Why SA should incentivise expats to return by DANIËL ELOFF
- Pablo Azevedo
- Apr 30
- 2 min read
When our expats come home they’ll bring knowledge, capital and the belief SA is still a place
of opportunity. There’s an Afrikaans saying: Oos wes, tuis bes (East west, home is best). Yet for hundreds of thousands of South Africans home is a fading memory, a postcard from a life left behind. Between 800,000 and 1.2-million South Africans are estimated to live abroad, primarily in countries such as the UK, Australia, the US, New Zealand and Canada.
Most of them are highly skilled professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs — the very people SA desperately needs. Many of them didn’t leave because they necessarily wanted to. They left because of crime, corruption, economic stagnation or the feeling that their talents were better appreciated elsewhere. And yet, for all the safety and stability of life in London, Sydney or Auckland, there’s a restlessness among South Africans abroad. They miss the energy of their homeland, the undeniable rhythm of SA life. They long for biltong and a braai, the electric atmosphere of a packed Cape Town Stadium against the backdrop of Table Mountain, and the unmistakable smell of summer rain on the highveld. But nostalgia is not enough to lure them back. The reality of moving home is daunting. Taxes are high, the cost of repatriation is significant, and the economic risks — both perceived and real — can feel overwhelming. For SA to bring its lost talent back, it needs more than warm sentiment. It needs a serious incentive programme.
If SA is to successfully lure its expats home, it would do well to study Portugal’s Nonhabitual Resident programme. Introduced in 2009, the scheme offered foreign professionals and Portuguese nationals returning from abroad a 10-year tax break, including a flat 20% income tax rate and exemptions on foreign income.
The result? A surge of wealthier individuals (estimates passed 50,000, with an accelerating number of US applicants joining European applicants) moving back to Portugal, bringing foreign capital, expertise, and job creation.
Source from BusinessLive👇
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