Why I Left South Africa (Part 1)

.
.


...and why I can never come back again...

Put it another way...I left for different reasons then, than the reasons I can never go back again, now.

I'll deal with the reasons how my negativity about South Africa caused me to abandon ship five years ago, but also how I started out incredibly positive following the 1994 elections, and how that positivity soured and continued to do so until I had had enough.

I'll start with the most immediate reason that I left which goes back to the period six or seven years ago when Thabo Mbeki was still president of ZA.

Large scale socio-economic restructuring in the country including the private sector company I had been loyal to for fifteen years:

This affected me (and my family) personally. I'm talking about Black Economic Empowerment (Affirmative Action) that was being applied in a Top Down, Autocratic manner (is there any other way to do it?)

This was rather like a game of draughts (checkers) rather than a well thought out game of chess. In my daily life and work it became difficult to read in between the lines. There were tangible "reverse discrimination" issues (believe me, if you think the State has a ham-fisted approach to it, you have no idea what the fat-cat industry leaders had in mind and how ruthlessly they wished to attain their various sector BEE targets)

Many not so "grey beards" were being enticed to take packages to make way for "early twenties" black (esp female) graduates.

I'm talking of retirement for white grey beards as young as 55...This has been reduced even more over the intervening period since 2005, to age 50 in the company I used to work for in ZA...

I was aged 39 then. Think about that, a near middle aged "tweeny" LOL

Which "list" was I on? The "grey beard list" or the "black skin (pref black female - list"?

Was there any place in between???

I could not read between the lines but I saw what was coming.

I decided to jump before I was pushed.