Families Face Impossible Choices as South Africa's Cost Crisis Deepens

South Africa’s Cost-of-Living Squeeze: When Staying Becomes the Harder Choice

My father has often told me and my brother: “If you can leave the country for a better opportunity elsewhere, you should.” That advice, offered to his own children, captures something profound about a nation that an increasing number no longer call home. It is not wanderlust speaking. It is arithmetic.

Over the past three decades, more than a million South Africans have left. The departures have not slowed. Roughly 119,000 left between 2000 and 2005, and a further 107,500 between 2020 and 2024. These are not statistics of restlessness or mere ambition. They reflect a deliberate calculation: that the risks of emigration are smaller than the penalties of remaining.

The arithmetic begins with employment. South Africa’s official unemployment rate climbed to 32.7 percent in the first quarter of 2026, up from 31.4 percent in the final quarter of 2025, translating to 8.1 million people without work. For young people between 15 and 34, the crisis deepens. Youth unemployment rose from 43.8 percent to 45.8 percent over the same period, and young South Africans face not only higher joblessness but lower employment relative to their share of the working-age population. Gauteng, the country’s economic heartland, shed 67,000 jobs in the first quarter alone, more than any other province.

Meanwhile, the costs of living are accelerating faster than wages. Headline consumer inflation reached 4.5 percent in May 2026, its highest point since July 2024. Transport costs surged 9.4 percent year on year, while housing and utilities climbed 5.3 percent. Petrol prices have risen 24.8 percent over twelve months; diesel prices are up 53.8 percent.

These pressures hit households directly through municipal tariffs. The City of Tshwane, which encompasses Centurion and serves as one of South Africa’s largest metropolitan municipalities, reached only 20 percent of its 2024/25 electricity and water-infrastructure targets. Yet since July 1, Tshwane increased tariffs on consumption rates and basic service fees. Depending on property value and category, the impact varies, but no household escapes it.

The squeeze falls hardest on those least able to absorb it. Only wealthier households and large corporations can manage rising municipal costs alongside escalating food, fuel and service expenses. The middle class, caught between these pressures, faces erosion. South Africa can ill afford to lose it. Municipal costs are rising faster than the economy is creating jobs to pay for them. That equation does not produce stability. It produces departure.

Unemployment and crime feed each other in ways that accelerate the decision to leave. Between October and December 2025, police recorded 6,351 murders nationally. The first quarter of 2026 saw 5,181 murders, averaging 58 killings per day. More than 11,000 rapes were reported during the same period, alongside thousands of house and business burglaries each quarter. High unemployment and high crime are among the strongest factors driving emigration. They represent not restlessness but a rational response to feeling simultaneously unsafe and unable to earn a living.

Emigration itself carries costs and disappointments. It is not simply a matter of packing a suitcase. Emigrants know the risks. Yet even accounting for those risks, the upside of job opportunities and safer environments exceeds the penalties of staying. Everyone knows someone thinking about leaving, or already gone.

The Institute of Race Relations launched its Diaspora Survey as part of the #WhatSACanBe campaign to understand why people have emigrated. The goal, according to IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Makone Maja, is “to turn South Africa into a country people want to come to, where airport goodbyes start sounding more like ‘welcome home’ and less like ‘we will miss you’.” That this research is necessary speaks volumes. More than one million departures over three decades is not a footnote. It is a referendum cast with feet.

The harder question remains unasked: What would it take, in readily available jobs, in lights that stay on and taps that keep running, to make staying feel like a choice worth making rather than a sacrifice worth escaping? Until South Africans and the government they elect can provide that answer, the queues at the airports will continue to fill with people saying goodbye, for good.