South Africa’s most valuable resource is its skilled people

Joel Pollak said the recent actions by the United States are a wake-up call to South Africa that its most valuable resource is its skilled people.

His comments followed an executive order from United States President Donald Trump freezing assistance to South Africa.

The order was in response to South Africa’s Expropriation Act, which it argued amounts to discrimination against the white minority population.

Trump and his close ally Elon Musk also criticised South Africa’s numerous race-based policies discriminating against South Africa’s white minority.

They referenced numerous government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business.

The United States extended an olive branch to Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

This included humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program.

This offer surprised many South Africans and sparked significant debate about land expropriation, black empowerment laws, and affirmative action.

Pollak, the frontrunner to become the United States’ next ambassador to South Africa, called the offer to Afrikaners a wake-up call for the country.

“Your most valuable resources are not your minerals but rather your people and their skills,” Pollak said.

He explained that skilled people, including many white South Africans, are mobile and cannot endure bad policies indefinitely.

Many skilled South Africans have already left South Africa because of government policies that are disadvantaging them.

South African medical professionals, for example, are highly sought after and valued globally, and many have already left the country.

Losing these skills resulted in severe understaffing in many areas in South Africa, poor healthcare services, and poor access to quality medical care.

South Africa’s slow economic growth and political uncertainty, with policies like the NHI, means more skilled healthcare professionals are considering emigrating.

The same has happened in many other fields, including engineering and finance, which are hurting the country and economic growth.

Unsurprisingly, many experts view brilliant people like Elon Musk and David Sacks as South Africa’s most valuable export.

The Uganda example

Globally renowned economist Thomas Sowell provided the example of Uganda, which expropriated the Gujaratis’ wealth and kicked them out of the country.

In the 1970s, under Idi Amin’s leadership, Uganda decided that the Gujaratis from India were too wealthy and controlled too much of the economy.

They decided to kick them out of the country and prevented them from taking their assets and their wealth with them.

The Gujaratis, who mostly landed up in England, were destitute as they were stripped of all their assets.

The Ugandan government expropriated all the assets belonging to the Gujarati community that operated there.

Within a few years, the Gujarati community became prosperous in England despite starting with no assets or wealth.

In turn, the Ugandan economy collapsed despite all the wealth and assets it expropriated from the Gujaratis.

“The economy collapsed because they did not have people who could do what the Gujarati community was doing. So, they no longer had the same production,” he said.

He explained this is also the problem with trying to finance things by confiscating the wealth of the wealthy.

“All you can confiscate is the material wealth. You cannot confiscate the human capital,” Sowell explained.

Human capital creates wealth, employment, and prosperity, as Sowell and Pollak referred to. “True wealth is what is between people’s ears,” he said.