South African immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: Although South Africans have accounted for a relatively small part of the immigrants to the United States, white South Africans began immigrating in increasing numbers after the early 1960s, as their homeland’s apartheid policies raised political and social tensions. 

The first South Africans known to immigrate to the United States arrived during the 1860s. Their numbers were small, however, and few of their countrymen followed them to the United States until the 1930s. The national origins quotas of the US Immigration Act of 1924 limited South Africa to only 100 immigrants per year, and South Africans rarely filled their quota. Between 1924 and 1950, an average of only 61 South Africans immigrated to the United States each year. As late as 1960, only 5,300 people of South African descent were known to be living in the United States.  

Apartheid and Immigration

After a half-century of independence as the Union of South Africa, South Africa became a republic in 1961 and left the British Commonwealth. By this time, South Africa had become a pariah within the world community of nations because of its rigid system of government-supported segregation known as apartheid. Under that system, virtually all political power was in the hands of the approximately 20 percent of the country’s population who were White. Asians and mixed-race “Coloureds” enjoyed some political rights, while the nation’s large black African majority had almost no power. 

After South Africa began instituting its apartheid laws in 1948, immigration from that country began increasing. Some immigrants were non-White refugees leaving to escape the repressive segregation laws; others were White opponents of the new system. 

The US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 overturned the four-decade-old system of national origin quotas and allowed many more non-European immigrants entry into the United States. The number of South Africans admitted to the United States then increased to an average of 1,000 per year. The vast majority of these new immigrants were White, and they constituted 95 percent of the South Africans living in the United States in 1970. 

Postapartheid

Trends

In one of the most remarkable peaceful political transformations in world history, the South African government abandoned apartheid during the early 1990s and extended full civil and political rights to all its citizens, without regard to race or ethnicity. Under a new nonracial constitution, South Africans elected a new government in 1994. Nelson Mandela—who had long been a political prisoner—became the country’s first nonwhite president, and the African National Congress—which had long been banned as a subversive political organization—became the majority party in the country’s parliament. 

With the abolition of apartheid and the arrival of what was, in effect, black-majority rule, many people feared that South Africa would follow the example of its neighbor Zimbabwe and experience a mass exodus of White people. Since that time, a large number of White South Africans have emigrated, but their numbers have not been as high as many predicted. 

Political and social changes have not been the only factors driving South African emigration. Since the 1990s, the country has also been afflicted by rising crime and unemployment rates. Violent crimes have been a particular problem, with a rate of about fifty murders every day during the early years of the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate has steadily risen, reaching more than 33.56 percent in 2021, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. 

South Africans in the United States

During the early twenty-first century, South African immigrants could be found living in major cities throughout the United States, most notably in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. As the vast majority of them are native English speakers, they have tended to assimilate quickly. 

Thousands of young professionals, including many doctors, teachers, and scientists, have left their country in search of employment opportunities, many in the United States. According to Statistics South Africa, the three top overseas destinations between 2006 and 2016 for South African emigrants were Australia (26 percent), the United Kingdom (25 percent), and the United States (13.4 percent). Not surprisingly, the large number of educated people leaving South Africa has caused the country to experience a “brain drain.” According to the Pew Research Center, 69 percent of sub-Saharan African immigrants aged twenty-five and over in 2015 had at least some college experience; South Africa was one of the ten biggest source countries for sub-Saharan African immigrants. 

In 2021, South Africa experienced a period of unrest and rioting in response to economic conditions and COVID-19 policies that led to violence and death. Yet, in the following years, South Africa continued to face political and economic challenges. High levels of unemployment and general instability have led South Africans to increase their emigration rates. In 2022, 915,000 South Africans emigrated, and while the top destinations remain overwhelmingly the United Kingdom and Australia, the United States remained the third most popular destination. 

In the 2020s, South Africa faced immigration challenges of a different sort. The country became the point of destination for many African migrants fleeing security, environmental, and economic conditions in their native countries. In many respects, the topic of immigration became as much a contentious political issue in South Africa as it had in other global locations such as the United States and Europe.  

In South Africa, a rapid influx of immigrants began in the mid-late 1990s when South Africa began to accept large numbers of migrants into its borders. By 1996, 835,000 had entered the country. Two decades later in 2022, immigrant numbers had swelled to 2.4 million. Eighty percent of this total were originally from sub-Saharan African nations such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Malawi. Migrants now totaled approximately 4 percent of the population.  

South Africans directed the same types of nativist rhetoric towards its new immigrants as could be found in right-wing movements that had emerged as a political force in the developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Detractors of immigrants cited the strain on resources and the competition for jobs native South Africans were experiencing. South Africans blamed immigrants for spikes in crime. Similar to how both the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States had, by 2024, come to support immigration controls, most of South Africa's political groups advocated identical policies.  

The situation in South Africa spoke to how universal the issue of global population displacement had become to all nations of the world. It also illustrated the sameness of nativist responses that reared themselves regardless of a country's level of development or location on the globe.  

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