Post-Apartheid South Africa Beckons

Daniel Matemotja arrived in the United States with one goal in mind: Get a good education and return to his native South Africa -- as soon as the white minority government could be dislodged and replaced by black majority rule.

That was almost 30 years ago.

In the intervening years, Matemotja, 56, has become a doctor, built a family practice in Compton and raised three children.

Ten years after the end of South Africa’s apartheid regime and the onset of multiracial democracy there, Matemotja is about ready to go home. Once his youngest child graduates from college, he will finally return, he said. She will begin her freshman year at UCLA in the fall.

“I’ve always felt that South Africa is where I belong,” said the doctor, a black South African who fought against the apartheid regime as a member of the African National Congress, which today is the country’s ruling party. “I feel very indebted to the people. Without the ANC, I would not be here today. I am going back to pay my debt. I owe it to the people. I’ll contribute in any way I can.”

The 2000 census showed that more than 9,300 South Africans had settled in Southern California, drawn in part by a climate and landscape that reminded many of home.

Some arrived during the apartheid years to escape a society that was strait-jacketed by race. Others joined a small but steady white flight after the onset of black rule.

Now, like Matemotja, some are beginning to head home. Lungi Sosibo, who teaches classes in South African cinema and literature and Zulu language at UCLA, is ready to return right now. With her doctorate in adult continuing education, she feels her skills could be put to good use. A black South African originally from the port city of Durban, she came to the United States in 1994 on a Fulbright scholarship.

“The grass is becoming really greener at home for educated people,” said Sosibo, 46, who has two daughters, ages 20 and 21.

Indeed, the government of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who recently won a second landslide victory in the country’s presidential elections, boasts that 1.6 million new homes have been built for the poor, electricity and running water have reached 70% of the population who never had it before, inflation is down from the double digits of 10 years ago and South Africa is one of the most politically stable countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Race relations have also significantly improved. “That has been the most amazing thing of all,” said Eubulus Timothy, a 40-year-old filmmaker of Indian heritage who accompanied his wife, Jacintha, to California a year ago so that she could complete a course at the Los Angeles Film School. “People thought that with the change would come a blood bath, but that didn’t happen at all.”

‘More Good Than Bad’

“It’s a land of opportunity at this point,” Timothy added. “We’ve got our problems, but who hasn’t got problems? We are a new democracy, and we have all the birth pains and teething pains of a new democracy. But it’s an amazing country. There’s so much more good than bad.”

Other South African emigres, however, find themselves setting aside dreams of returning. Some say that, although they still feel a strong attachment to the land of their birth, America is now home. Their children were raised here. They have established careers and purchased property. They have established roots.

Many are daunted by chronic problems that continue to trouble the country -- back-breaking poverty, unemployment, crime and a staggering rate of HIV/AIDS infection.

“There was this moment when going back seemed very attractive because of the possibility of doing very important things,” said B. Peter Rosendorff, an associate professor at the School of International Relations and the Department of Economics at USC, who has lived in the United States since 1986.

Ultimately, Rosendorff, decided against returning, citing concerns about disrupting the stability of his family and anxiety over their personal safety in South Africa.

“The dislocation would far exceed the personal value of the experience we would have,” said Rosendorff, a white South African, who is married to an American and has three children, ages 8, 2 and 4 months.

Still others bemoan the problems that have come along with majority rule. Neville Walker, 63, a white South African who moved his family to the U.S. in 1985 and now lives in Woodland Hills, acknowledged that political change needed to happen in South Africa, but also lamented the social problems that plague the country now.

“Apartheid created stability for all South Africans,” said Walker, who does not intend to return. “There was not the amount of crime you have now, and you had a very solid economy.”

It is difficult to determine how many expatriates have left Southern California to return to South Africa in the last decade, but many groups have sprung up in recent years to assist expatriates who want to go home.

Representatives of the Come Home Campaign, a group based in the South African capital, Pretoria, said they had 150,000 hits on their website in their first year of operation. Come Home spokeswoman Alana Bailey said that between March 2003, when the club started, and January 2004, the campaign was contacted by 523 returning individuals and families, 73 of whom were living in the United States.

Between those who return and those who have made new lives in America are a large number who keep one foot in America, the other in South Africa, arguing that they can still contribute to their country’s progress through trade and business investments without the need to permanently repatriate.

Mandy Jacob is president of the nationwide 5,000-member South African Business Club, which works to forge small-business links between the United States and South Africa and provides expatriates with opportunities to maintain business interests back home and lure investment back to the country.

Such efforts are critical, said Jacob, as her native country continues the transition from its historically isolated economy to the more competitive global marketplace.

The club, which started in January and has 500 members in California, is also hoping to staunch the outflow of skilled workers from South Africa.

“Most of us are what you would consider the brain drain,” said Jacob, who has lived in Los Angeles for three years and runs a venture capital firm that finances development projects in South Africa.

U.S. Dollar a Factor

“I don’t know exactly how to justify that. The problem is that South Africa can’t compete with the U.S. dollar -- even though the standard of living is better there, you’re just not going to get compensated as much as in the U.S.

“I think I’m much more of a resource for South Africa, working here, than I would be there,” she added.

Ryan Audagnotti agrees. He moved his family from Johannesburg to San Juan Capistrano in 1999 to seek greater business prospects and better services for his mentally disabled son.

“My goal is globalization,” said Audagnotti, 41, who runs a consulting firm, but frequently travels back to South Africa to tend to several orphanages he and his wife have founded over the years for children infected with HIV.

“When you reach the top levels of business in South Africa, you really need to expand your horizons and get into bigger markets, and go after bigger opportunities. And America is the biggest.”

Such scenarios are typical of many immigrant groups in the States, sociologists say.

“Immigrants are very good at maximizing any opportunity to grow these kinds of international relationships,” said Ruben Hernandez-Leon, a sociologist at UCLA. “Sometimes they involve for-profit activities -- business deals, trade. But most people actually sustain types of links that are not business-related -- family, friendships, political interests, associations of different kinds.”

To some extent, changes in South Africa have begun to affect the lives emigres live here.

Peter Walker, the son of Neville Walker and co-owner of a sports bar called the Springbok Bar and Grill that opened in Van Nuys last September, said that during his recent trips to South Africa -- especially in the resort area of Capetown -- whites, blacks, East Indian and Malaysian South Africans were interacting more than ever.

He sees the same thing happening at his bar. “If you think of the U.S., people of like descent hang out with each other. But we probably mix more here than most parts of America.”

“A lot of South Africans live around here,” he added. “But for a long time we didn’t have our own place to go. There was the Aussie bar. There were English pubs. But this is the first South African place. We’re proud to be South African. We fly the flag.”