What black American migration patterns tell us about Joburg’s possible future – Sindile Vabaza - Biznews
The Brookings Institution piece on Black Americans’ “New Great Migration” to the South highlights how economic and social factors, such as lower housing costs and job opportunities, are driving this shift. Similarly, Johannesburg’s struggles with city administration contrast with Cape Town’s relative advantage, illustrating how effective governance can influence migration and economic success.
Sindile Vabaza
I recently read a piece by the Brookings Institution titled A ‘New Great Migration’ is bringing Black Americans to the South, which describes in part some of the obvious reasons – the Jim Crow laws and racial violence – for the initial movement of black people from South to North.
It also highlights the availability of factory jobs in the North, which were further increased by the US involvement in World War 1 and the government’s eventual restriction of immigration.
The piece then details the factors contributing to the reversal of this earlier migration and how it is largely driven by younger college-educated black people from the North and the West going to states like Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, and especially magnet cities like Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta and Houston, with the promise of a lower cost of housing (deregulated housing policy), jobs (deregulated labour markets and more business-friendly policies) and a return to social ties and cultural roots in the South.
Taken together with all the ink spilled about the decline of San Francisco and the migration out of California to places like Texas (Austin, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth), this case study in migration patterns is instructive for our situation in South Africa. It teaches us that people are rational actors when migrating and are often motivated by a combination of factors, with economic factors looming large.
It is why I conclude that Cape Town’s only real advantage over Johannesburg and Durban is its excellent city administration.
Despite some questionable conclusions being drawn from a recent BizNews article about the Census 2022 numbers, Johannesburg’s housing, both owned and rented, remains significantly cheaper than in Cape Town.
Lion’s share
Johannesburg’s economy is still 50% larger and it still has the lion’s share of corporate head offices in the country and is the economic engine of a province that produces a third of this country’s economic output.
By every rational measure outside of city administration (government and government policy), Johannesburg is more attractive than Cape Town. We can’t even talk about weather or the beach, because as migratory patterns out of California show, Texas does not have better weather or beaches or restaurants or anything of consequence outside of city administrations and local and state policy than California. Large parts of Texas feel like Bloemfontein.
People are fleeing places like Johannesburg for Cape Town due to city administration failure (potholes, poor service delivery, growing criminal property incursions and a general feel of infrastructure decay).
This in and of itself should be instructive to opposition parties in the GNU: in particular, the DA, as the only party with a proven track record in city administration excellence. Firstly, the tasks of nominating a candidate who can turn Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni around and supporting the Tshwane incumbent Cilliers Brink are the most important things the party can do leading up to 2026.
I had lunch recently with someone I will describe as a DA insider. He told me in admiring tones about how, and excuse the language, Brink had balls the size of church bells (which he has needed, as he has faced down entrenched rent-seeking interests in the City of Tshwane), and he has the ability to think systemically in first endeavouring to fix Tshwane’s finances so that the city can eventually deliver services to its full capacity.
Both Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg need candidates in the mould of Brink, with not only the skill but the temperament to face down entrenched rent-seeking interests, and resist those who would seek to subvert and destroy any work towards functioning metros in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.
As Urban Development expert Tanya Zack showed in her award-winning research into cross-border shoppers in Johannesburg’s informal sector in the CBD, Johannesburg needs committed City administration to unlock value in this sector and create jobs. There are a billion people north of South Africa who need pots and pans and clothes and all sorts of other articles. Many in the SADC region already cross our borders to get them.
Manufacturing hub
The African Free Trade Agreement needs to be fully utilized. With the right labour market policies and competent and committed city administration, Johannesburg should be a manufacturing hub for these goods, as well as a retail outlet for them as well.
All of this is to simply argue that despite diseased city administration, Johannesburg has all the bones to be a highly productive and successful city, and the engine not just of South Africa but of the entire SADC region.
I would even argue that a functioning and successful Joburg underpinned by sound policy and sound city administration would probably benefit from skilled migration even more than Cape Town does, especially from returning expats, because of the affordable housing in Gauteng in comparison with the Western Cape.
Sindile Vabaza is an avid writer and an aspiring economist
This article was first published on the Daily Friend.