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#Bye for now South Africa: So now I’m a traitor?

I’m not terribly good at keeping secrets. So, despite my best intentions about keeping our emigration strategy under wraps I couldn’t stop myself from ‘fessing up in front of a couple of colleagues. My husband, who suffers from the same over-sharing affliction as I do, revealed our plans on his family’s mobile phone “group chat”, which […]

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I’m not terribly good at keeping secrets. So, despite my best intentions about keeping our emigration strategy under wraps I couldn’t stop myself from ‘fessing up in front of a couple of colleagues. My husband, who suffers from the same over-sharing affliction as I do, revealed our plans on his family’s mobile phone “group chat”, which elicited a barrage of heated reactions from distant cousins and their even more distant partners. Everyone has an opinion, it’s always emphatic, and in the case of those who are so vehemently against our leaving, we are judged cowards and traitors for “turning our backs” on our country.

Online platforms – from Facebook to news channels and beyond – also have the uncanny ability to attract the haters who are able to conceal their identities behind the veil of secrecy offered up on a plate by the Internet.

Those who choose to leave SA are branded racists, imperialists, traitors and more by the jealous masses who have no option but to stay. Yes, you read that right. It’s those South Africans who have no ancestral link to other nations, who don’t have the economic means, are too old or simply don’t have a professional skillset that would make them welcome on distant shores who have the nastiest things to say about those of us who are on the move.

Those folk have no choice but to be positive about this country because they have nowhere else to go. And while I respect that set of circumstances I would like a modicum of respect and restraint exercised regarding my decision to leave.

Basically, what I’m saying is: “Shut your pie holes, haters. I’m outta here.”

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