Hazara Nation

Last week I found myself, briefly, in the land of menace and fortified shopping malls, prestige cars and electric fences, natural beauty and violent crime. And I found myself thinking about all the South Africans migrating to Australia. For although public debate about African migration tends to focus on Sudanese refugees, many more African migrants arrive from South Africa - and they tend to be white.

"Packing for Perth" has become slang for whites leaving South Africa, so popular has Australia become as a destination. At the time of the 2006 census, there were 104,120 people in Australia who were born in South Africa. More than half had arrived since Nelson Mandela became president in 1994. And yes, they do all live in St Ives. At least, St Ives is the Sydney suburb with the highest number of South Africans, followed by Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Dover Heights and Cherrybrook.

All migrant groups develop a reputation, justified or not. The Poms whinge, the Lebanese form gangs, Chinese kids steal places in selective schools. With white South Africans, the stereotype is that they are brash and rude, condescending to anyone they perceive as inferior, especially those serving them in shops.

A South African living on the North Shore, giving advice to prospective migrants on an online forum, puts it this way: "South Africans are considered to be arrogant and pushy, and often have a difficult time adjusting to the environment. I have had CEOs commenting to me that I am 'not the typical South African, you're lovely'." She adds that South Africans used to being go-getting and entrepreneurial in the workplace will have to "tone down immensely in order to gain respect".

I have been gently asking around, trying to find out where this cultural difference comes from. Some have suggested it is simply a difference of manner, others say it is about the sense of entitlement whites developed during apartheid.

On websites devoted to this diaspora, this is evident in the recurring conversations about the difficulties of getting used to not having "domestics" and "garden boys" outside Africa. As one imminent migrant writes about Australia: "We will have to drop our standards - of that we are very certain. Just looking at the average house over there and the way in which people live - it seems a bit backward and years behind."

Though this fear of not being served by lackeys recurs, the most popular theme on the websites seems to be a genuine love for their country mixed with a feeling of being forced to leave for the sake of the safety, given the massive rates of violent crime in the country which was supposed to become a rainbow nation of peace and harmony. There are tales of carjackings, home invasions, neighbours murdered. But this is often this is described in racist terms. One expat living in Perth writes of his realisation "that you can't mix 10 parts coal with one part vanilla ice-cream, and then expect the ice-cream to remain intact".

The view of whites as civilised and blacks as violent is one I find hard to stomach, given the violent history of apartheid, which I saw briefly for myself on holiday at the age of 10, when on a train to Cape Town I saw the white policeman in the next compartment point a gun in the face of black children my own age, standing on a train platform.

But there is more to the story of South African migration than some damn rude shoppers and a few racists. The country has given us many notable citizens. The Booker and Nobel prize winning novelist J.M. Coetzee lives in Adelaide. Gene and Brian Sherman, gallery owners lauded for their commitment to contemporary art in this city, also came from South Africa. As did the lawyer Andrea Durbach, who directs the Australasian Human Rights Centre. Many migrants hated apartheid and actively fought it.

There are benefits and drawbacks to all immigration. Are we contributing to the African brain drain by accepting so many skilled South Africans? Does this further the effects of apartheid because it is the whites who have the educational advantages that allow them to leave? And is it really possible for us to claim the moral high ground when we would probably leave our country too in the same circumstances?