After encountering an "accumulation of micro-aggressions" on the streets of Cape Town, Duma Gqubule, director of the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation, vowed he would not return - and for many years he didn't.
"I've been to Harare, to Mount Kilimanjaro and to Dar es Salaam more than I've been to Cape Town," he said.
He is one of many black professionals happy to give the Mother City's lifestyle a pass. Their experiences were tainted by an undercurrent of perceived racism, manifesting in the representation of patrons at restaurants or choice of language spoken in boardrooms.
"I've had a lot of friends in financial services that go to Cape Town for a few years to get ahead in their companies. But they always return to Joburg when they are recognised," Gqubule said.
According to Statistics South Africa the number of black professionals working in Cape Town has shrunk from 26,000 in January 2015 to 17,000 this year.
Valerie Tapela, an MPhil in coaching management from the University of Stellenbosch Business School, assists companies in attracting and retaining black professionals and says the low level of black representation in Cape Town's workforce is not economically sustainable.
Her research shows that companies in Cape Town struggle to hold on to black professionals and executives, with newcomers describing a sense of "otherness" where they work and live.
Some of the barriers that send black executives packing include limited access to mentorship, a hostile environment, negative stereotyping and a sense of exclusion from the eurocentric organisational culture, her research found.
"If you look at Joburg, it's a little bit more eclectic and more integrated. There is a little bit of individualism in Cape Town, but it doesn't speak to the African culture. What came out ... is that there is still that old working order. People still speak Afrikaans in the boardrooms [and] there's a whole lot of decisions that get made at rugby on a Saturday at Newlands," Tapela said.
Part of the difficulty is that apartheid-era city planning has survived, with expensive property making it difficult for new arrivals to live close to the city centre, where they are likely to work.
"White people live in English-speaking southern suburbs, the northern suburbs are full of Afrikaans [people] and the black people are along the N2.
"Inclusive environments haven't been developed and I think going forward we [will] want to talk about belonging," Tapela said.
Despite this the City of Cape Town said it prioritises economic inclusion.
Gqubule is not convinced the status quo in Cape Town can be changed.
"I think a lot of people have gone past the point of caring. There's nothing that can be done."
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