South Africa is faced with a potentially damaging brain involving both newly qualified and experienced professionals across different disciplines.
I will not limit this topic to professionals in the property industry only because whatever happens in one sector has a direct impact on all matters property.
I will explain briefly: if a teacher, medical doctor, artisan or engineer decide to seek greener pastures abroad, it means the property sector has lost some potential customers who were either going to rent at some point or buy their own property.
Of course, some might decide to invest back home, but that possibility is not always guaranteed.
We have also seen professionals in the property industry such as architects, estate agents and quantity surveyors leaving the country, thereby directly impacting on the work done in the sector.
Practically, every time the economy gets tough it is natural for skilled professionals to look for more active areas to live and work in.
This might mean moving to the Cape from the interior because it is perceived that the government of these areas is better as are the opportunities for these professionals.
Artificial barriers to employment for these professionals can result in them seeing opportunities overseas that are not available to them here.
This is what is happening now, and has been happening for some time.
Highly skilled professionals are moving overseas in the search of better opportunities.
Typical of this would be my son who has an accounting degree and another one in internal auditing.
He is a determined and hard-working professional.
Notwithstanding that he can be seen as being at the top of his profession, he found himself being bypassed by less qualified and experienced people here.
The result was that he was required to do the job for his boss.
He eventually went overseas and has gained far higher and well-paid positions because of his abilities – at a total loss to the South African economy.
This is happening in every sphere of professionalism here, especially among the younger family generation.
Political interference, such as state capture, is also resulting in highly qualified black professionals seeing their future overseas.
America and Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand welcome these well-trained and ambitious people with open arms.
They are seen as hard working and innovative people.
It is amazing how many of these South Africans rise to the top of their professions.
Just think how much Elon Musk would have contributed working in South Africa today.
How can this emigration be stopped?
The answer is simple: just make it attractive for these people to stay.
Get rid of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and allow promotion on merit.
How can you select doctors on colour and not on their academic results?
Taking a person with C grades against one with A grades just does not make sense.
We need to do away with biased allocation of tenders – get rid of racial undertones and appoint people on their ability to do the job.
A huge problem is going to occur is when the current older generation of professionals retire.
Few new property valuers are coming through because it is a profession that requires a high level of understanding of building processes and detailed comparisons of past data.
Schooling is simply not orientated towards creating administrators and professionals and South Africa is going to see a dearth of professionals over the next few years.
- Mike Spencer is the founder and owner of Platinum Global. He is also a professional associated property valuer and consultant with work across the country as well as Eastern Europe and Australia.