Fair point; but those are the laws of the country. It's unfortunate for them, but this is not the way.
South Africa
- Thread starter Priapus
- Start date
Fair point; but those are the laws of the country. It's unfortunate for them, but this is not the way.
I'm sure you'd think differently if you were in their position. In fact, you're already looking to leave your country, so you're not that far from their position.
You won't need to...just apply for a British Passport prior to informing SA and getting permission and it will be done for you. Short story, prior to getting British passports here, I sent in forms sent to me by SA House. Then waited a week and applied for British passports. Heard a month later that the forms *they sent me" were now old and required a different version. Needless to say, as we had already sent in our British applications, we had not asked for permission *prior to*! And I have not bothered to go though the rigmarole of reapplying for SA Citizenship.
Haven't got to the end of this thread but can tell you with 18 years under my belt here that it is neither Paradise nor Nirvana HOWEVER, it is a hell of a lot better than SA. Has it declined since we first arrived? Yes, but it is by no means intolerable and indeed, show me one place that is perfect and it will be instantly ruined by immigration e masse from everyone who believes that the grass is always greener elsewhere.
Apart from the issues already highlighted, don't forget, in the UK, we pay our tax and things generally work (sometimes better, sometimes worse). However, in SA, you pay your official tax and then get hit with all the stealth taxes...private security contractors, private health care, private schooling. You have the constant, and I mean constant, overriding fear of being the victim of crime such that I was always in war mode...took me almost five years to relax in the UK although I still lock doors at night and when I drive and never sit with my back to a door in a public place. It doesn't leave you. I will still jump at loud bangs and "reach for my gun".
I am like a brand ambassador for the UK. I am always telling locals born here how fantastic the place it...by no means perfect but still a lovely place to live. The weather is not so bad as everyone makes out (certainly not in the SE of England). AT the end of the day, we have lovely green areas, open fields, lovely forests etc that would not exist if we had much less rain...you cannot have one without the other.
People can all complain as much as they want about the state of the NHS, public schooling, the price of housing, the cost of living etc etc. My suggestion would be to put your money where your mouth is and go live in USA, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc and try it out and then decide if it is really that bad here. The UK is not perfect but as I mentioned, no where is... they just have a different set of problems. You decide what is most important to you.
I love this country and my children were brought up singing G-d Save the Queen every morning (all three verses!).
I flick a switch and the lights and oven turn on. I buy things on special at the supermarket knowing that my freezer will be able to freeze and store it. I go walking in the forest with the family not worried about being, mugged, stabbed or shot for my cell phone (mobile). I may think the politics is a shambles but at least you have a realistic chance of voting out the incumbents.
Now, you could argue that one can expect this in many other countries and you would be right. However, it may mean facing similar issues in the USA with the additional burden of a private healthcare system and higher levels of violent crime. Perhaps Australia? Well, apart from having to deals with Australians on a daily basis, they also have their own specific issues around weather, being at the ar*e end of the world and others (here we only have to deal with the Welsh)
All in all, saying we are better than SA can be correctly be interpreted as a low bar but for people coming from there, it is a big thing for a lot of reasons. However, I would argue, that for all our problems, it is still a lovely place to live and we should be a little more appreciative of how good we have it. Sometimes, you have to see things through the eyes of an "uitlander" (foreigner) to realise that perhaps you are a little jaded.
So, to Priapus, make your way over here. It will be infinitely better than your current situation (in Joey's?) and you will not regret it. You will have to make adjustments but overall, you will be a winner.
Good luck
If I had no legal right to enter the UK - or any country I wouldn't try get in illegally. But yes, maybe I would think differently if I were in their shoes.
Associate
As an aside, the law that causes people to automatically forfeit SA citizenship was struck down by the high court a week or two ago.You won't need to...just apply for a British Passport prior to informing SA and getting permission and it will be done for you. Short story, prior to getting British passports here, I sent in forms sent to me by SA House. Then waited a week and applied for British passports. Heard a month later that the forms *they sent me" were now old and required a different version. Needless to say, as we had already sent in our British applications, we had not asked for permission *prior to*! And I have not bothered to go though the rigmarole of reapplying for SA Citizenship.
Haven't got to the end of this thread but can tell you with 18 years under my belt here that it is neither Paradise nor Nirvana HOWEVER, it is a hell of a lot better than SA. Has it declined since we first arrived? Yes, but it is by no means intolerable and indeed, show me one place that is perfect and it will be instantly ruined by immigration e masse from everyone who believes that the grass is always greener elsewhere.
Apart from the issues already highlighted, don't forget, in the UK, we pay our tax and things generally work (sometimes better, sometimes worse). However, in SA, you pay your official tax and then get hit with all the stealth taxes...private security contractors, private health care, private schooling. You have the constant, and I mean constant, overriding fear of being the victim of crime such that I was always in war mode...took me almost five years to relax in the UK although I still lock doors at night and when I drive and never sit with my back to a door in a public place. It doesn't leave you. I will still jump at loud bangs and "reach for my gun".
I am like a brand ambassador for the UK. I am always telling locals born here how fantastic the place it...by no means perfect but still a lovely place to live. The weather is not so bad as everyone makes out (certainly not in the SE of England). AT the end of the day, we have lovely green areas, open fields, lovely forests etc that would not exist if we had much less rain...you cannot have one without the other.
People can all complain as much as they want about the state of the NHS, public schooling, the price of housing, the cost of living etc etc. My suggestion would be to put your money where your mouth is and go live in USA, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc and try it out and then decide if it is really that bad here. The UK is not perfect but as I mentioned, no where is... they just have a different set of problems. You decide what is most important to you.
I love this country and my children were brought up singing G-d Save the Queen every morning (all three verses!).
I flick a switch and the lights and oven turn on. I buy things on special at the supermarket knowing that my freezer will be able to freeze and store it. I go walking in the forest with the family not worried about being, mugged, stabbed or shot for my cell phone (mobile). I may think the politics is a shambles but at least you have a realistic chance of voting out the incumbents.
Now, you could argue that one can expect this in many other countries and you would be right. However, it may mean facing similar issues in the USA with the additional burden of a private healthcare system and higher levels of violent crime. Perhaps Australia? Well, apart from having to deals with Australians on a daily basis, they also have their own specific issues around weather, being at the ar*e end of the world and others (here we only have to deal with the Welsh)
All in all, saying we are better than SA can be correctly be interpreted as a low bar but for people coming from there, it is a big thing for a lot of reasons. However, I would argue, that for all our problems, it is still a lovely place to live and we should be a little more appreciative of how good we have it. Sometimes, you have to see things through the eyes of an "uitlander" (foreigner) to realise that perhaps you are a little jaded.
So, to Priapus, make your way over here. It will be infinitely better than your current situation (in Joey's?) and you will not regret it. You will have to make adjustments but overall, you will be a winner.
Good luck
Permabanned
Interesting. I will look it up. Thanks for the heads up.
It would be is they actually did what they promised to do, they've failed on immigration spectacularly.
Soldato
The talking down of the UK is a British trait.
As we saw during the Brexit debate both sides ended up complaining about Britain for different reasons.
England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland (Republic of Ireland) are still great places to live. It just depends where.
Every country has it's good and bad places.
One of the nurses that helps me at the hospital is from South Africa. She's been here for at least 15 years and likes it.
As we saw during the Brexit debate both sides ended up complaining about Britain for different reasons.
England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland (Republic of Ireland) are still great places to live. It just depends where.
Every country has it's good and bad places.
One of the nurses that helps me at the hospital is from South Africa. She's been here for at least 15 years and likes it.
Well from a business perspective it's in the same timezones as Europe and our work is remote so we can leverage their great talent to European markets that tend to pay more frankly. It's not all corporate greed though - the funds stay in the SA economy and the BEE stuff we comply with hopefully means money goes to help improve equality (although I have some reservations about how much of that actually gets to the right people in practice)
And if you think SA was an odd choice, it was a walk in the park compared to the Ukrainian business I also bought.
Oh yeah, if you bought a business in Ukraine; SA is much easier to deal with from that viewpoint. The reasons you listed, make sense and the strength of the Pound to the Rand, helps.
As for th BEE - that's all nonsense and the money doesn't go to the right places, unfortunately.
I fear as much from the moment it became apparent that you could avoid a lot of it by basically paying more taxes to get the points required. However we're exploring things we can have some control over like setting up our own training facilities and programmes to control up-skilling young black people who maybe then we can give jobs to etc. I'd rather pay twice as much and do something that I KNOW is going to the right place than handing a cheque over to the SA government and hope.
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You won't need to...just apply for a British Passport prior to informing SA and getting permission and it will be done for you. Short story, prior to getting British passports here, I sent in forms sent to me by SA House. Then waited a week and applied for British passports. Heard a month later that the forms *they sent me" were now old and required a different version. Needless to say, as we had already sent in our British applications, we had not asked for permission *prior to*! And I have not bothered to go though the rigmarole of reapplying for SA Citizenship.
Haven't got to the end of this thread but can tell you with 18 years under my belt here that it is neither Paradise nor Nirvana HOWEVER, it is a hell of a lot better than SA. Has it declined since we first arrived? Yes, but it is by no means intolerable and indeed, show me one place that is perfect and it will be instantly ruined by immigration e masse from everyone who believes that the grass is always greener elsewhere.
Apart from the issues already highlighted, don't forget, in the UK, we pay our tax and things generally work (sometimes better, sometimes worse). However, in SA, you pay your official tax and then get hit with all the stealth taxes...private security contractors, private health care, private schooling. You have the constant, and I mean constant, overriding fear of being the victim of crime such that I was always in war mode...took me almost five years to relax in the UK although I still lock doors at night and when I drive and never sit with my back to a door in a public place. It doesn't leave you. I will still jump at loud bangs and "reach for my gun".
I am like a brand ambassador for the UK. I am always telling locals born here how fantastic the place it...by no means perfect but still a lovely place to live. The weather is not so bad as everyone makes out (certainly not in the SE of England). AT the end of the day, we have lovely green areas, open fields, lovely forests etc that would not exist if we had much less rain...you cannot have one without the other.
People can all complain as much as they want about the state of the NHS, public schooling, the price of housing, the cost of living etc etc. My suggestion would be to put your money where your mouth is and go live in USA, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc and try it out and then decide if it is really that bad here. The UK is not perfect but as I mentioned, no where is... they just have a different set of problems. You decide what is most important to you.
I love this country and my children were brought up singing G-d Save the Queen every morning (all three verses!).
I flick a switch and the lights and oven turn on. I buy things on special at the supermarket knowing that my freezer will be able to freeze and store it. I go walking in the forest with the family not worried about being, mugged, stabbed or shot for my cell phone (mobile). I may think the politics is a shambles but at least you have a realistic chance of voting out the incumbents.
Now, you could argue that one can expect this in many other countries and you would be right. However, it may mean facing similar issues in the USA with the additional burden of a private healthcare system and higher levels of violent crime. Perhaps Australia? Well, apart from having to deals with Australians on a daily basis, they also have their own specific issues around weather, being at the ar*e end of the world and others (here we only have to deal with the Welsh)
All in all, saying we are better than SA can be correctly be interpreted as a low bar but for people coming from there, it is a big thing for a lot of reasons. However, I would argue, that for all our problems, it is still a lovely place to live and we should be a little more appreciative of how good we have it. Sometimes, you have to see things through the eyes of an "uitlander" (foreigner) to realise that perhaps you are a little jaded.
So, to Priapus, make your way over here. It will be infinitely better than your current situation (in Joey's?) and you will not regret it. You will have to make adjustments but overall, you will be a winner.
Good luck
As previously mentioned by @Sinbad2000 - that law was struck down by the high court. In any event I have no intention of renouncing SA citizenship - will just leave it as is.
People who have never stayed in a country like South Africa will not understand this. Crime is literally always on my mind. For example; I have my farewell do this evening for work as I am joining a new company based in London. I have to hand in my old equipment and trying to work out if I should Uber, or take my own car, as I don't want the laptop to be stolen and want to avoid Uber case I am mugged... UK might have issues, but I don't need to worry about crap like that there.
Agreed. I actually don't take the state of the UK into consideration when moving. We are not moving there because its better (Its a nice perk) - we are moving so our son can grow up around his family - we literally have zero family in SA. It's just myself, my wife and I. That's it.
It was me you were replying too so I have to take just as much blame for the derailment
Hah, I thought I'd guessed South Africa correctly!I went to Johannesburg in around 2009 on a business trip. At my new company I have an office in Cape Town so I expect I will be going out there soon. When I was there in 2009 I loved it. But I was at the expensive business and tourist parts. I could see that if you go beyond those areas then it didn't look so great, even then. But it is a beautiful country. I remember walking outside the office at lunchtime and there was a definite underlying vibe. On the trip back to the airport I was fully dressed in a suit (a mistake I think) carrying a laptop. We drove through some quite iffy areas and it occurred to me that if we broke down then I probably wasn't getting out of there.
Sadly a South African friend of my wife's went back there 20 years ago. I remember talking to her about safety at her leaving party but she assumed me where she was going was one of the safer areas and she would be living in a gated area. We lost contact with her and then around 5 years ago we found out that she had been murdered by her new gardener, tied up in her kitchen and stabbed multiple times.
An interesting watch:
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Whilst not entirely untrue, this bloke's incessant "waaaa waaaa waaaa" does my head in. Whinge, whine, moneypls. That's his channel in a nutshell.
Anyway, I moved here (London) in 2006, started off doing whatever I could find and started off moving office furniture for £50 a day. Eventually found a "proper" job as a maintenance plumber and gradually worked my way up to being the technical manager of the Natural History Museum which pretty much guarantees me a job anywhere in the world if we ever want to move.
I've lived in Elephant & Castle, Tooting, Clapham, Streatham and now Putney, with the urge to move out of London slowly taking hold.
This country has been very kind to both of us, but then we've worked our arses off to make the most of it. We are currently 39 and 40.
We did have to steal quite a few jobs from British Citizens to get where we are, we've still got them in our basement.
@Priapus hit me up if you need any pointers. This was a quick reply, haven't read much of this thread but @tom_e butters his toast on both sides.
Man of Honour
More butter the better big boy
Caporegime
South Africa is a failed state. The UK is a paradise by comparison.
Soldato
As a pure anecdote, I had a 2 week holiday booked around Cape Town for summer 2020 which obviously got stopped by COVID, and during the setup I asked the hotel (5* middle of town IIRC) about personal security and got the usual "mostly safe in this area but be sensible at night" - I looked at rebooking for this summer and before I did I asked the same question to the same hotel and the answer was "don't worry, we've got guards, you'll be OK" which is a slight enough difference to me that, once I'd done a little more research, I just wasn't as happy to "risk" it as I was back in 2020.
Again, purely anecdotal I know but if that's just 1 potential tourist not going I can imagine that more will be doing the same (except for the safari types who won't be staying in Cape Town anyway).
Again, purely anecdotal I know but if that's just 1 potential tourist not going I can imagine that more will be doing the same (except for the safari types who won't be staying in Cape Town anyway).
I lived in SA for four and a half years with my Mum and step-dad from 2001 till 2005 when I was younger, four years in the JHB suburbs (Sandton) and the rest in a small town called Secunda in Mpumalanaga. I had a great time over there, quality of life was good, going out with friends etc was cheap, tech and games were expensive but not horrendous (aside from when the value of the Rand against the £/$ really dropped), and fortunately we never had any problems over there.
It's rather sad to see the state of the place these days, problems that were obvious back then have only got worse, the infrastructure is falling to pieces and as far as I'm aware load shedding has been a thing over there for years to stop the electricity grid from collapsing entirely. Crime was rampant and the police were incredibly poorly paid and understaffed, and corruption was rife. I remember once phoning 112 when there were gunshots from fenced housing development next to ours, and the operator said the police weren't answering the phones.
Such a shame, it's a beautiful country, the people were great and the weather was wonderful. Spending Christmas outside having a brai was a highlight.
It's rather sad to see the state of the place these days, problems that were obvious back then have only got worse, the infrastructure is falling to pieces and as far as I'm aware load shedding has been a thing over there for years to stop the electricity grid from collapsing entirely. Crime was rampant and the police were incredibly poorly paid and understaffed, and corruption was rife. I remember once phoning 112 when there were gunshots from fenced housing development next to ours, and the operator said the police weren't answering the phones.
Such a shame, it's a beautiful country, the people were great and the weather was wonderful. Spending Christmas outside having a brai was a highlight.
Soldato
I used to visit JHB on business a few years ago, I never really saw anything other than the office and the hotel because my boss made it clear on my first trip that you only ever use the hotel chauffeur service to go back and forth between the two. He said it was just too unsafe to risk walking anywhere or getting a taxi. At the time there were stories of local taxi drivers dragging Uber drivers and their passengers out of cars.
Several of my colleagues over there had terrible stories, one had their wife threatened with a branding iron for the combination to their safe.
It always amazed me how the guys over there just get on with life despite all the crime, load shedding and corruption. On my final trip before changing roles, the director out there organised a little sight seeing tour as a way of giving our boss a taste of the market. We drove through a township called Alexandra and literally 10 minutes later we were in Sandton, really hit home the disparity in wealth there.
Several of my colleagues over there had terrible stories, one had their wife threatened with a branding iron for the combination to their safe.
It always amazed me how the guys over there just get on with life despite all the crime, load shedding and corruption. On my final trip before changing roles, the director out there organised a little sight seeing tour as a way of giving our boss a taste of the market. We drove through a township called Alexandra and literally 10 minutes later we were in Sandton, really hit home the disparity in wealth there.