With the crippling ongoing bailout burdens of Eskom and other SOEs, the potential impact of the upcoming NHI on the fiscus, the extent of state capture being laid bare for all to see, as well as low economic growth, high crime rates and massive youth unemployment, talk of moving overseas seems to be resurfacing in conversations everywhere. To get some perspective of life abroad, Brainstorm sat down with Tracey Pretorius, a South African who lived in the UK for six years and has spent the last 14 years at Microsoft’s head offices in Redmond working her way up to become the company’s director of global partner business strategy, in its One Commercial Partner business.

When we caught up with her, she was visiting South Africa for a school reunion, which coincided with the school’s 140th birthday. Having spent her entire school career at the same institution in Pretoria, she studied a BA in communications and industrial psychology at UNISA, which led to her first job in PR, and opened the gateway to a career in technology. As many of the big tech firms were, at the time, coming back to post-Apartheid South Africa, her client list included Compaq, which was relaunching in the country, but also Microsoft, with its anti-piracy campaigns for Africa.