Mobility of the Highly Skilled—Towards a Non-racial South Africa

Abstract

The topic of this article is the mobility of the highly skilled, or ‘moths’, towards, in and from post-apartheid South Africa. The article picks up where the Human Sciences Research Council study on the mobility of knowledge workers left off by examining new data, and innovation and immigration policy. It argues that there has been a considerable shift in researcher demographics, but that this has been through a policy of substitution rather than growth. The ongoing shortage of skills thereby creates a price premium for that skill, the more so as immigration policy dictates that the considerable investment in developing foreign students returns little by way of local capacity development. Despite a dysfunctional school system the innovation system shows resilience, with increased publication outputs largely pulled up by international collaboration. The odds are that the innovation system will remain starved of foreign staff, yet be ‘open’ for collaboration. The beach is open, but the gate is closed.