Johannesburg - The global recession could contain a silver lining for South Africa: the chance to reverse a crippling, decades- long brain drain. Several businesses that cater to South African expatriates, the biggest concentration of whom are found in Britain, have reported that increasing numbers of skilled workers are packing their bags for home.
Since South Africa was readmitted to the international fold at the end of the 1990s, legions of young, university-educated whites have winged it to London in search of adventure and jobs that pay in British pounds.
What began for most as a two-year jaunt on a working-holiday visa often stretched to several more years as immigrants traded on their ancestral links with Britain or their skills to remain on and obtain residency.
Rampant crime, political uncertainty and positive discrimination by employers in favour of the long-disadvantaged black majority fuelled the exodus, mostly to Britain but also to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries.
But as these bastions of prosperity have been brought to their knees by mass layoffs, bankruptcies and budget cuts, South Africans are taking a fresh look at home - and finding a lot to like.
"What the global financial crisis has done is accelerate the thought process around coming home, and to act as a catalyst," says Martine Schaffer, managing director of Cape Town-based Homecoming Revolution, a not-for-profit agency that helps South Africans move home.
"People are reviewing their situation and deciding they want to be home."
South Africa does not track the flow of its emigrants. Moving companies say that departing emigrants, estimated at more than 800,000 since 1995, are still heavily on the ascendant.
But the green shoots of a return are visible.
Schaffer says she gets about 50 to 60 enquiries a month from expatriates about how to move back - an increase of more than 20 per cent over the last year.
The profiles of returnees are also changing.
"We are seeing more engineers, people in IT, finance, entrepreneurs," Schaffer says.
Brendan Voogt, managing director of the South African arm of 1st Contact, a company providing services to people who migrate to Britain from Commonwealth countries, says he has also seen a shift.
1st Contact helps returning migrants transfer their taxes and ship their belongings. Over the last year, the volume of goods shipped by the company to South Africa has jumped 38 per cent.
"To me, it's one of the clearest indications that would suggest there's a movement back," according to Voogt, who spent 12 years in London.
"The good times in London are over," says Timothy Schultz, a 35- year-old communications manager at Learning Trust, a company founded by the British government to run education programmes in inner-city London.
Three or four years ago, the challenge for highly qualified newcomers in London was not to get a job, but to get a job in their field, Schultz says.
"Now, new arrivals are having much more difficulty to get their first opportunity. And people with lots of experience are being laid off."
The economic outlook back home is also turbulent.
Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year, when South Africa fell into recession for the first time in 17 years.
For people like Schultz, who is leaving Britain after nine years, there's one key difference in South Africa: white-collar jobs have been nearly untouched.
Through prudent lending policies, South African banks avoided the mountain of bad debts that their European and US counterparts accrued. So, no nationalizations or employment freezes there.
The construction industry is also in good health as the country scrambles to complete a raft of infrastructure projects worth tens of billions of dollars before next year's football World Cup.
Politically, the trepidation felt by many South Africans over the arrival to power of populist President Jacob Zuma in May has eased, as he reveals himself to be a grounded, conciliatory leader.
"People are quite excited about the general possibilities," says Schultz.
Some of his friends have found work on the World Cup stadiums or the new high-speed train linking Johannesburg's airport with the city.
"They have all done very well," he says, "and found good jobs - often better than before."
