To all those who could go but stay: respect

I am not sure why, but the passing of Julian Ogilvie-Thompson has moved me. Perhaps it reminds me of my dad’s death in 2018, but I think I understand my feelings about my father. He was, and probably remains, the dominant male figure in my life. I miss him terribly and my values and impulses are, to a remarkable degree, as I remember his.

Some of them I even try to guard against, but Ogilvie-Thompson I hardly knew. So why might it be hard to shake the news that he is no longer here? For a start, like my dad at 93, he died here, in SA, aged 89. In Johannesburg.

I think it’s important that someone as powerful as he once was — chair of both De Beers and the Anglo American Corporation — who could have lived out a glamorous retirement in whatever corner of the world he chose, chose Johannesburg.

I respect that. I’m comforted by it. I admire that a very wealthy SA businessman stayed here when he didn’t need to and despite the terrible decline in both urban and rural living standards since the ANC came to power in 1994.

Perhaps that decline was inevitable. Perhaps the lack of electricity or clean water now, the carnage on our roads and farms and in our townships, was always going to happen in the wake of the grim 300 years of history that preceded 1994. But that didn’t mean JOT, as he was known, would have to stay.

Amid the lamentation for people leaving it is equally surprising how many do not leave. JOT didn’t. Basil Hersov, who took the huge Anglovaal empire over from his father, still lives, vigorously, in Johannesburg. He is 97 this month. Harry Oppenheimer died at home in Johannesburg, and his son Nicky and daughter Mary Slack still live in the same family spread in Parktown.

My admiration for these people is simply boundless. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of extremely wealthy people stay here when they could all succumb to the general “Seffrican” despair and leave. All four of the Rand Merchant Bank empire founders, now retired, are very much here. I wish I could thank them, personally, for not leaving.

Johann Rupert may have moved his tax domicile abroad, but he is very much in and of SA. I had always hoped I could interview them all for TV, simply for posterity. JOT was at the top of my list. Of course they are able to travel and relax all over the world, but their hearts are at home and it matters, particularly as so many thousands of smart people, black and white, are leaving.

For me, the message of emigration is that being a South African matters. I perfectly understand the desire to leave. If you’re 43 and specialised, with a young family, you only have one chance to build a new life abroad.

But don’t kid yourself that you are doing this for your kids, because in all likelihood you’re probably doing it for you. Your kids, educated here, would have no trouble building their own lives abroad. South Africans are in high demand. We are easy-going, unthreatening and unpretentious.

But having spent 20 years abroad  in the 1980s-90s I will never forget the sense of loss I felt about home. And I had a good career in a job I loved. I came home the moment I could and I’ve never regretted it, the slow collapse of our economy notwithstanding. I choose to live in an African democracy.

Obviously, if my life were threatened I would have to think about leaving. But until then, no. I like it here for the same reason, I suspect, that JOT did. Johannesburg, for a start, is still an amazing place to live in. The weather is outstanding. SA wines are always excellent and so is the company.

The country works well enough for my diminishing needs. The rugby is good but I’m sad about the cricket. And pretty much whatever I need I can get delivered to my front door.

Middle class and bourgeois, I know, but I paid, even in my retirement, more than half a million rand in taxes last year so I’m also accounting for at least a fraction of Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s vast monthly salary.

I briefly bumped into a family of South Africans the other day who now live in the UK. They were visiting, one said with half a smile, to make sure they’d made the right decision six years ago. I asked what the verdict was and he said it was still out.

You have to understand how different other places are. Even if you’re an accountant or a doctor with prospects you will never replicate the quality of life you have here in the UK or the US, Australia or New Zealand. You might if you’re able to emigrate with a truly hideous amount of money.

At some stage quality of life matters. This is why most of the people who complain about SA are still here. It is why JOT stayed here until the end, and why the many other CEOs of old I know are still here.

Their money and tax affairs are well sorted. If the state were only able to invest for the poor as well as the rich do for themselves, the future might look a lot brighter. And how hard would that be?

• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.