Johnny Sexwale, South African High Commissioner to New Zealand, Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu, arrives in Apia on 24 October 2024. Photo: RICK RYCROFT
South African migrants should stop "bashing" and badmouthing their home country when they arrive in New Zealand, says that country's High Commissioner.
About 100,000 South Africans live here, making up the third highest number of new overseas-born citizens last year.
Johnny Sexwale, the South African High Commissioner to New Zealand, says South Africans travel and migrate like many nationalities, but some lie about conditions in their home country when they resettle.
He was responding to suggestions that political instability and crime were their motivation to migrate, pointing out South Africa had been a democratic country since the end of apartheid, and white families were continuing to operate there.
Demographer Professor Paul Spoonley previously that migration from South Africa to New Zealand was typically due to issues such as politics and crime.
"The migration from South Africa to New Zealand is always interesting, and there's always those push factors which tends to be what's happening politically and issues such as crime. And then of course the pull factors ... there's already large South African population in New Zealand, quite a few of them have got family members here," he said.
But Sexwale suggests those leaving South Africa is no different to any other nationality leaving their homeland to head abroad.
"South Africans also leave South Africa to come to New Zealand to come to go to England and other parts of the world just as much as New Zealand does also live New Zealand to go to other parts of the world," he said. "So people are rotating around the world. And that is the main reason why people move.
"But now we don't agree with people who come who leave South Africa for those reasons, and when they arrive in the host country then they bash their country. That is not right, because we are aware that there are some South Africans that come to New Zealand and go to other countries and start lying about the conditions in South Africa and start lying that they ran away from South Africa because they are being killed, because they are being targeted for their race, that is lies, and that is not true."
The majority of people would stay in South Africa or return there eventually, he added.
"It's just a fraction of those kind of people that have left South Africa, the majority of South Africans are still there, the majority of white South Africans are still there.
"And we've got now figures - we know that some of those who left because they were angry with with the end of apartheid, they were angry when Nelson Mandela became president and they started leaving the country - they are coming back to South Africa, some of them, because life abroad and life in South Africa is not the same. And they do miss a lot of things that South Africa offers."
Meanwhile, Spoonley also said research suggested South Africans would return if factors such as crime decreased.
"One of the things that we noticed in our research was that there was always a thought that the South Africans, if things improved in South Africa, would go home. I think what you're seeing in the citizenship figures is the long term commitment to New Zealand. They've now accepted the fact that they are resident in New Zealand, want to stay in New Zealand and going back to South Africa is no longer a possibility," he said.
New honorary consul
The High Commission, based in Wellington, is stepping up its presence in New Zealand, looking for a honorary consul in Auckland to represent the larger number of expats there.
"We're looking for a person with a good reputation, whether New Zealander or South African with credibility, who we can appoint as an honorary Council," said Sexwale.
"So that is a process that we are we undertaking right now and we welcome applicants to bring their CVs to the High Commission so that we can consider them."
That could also take the pressure off the waiting times for passports and other documents, he added, and avoid people feeling forced and "falling into a trap" of using illegal services.
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