I saw last week that Nelson Mandela had been admitted to the hospital and in a separate news article that there was political and social unrest in South Africa.

I was reminded of what my brother Matt B, who does a lot of business throughout Africa, said about politics in South Africa last Autumn.  He thought that the only thing keeping South Africa from sinking into the chaos of Zimbabwe or Congo was loyalty to Nelson Mandela.  He expected that when Mandela died that South Africa would fall into the same sort of tribal violence that overtook Zimbabwe in the 1990’s and caused the whites who could to flee, the collapse of the economy and the total debasement of the currency.

There is a huge difference of scale however.  Zimbabwe has 13 million people and South Africa has 50 million.  About 10% of South Africa’s population is white and we can expect that, if what is predicted above happens, many of them will become international refuges.  Will the UK accept them?  How about Holland?  How about the USA?  Stay tuned.

There is already a diaspora happening from South Africa and a blog titled of course South African Diaspora.  But from the numbers I could gather there are less than a million white South Africans living in other countries.  Where will five million people go in a world that is increasingly xenophobic?  This will be a big test of the right to migrate.  Who will make room for them or will we allow a genocide?