

Part of the reason is that a generation after democracy, the schooling standard is very poor.  We are in a race to the bottom with the worst in the world.  Answering the question, “How well does the education system meet the requirements of a competitive economy?” the World Economic Forum ranked South Africa on 29 September 2015 at 138 out of 140 countries – worse even than Haiti and Nicaragua.  Thailand was 74th of 140 countries.

These are a few of the African countries scoring higher rankings than ours:

Kenya: 30; Zambia: 36; Zimbabwe: 43; Lesotho: 49 and Swaziland: 64. 

It is therefore firstly a question of education and skills that are lacking.  This can be addressed if we decide to tackle the problem and solve it.. 

But South Africa has also permitted a huge and irreplaceable skills-loss to occur. Estimates vary, but something like a million of our citizens left our shores in the past few decades.  Most of them were educated, skilled, employed and able to pay taxes and help create jobs.  The loss is vast and underestimated.  If we had retained these skills, it would have made no real difference to the political scene but just imagine how different our economy would look with another million taxpayers working and contributing to our growth.

I speak from experience when I say that after being away from this country for a while one starts longing for South Africa, its wonderful people, its climate and the fact that it is home.  Hundreds of thousands living elsewhere feel that deep longing and many could be persuaded to return if they were welcomed and recruited.

Of course a lot of them are white; that is not a very popular skin colour with some in government but considering the taxes they would pay, and the jobs they would help create our rulers might decide to revert to their non-racial ANC past.

We should also be recruiting immigrants with scarce skills in other African countries as well as Europe and India, for example, who could make a major contribution.  We often make educated potential settlers feel unwelcome with obtaining work visas a nightmare of red tape and delay. Think about doctors, for example; we seem to make it as difficult as possible for medical people to come here and practise, while we wave goodbye to our own whom the rest of the world welcomes. 

We also need to look at another problem.  Why is it that so many of our young people are not getting the jobs that do exist?  Why do they not do some of the jobs that immigrants are very happy to take?  It pains me when I hear, quite often, that employers prefer Zimbabweans and Malawians, “Because they work harder.”

We must look at whether migrants to and from South Africa can teach us a thing or two about working hard and knowing that a job, any honest job, is honorable and is far preferable to being unemployed.

As a nation there are far too many who sit back and wait for the government to do everything; or wait for a handout; or Julius Malema’s economic illiteracy of “economic freedom in our lifetime;”or for Professor Thomas Piketty’s dream of helping the poor by taxing the rich even more.  They ignore the efforts people should themselves make to better their lives; to make themselves employable; to create their own future without expecting the government or the taxpayer or somebody else to do it for them.

What we need to learn is the immigrant spirit of grabbing the future and making it happen. If our education is no good, let’s insist that the politicians and take South Africa up the ladder of educational excellence.  If we have a reputation for not wanting to work hard here, let’s prove them wrong by showing that we can outwork and outperform anyone from anywhere else in Africa.

Douglas Gibson is a former Opposition Chief Whip and a former ambassador to Thailand.

This article first appeared in The Star.