It is no secret that South Africa has, since the inception of ANC rule, suffered a brain drain. According to a report released in 2006 by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), one million white South Africans - almost a fifth - left the country between 1996 and 2006.

Frans Cronje, who compiled the report, attributed the main causes to be crime and affirmative action. And most of these emigrants, according to Marco Macfarlane, co-author of the report, are skilled and economically productive people, all aged between 20 and 40.

Now, these statistics may be four years old, but calculations predicted that the white population was to continue shrinking, which it did. Martine Schaffer, managing director of Homecoming Revolution, a non-profit organisation that encourages and assists the return of skilled expatriates, stated that 2008 was the year of "our biggest outflow." And this trend to resettle elsewhere, in countries which honour merit, no doubt continues to this day.

The pitfalls of affirmative action

It hardly needs mentioning that affirmative action, in its objectives, is an Act which contradicts itself.

To eliminate unfair discrimination once imposed on particular sectors of society (the previously disadvantaged) by imposing constraints on another is still unfair discrimination, yet terms like positive discrimination and inverse-racism have been invented in a, let it be said, pathetic attempt to sound politically correct.

And, as for its objective to promote economic development and efficacy in the workforce, the exact reverse has been the result. The reasons are painfully simple.

For every single skilled professional departing the country for greener pastures, at least eight job opportunities are lost. This was the statistic put forward by Cornelius Jansen van Rensburg, spokesperson for the Tuks Afrikaanse Studente (TAS), to parliament's portfolio committee on labour during a public hearing on the issue of youth unemployment in South Africa.