South Africa extends winning streak in Australia

South Africans are not outshining Australians in just cricket and rugby — South African immigrants occupy some of the highest seats in almost every sector in Australia. It is truly the land of opportunity.

Figures from Australia’s skilled migrant programme suggest that South Africans earn at least R50000 ($AU7,322.06) more than the average Australian salary.

It emerged that Australia’s highest paid male and female executives last year were both South Africans. Leading the charge is former Johannesburg bank teller Gail Kelly who — just 11 years after emigrating — is CEO of one of Australia’s top four banks. A mother of four, Kelly was ranked as the world’s 11th most powerful woman in the latest Forbes list, ahead of US talk show queen, Oprah Winfrey.

South African-born Allan Moss — who stepped down from his job as CEO of Macquarie Bank last year - was the country’s highest earning executive and retired on a nest egg of more than R1-billion.

Marius Kloppers, last year became CEO of BHP Billiton, one of the world’s major mining concerns.

The president of the Court of Appeals in Western Australia, Judge Christopher Steytler, heads a long list of South Africans who adjudicate in the country’s courts.

One billionaire expatriate, Brian Sherman, is a leading philanthropist in Australia; he is president of the national museum and helped secure the Olympic games for Sydney. Analysts say the Sherman family from Brakpan was probably Australia’s greatest “brain gain” from South Africa: a single family that has climbed to Australia’s highest levels of business, the arts, tourism, charity and the movie industry.

Having begun a two-man investment business from his new Sydney kitchen table in the ’80s, rand billionaire Brian Sherman is credited as the man who “sold Australia to the US”, raising billions of dollars in foreign investment.

Sherman is president of the Australian Museum Trust, where he sits alongside actress Cate Blanchett.

His wife, Gene, is director of one of Australia’s leading art galleries and chairman of a major arts foundation. Their son, Emile, has produced a dozen major movies, including Rabbit-Proof Fence, and even the film version of one of South Africa’s greatest stories: Disgrace, by Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, who is himself an immigrant there.

Phil Gardner, newly appointed editor-in-chief of Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group, who left SA in 1986 after working as a reporter at various Johannesburg newspapers, told the Sunday Times: “Overall, South Africans have seriously over-achieved over here. They have come here under difficult circumstances, determined to prove themselves in an environment that welcomes the best talent, no matter where you’re from.

‘‘I arrived here with 200 Australian dollars in my pocket, following a woman. (Now) I’ve got just over 400 journalists under my control.” In 2006, there were 104,000 South African-born people living in Australia; more than half of whom arrived after 1994.

However, one immigrant from South Africa, Gregory Sher, 30, made the ultimate sacrifice for his adoptive country last month. He was killed while fighting in an Australian commando regiment in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hailed him as “Australia’s hero” last month.