LIVING IN SOUTH AFRICA

I spent 3 weeks in SA 18 months ago. I was predominantly a tourist but I attended several meetings of some business clubs and got to know a couple of ex pats very well.

The blunt truth is that if you sell your house in the UK and move to SA, you will live like a lord.

However, it is dangerous. In my 3 weeks, I witnessed one mugging and there was a murder in the same hotel that I was staying at. The whites still regard the blacks as untrustworthy and dishonest. The blacks would just like the whites to leave, so the potential for trouble is enormous.

If you are prepared to live with the possible violence, it is a beautiful country but most of the whites want to leave but they know that if they return to Europe, their living standards will plummet. So they stay....golden handcuffs.

It depends on what is your priorities, wealth and a beautiful environment versus long term safety and political stability.

Regards

Mick

And they still makes VW Golf MK1:s there. Positive or negative?

JohanR

It appears that the definition of a patriotic South African:
"A person that cannot sell his house"

still applies

Derek

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My cousin and his wife returned to the UK about 2 years ago after living in Zimbabwe and later RSA for over 40 years. Whilst they loved RSA, they no longer wanted to cope with the crime and security issues which abound in Durban where they had a pig-farm and smallholding. They settled in S.Wales, love it and have no regrets about leaving South Africa's problems behind them.

I have another cousin who's still there sitting it out in anticipation of the problems easing as the RSA population is decimated by AIDS over the next ten years.

David

I lived there for a while and the country and culture are amazing the crime in Jo'burg put me off. The Cape is more pleasant.

Emigrating is a big decision though.

We lived down the cape for 4 years during apartheid. My father was working there and I was a sullen youth. The country is beautiful, the food is fresh and bountiful and the whites live in as much luxury as ever, with huge villas, staff and a couple of white Audis or Mercs out front. I was back to visit school friends 2 years ago, one living in Joburg and the other in the cape and I have to say that I still hated the blatant inequities, the barely concealed racism and simmering tension. I know that one shouldn’t generalise, but largely, some of the types, both ex-pats and Afrikaaners that you'll inevitably end up socialising with will turn your stomach, complaining bitterly about security costs and how it’s awful how they have blacks freely walking up and down outside their house or how it's much better now that they live in an armed compound. As others have said, whites are either bursting to get out but can’t or will try to convince you that the weather, beauty and ridiculously cheap property outweighs the worries about violence. If you’re the kind of person who genuinely can ignore such problems then maybe it’s worth a shot. If you haven’t visited why not go for a month or so?

Durban’s quite nasty in parts. It’s some time back so I don’t recall visiting the Hibiscus Coast but have heard nothing but good things about the beaches, scuba, surfing etc.

I am a South African - an Afrikaaner in fact - but my parents emigrated to the UK for political reasons in 1972 when I was 5 yrs old. I go back every couple of years - to the Cape, where all of my relatives still live, and to visit friends in Port Elizabeth. I also travel to Johannesburg from time to time on business but usually just for a day or two.

Whenever I visit with my family (I have three small kids) I am torn between a desire to live there, because it is truly beautiful and it is where I am from, and a fear of living there. That fear comes from the deteriorating personal safety situation, the devastation that AIDS is wreaking on the population, and the difficulties my kids would have in finding university places and jobs if the "positive" discrimination continues. All just selfish family reasons but that's what fatherhood does to you.

If I were to live there I would choose Cape Town over all other places because it has the best race relations, the most cosmopolitan/European atmosphere, and it is beautiful. Durban and KwaZulu is pretty rough and the climate is unpleasantly humid. Jo'burg is a money-obsessed, ugly and dangerous place - although it has a great climate and is "sophisticated" in a Los Angeles kind of way.

Even Cape Town has become pretty dangerous, especially in the city centre. My Uncle's colleague was murdered on a central street at 4pm on a weekday as he walked from his office with a colleague back to his car. Someone asked him to hand over his briefcase, he hesitated and a guy who was hidden behind him stabbed him in the back. Everyone in South Africa has stories like this, I'm afraid, and most of them are true.

To be positive for a moment, the handover of rule to the non-white majority was frankly miraculous in the way it happened with so little bloodshed. And the schools are integrated, black kids are no longer boycotting, sport is integrated, "mixed" relationships are becoming socially as well as legally acceptable (my cousin just married a "coloured" man) so the society is casting off the old mindsets and the new generation brings hope. Sadly, AIDS is devastating the country to the extent that there are now far more people dying between the ages of 30 & 45 than there are dying between 65 & 80. This is creating a generation of orphans and huge social problems (which is the area in which my friends in Port Elizabeth work).

I don't think I really answered your question. You need to look at what you hope to get out of living there, what you might contribute and what it might cost you and your family/friends.

Andrew

I was on a course in Reading this weekend and met 4 SA Physios.

They thought i was dumb to consider SA at this time due to all the reasons that you have highlighted.

Also they feel that when N.M. departs this mortal coil the real SA will emerge in all its ugly glory.

So that may have to be that.

My brother and his family are off to SA for the holidays soon and may buy a house in CT this visit. So i will speak to him when he gets back.

regards David