Why unemployed Zimbabweans flock to SA—new survey

Economists at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, are looking into whether Zimbabwe’s development policies— in terms of politics, education and employment— led to the brain drain.

Dr Prudence Magejo and Professor Miracle Benhura surveyed about 10 000 documented Zimbabwean professionals who lived in SA in 2001 as part of the ongoing research.

From that sample, the Zimbabwean duo discovered that most of the migrants had generally come to SA to look for work.

They also have established that highly qualified professionals experienced a rapid decline in returns on education back home during the southern African country’s decade-long recession.

According to the statistics agency Zimstat, Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted sharply by 46% between 2000 and 2001, at the height of the crisis.

This prompted millions to flee the country as unemployment spiralled, at a time when hyperinflation and food shortages were the order of the day.

“Zimbabwe suffered a substantial brain drain between 1995 and 2008 and we decided to look at the reasons why skilled workers were leaving the country,” said Magejo, a development economist.

“The low reward for skills potentially explains the brain drain in Zimbabwe. Based on the results, one avenue to mitigate the problem would be to offer better returns on education.”

The Wits School of Economic and Business Sciences researchers are looking into the returns derived from education, using selected official figures from both countries.

For example, the data used would be from the 1995 and 2003 Zimbabwean poverty assessment surveys, along with the 1996 and 2001 SA census.

Research focusing on the massive trek into SA grew over the years, but the Wits economists say it is sketchy; hence reliable findings are still needed.

“Most literature on the subject is only anecdotal and we wanted to provide scientific evidence on the subject,” said labour economist Benhura.

Having been victims of unemployment themselves and firsthand witnesses to the economic meltdown, they promise to come up with a ground-breaking analysis of the matter.

“Well-incentivised” jobs were hard to come by in the native country for the PhD graduates after they completed their studies.

Benhura and Magejo are graduates from the University of Cape Town and University College Dublin in Ireland, respectively.

“Zimbabwe was already in a crisis when I finished my PhD in 2007, which pushed me to consider job offers in South Africa,” Benhura said.

Economic hardship saw scores migrating to neighbouring southern African states, with others going as far as Europe, North America and Australia.

The SA government has been offering generous work and study permits to Zimbabwean nationals in the past five years as it sought to curb illegal migrants.

Although the programme has been lauded by authorities as a roaring success, quite a large number of people without proper documents still fall through the cracks.

UN agencies have put the figure of Zimbabweans living in SA at a rough estimate of 1.5 million, but some analysts argue the number could be much bigger.