MZANSI NOW: Why EC Youth are Leaving Home
Over two million individuals have left South Africa’s Eastern Cape between 2011 and 2022. The mass exodus is primarily driven by youth looking for work as unemployment and the cost of living continue to rise.
Thobani Mabango, originally from Dutywa, moved to Cape Town in 2020 after passing his exit exam for secondary school. “I tried to apply to study at universities in the Eastern Cape, but I was not lucky to get admitted,” Mabando said. “I decided to move to Cape Town for job opportunities and luckily I have got a decent one in the winemaking industry.”
In the first quarter of 2025, 32.9% of South Africa’s working-age population was unemployed. In the Eastern Cape, the figure is 39.5%, the third-highest of the nine provinces. Despite the province’s recent production of 89,000 jobs in the trade, construction, agricultural, and domestic sectors, job creation remains slow and insufficient to dent the unemployment rate. Rising unemployment rates are exacerbated by high cost of living. In the past two decades, entry-level salaries have remained stagnant across the nation while prices for essential goods have risen dramatically. A report by the TEFL Academy stated that, when measured against inflation, today’s starting salaries have seen a 21% loss in their purchasing power. For example, in 2005, monthly rent accounted for about 20% of an individual's income. Rent costs are now eating up 48% to 64% of entry-level salaries, leaving little left to afford other basic necessities, all of which increased substantially in price.
Since 2005, grocery expenses are up 260%, public transportation has increased by 52%, student debt has grown over 200%, and university tuition, healthcare, and fuel costs have become more expensive as well. Comparatively, groceries in the United Kingdom are about 90% more expensive than they were in 2005, and rent takes only 30% of an individual’s income share. Consequently, about 40% of all expat South Africans reside in Europe, with the UK amongst the top five nations for those looking to immigrate.
As rising costs and unemployment plague the nation, many individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 have taken to inter-provincial migration in search of higher pay and better employment prospects. Of the 2,010,942 individuals who left the Eastern Cape between 2011 and 2022, 63.9% moved to Cape Town in the Western Cape.
The Western Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 19.6%. Although cost of living remains high, the better prospects of employment and more effective government services appear to mitigate concerns of the cost. Road quality, internet access, and education all see stark improvements from the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape.
In terms of infrastructure, the Western Cape Mobility Department’s (WCMD) budget was allocated about 1.3 million more rand by the national government than that of the Eastern Cape Department of Transportation’s (ECDT) in the 2021-22 fiscal year. By the year’s end, the WCMD obtained its 10th consecutive clean audit report and spent 98.8% of its allotted budget. Whereas in the Eastern Cape, the ECDT incurred R385-million of irregular expenditure in the same year. As a result, only 9.8% of the Eastern Cape’s road network is actually paved, and such pavement is primarily concentrated in the eastern part of the province where economic activity is minimal.
The internet is another necessity with dramatically different accessibility rates bbetween the Eastern Cape and Western Cape. Over 30% of the Eastern Cape’s households do not have internet access, as compared to the 88% of households in the Western Cape that do. Since 2015, the Western Cape government has provided residents with up to 6GB of free Internet data per month. The program began with provisions to provincial government buildings and expanded in 2018 to include public schools, healthcare clinics, and libraries with 1,600 connectivity sites. These sites exist throughout the province, but are primarily concentrated in Cape Town, where a majority of migrants from the Eastern Cape have moved to.
The Western Cape’s government also prioritizes education more so than the Eastern Cape’s. In 2023, the Eastern Cape granted no budget towards addressing infrastructure concerns regarding education. While in the Western Cape, the Rapid School Build programme built the Saxonsea Junior High School in just 65 days using funds provided by the provincial government. The Western Cape’s attention to educational infrastructure supports the indication that young individuals from the Eastern Cape are migrating to the Western Cape in pursuit of better educational opportunities for themselves or their children.
Those who have post-secondary education and have not experienced poverty are typically the ones to engage in inter-provincial migration. These individuals’ economic and educational stability enables them to move, while also leaving the Eastern Cape without the numbers and resources to build the province back up and provide essentials for its citizens. Additionally, with a smaller base of high earners, the government's tax revenue decreases, impacting its ability to fund public services and infrastructure. This phenomenon has been colloquially known as ‘brain drain’: the depletion or loss of intellectual and technical personnel who migrate to other provinces or nations.
The healthcare sector is a prime example of the effects of brain drain. Patients in rural areas walk long distances to seek medical care as a result of doctors migrating from rural areas to urban areas. Engineering, IT, finance, electricity, and foreign language are also sectors suffering from the mass emigration of young professionals.
The overall effect is a skills shortage where professionals leave their posts without anyone qualified to fill them. Alternatively, the job market for unskilled labor is already saturated. Those looking for work, primarily those without specializations or degrees, cannot find work in their chosen field. In turn, the South African government is seeking professionals from overseas. According to Xpatweb’s 2025 Critical Skills Report, 84% organisations report difficulty in hiring critically skilled employees in South Africa.
Though these figures apply to South Africa as a whole, they have specific implications for the Eastern Cape. The improved quality of infrastructure, internet access, healthcare, and education have all drawn professional Eastern Cape natives to outside provinces. As these professionals seek work in places like the Western Cape, immigrants fill high-paying positions while locals struggle to find sufficient employment.