Cape Town is not quite the promised land for Vaalies

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille said in her State of the Province address that more than half of all new mortgages registered by Gauteng residents were for Western Cape properties.

This might suggest that internal migration trends are accelerating. Data from Statistics SA also suggests that the trend she highlighted is significant. Between 2011 and 2016, 73,000 Gautengers settled in the Western Cape - which saw a net gain of 350,000 internal migrants over the same period.

The DA might be tempted to point to this as a "governance dividend".

Indeed, standards of state education and health in the Western Cape are regarded as high compared to elsewhere and the DA administration is largely stable and efficient.

But the truth is likely not so simple.

Cape Town's property prices have been buoyed for decades by internal migration, driven in particular by the headquartering of major financial services companies in the city.

Demand continues to be high. The Pam Golding Property Index shows house price inflation for the Western Cape over most of last year was 11.55%, compared to a national average of 4.9%.

Some estate agents in Johannesburg report that as many as 40% of their clients are moving south. Others say Gautengers are buying in the Western Cape as investments and not necessarily as primary residences.

Official data also suggest that Gauteng is not being depopulated. Far from it.

In the past five years, Gauteng has seen nearly 100,000 migrants from the Western Cape alone, part of a net internal migration to the province of nearly half a million people.

Age-old economic incentives and cheaper air travel which empower "semigrant" lifestyles may tell more of the story than a governance dividend.

Cape Town is not quite Gauteng-by-the-Sea yet. In fact, it may be the other way around.