We appreciate your commitment and interest wherever you live. Perhaps you may also come back and invest in the home you know so well. Similar to the university fundraisers that keep track of their alumni all over the world, SA missions could use voting to establish a register of interested South Africans abroad who could be mobilised for other support. Voting is an opportunity to renew and affirm the fragile ties to the country of origin. Strengthening these bonds should be the goal of government policy.
All western democracies allow their nationals abroad a postal vote.
The right of citizens to influence the government of their country of origin is taken for granted. Nobody would dare do what SA does to its permanent residents abroad, let alone its temporary absentees from home. SA restricts the most basic democratic right to vote to local immobiles. Heribert Adam is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town.