Would you move to Cape Town?

[ZarZarGabor]

Sorry posting here for traffic.

A good job opportunity has come up to move to Cape Town with work, likely for 3 years or so. We have one pre-school age child and are aware childcare options there are more affordable.

We have spent some time there before and so are alive to some of the issues the country faces including crime, load shedding and bureaucracy. However we still absolutely love the place and want an adventure.

Would be grateful to hear the views of people who have direct experience living there, especially with a young child.

I know lots of people will have a “friend of a friend” who has had bad experiences in South Africa, but I’d really like to hear from people who actually live or have lived there about day to day life for an expat and the sorts of considerations we might have forgotten to factor into (we have already considered visas, healthcare, security, costly mobile phone data etc).

thanks for any advice.

Not if you offered to pay me.

is vanishingly rare for a bystander or for someone not involved in a gang to find themselves caught up in indiscriminate violence in London,

It may be rare for a bystander to be caught up in gang violence in London but muggings, phone theft and ATM robberies are pretty common. On the Nextdoor app every day there are posts from people who’ve been robbed or their children have.

I know the levels of extreme violence are not the same in affluent areas as they are in the townships. But I'm not just talking about murder and rape when I talk about violent crime.

There is a reason why every home has bars on the windows and doors, why families have guard dogs, why gated communities have armed guards, why there are armed guards in the tourist areas, and so on. The threat of robbery and house break ins is constant and real. Crime in Cape Town absolutely does not follow the same patterns as in London. We do not have anywhere near the same levels of robbery - armed or otherwise, muggings, car jackings, petty theft, and so on. You will see very, very few homes in the UK with bars on their windows. Only the obscenely wealthy in London will have any form of personal protection in and around their homes. You really can't compare the two.

For someone thinking of moving from the UK to South Africa, I think it's really important to be honest about this rather than trying to downplay the reality.

Blimey I'm surprised at this. Has it really become much more dangerous in recent years? I've always though Joburg was dangerous but Cape Town less so.
My DDs school have run a school trip there for many years (my own DD went in 2016 and a fabulous time). I'm wondering it they still run it now!

It's far more complicated than I understand or could explain as it involves a number of colliding problems - ideas about masculinity, failures in policing, poverty, ideas about false cures for hiv, racism and the reasons why black women may be reluctant to report their rape etc.

My very very limited understanding is that failure of the authority to ever see rape beyond an individual crime has been a huge contributing factor in that it leads to a backlog of cases which can take years to be addressed while nobody ever addresses the underlying problems that have lead to it being such a prevalent issue. The most recent suggestion by the ANC of chemical castration for convicted rapists is evidence of this in that it still views rape as a crime of sexual desire ignoring the fact that it's generally borne out of a need to exert power or revenge over a person. Evidence is actually beginning to show that a man who has been castrated will still rape using a different implement instead.

There's also the issue of people believing that intercourse with a virgin is a cure for aids. Now it's so easy for us to know that it's nonsense, but I don't think people realise the extent to which American and European companies have exploited the aids crisis in Africa. Many many many years ago I worked in a neighbouring country and saw first hand how pharma companies (or people impersonating them) would head to villages with 60% of the people there living with aids to sell the latest cures. Families would sell everything they had to buy medicines for the youngest children but none of it worked. I talked to highly educated/respected people who had no idea what to believe because of the sheer amount of lies they'd been told. There were people there who genuinely believed that people were purposefully infected with aids because there was so much money to be made from it. Obviously I'm not condoning raping virgins but I do see how somebody might believe it would work.

I actually came on to say though that people living in the U.K./Oz/NZ will have a skewed perspective of life in SA because the majority of South Africans they come across will already have left because of the crime (rather than those who have decided to stay) and are more likely to be white giving rise to this myth that white people are the only victims.

I'm really surprised to read some of the posts here. I always had it in my head that it wasn't a safe place to visit, but I had started to change my view after my friend's experience of living there. She and her family moved out to Cape Town last year with children aged 9 and 12. Her husband was raised in SA. They have never complained about safety, but she has felt the schooling is not great, and her children have fallen considerably behind compared to the UK. They are also thinking of short-ish terms. 3-5 years. It has been really interesting to read about other people's experiences. Where I live, we have lots of SA who have settled here. They all have good jobs in the city, so I assumed it was just work opportunities that brought them here.

These kinds of petty crimes are common in any large city.

This does not make London comparable to Cape Town in terms of crime statistics. Suggesting this is absurd.

No they're not common. I've lived in London my entire life...I'm 42. I've never once been mugged, nor has any of my family. We've been burgled once and car broken into once. I don't think that is too awful for 42 years. London is really very safe

This does not make London comparable to Cape Town in terms of crime statistics. Suggesting this is absurd.

I didn’t say it was. I said it may be rare for a bystander to be caught up in gang violence but there’s plenty of muggings and phone snatching etc.
Also those sort of crimes aren’t common in all large cities - Seoul, Busan and Tokyo for example are safe.

I think a lot of SA folks moved to Oz and New Zealand for a safer environment with more like SA weather.

Can you go on holiday for a few weeks in an area similar to where you would be moving to see what you think?

Another option is to make a bucket list of things you want to do there and prioritise holidaying there- if you dont want to prioritise it over, say, the cost of a holiday somewhere else, maybe you dont want to go there as much as you think.

Would you even be thinking about it, seeking it out, if it wasnt offered to you?

There are a lot of people commenting here who dont live in South Africa, may not even have visited, and base their opinions on what theyve seen in the news, heard from disaffected Saffers who've emigrated, or from a friend of a neighbour's uncle. I have lived in South Africa. Its a wonderful country. It has big, complex problems and security and poverty are huge issues. However, I lived a very active outdoor lifestyle, made great friends, earned great money and racked up experience in a multinational in emerging markets, and overall had a wonderful experience. The company did secure me very secure housing in a gated security estate and we were also very well supported in terms of advice, counselling about the different cultural expectations, safety and security on the ground etc. I think its true that I almost always felt on alert when out, but I observed all the guidelines and was diligent about my own safety and had a glorious time. I would do it again, but I would do it on exactly those terms again, as its the only way I would feel happy and safe to do it. South Africans are awesome and their problems are huge and to be honest, probably not fixable. But its not entirely true to believe a one sided view of the country, any more than it is for South Africans to believe all Brits are Brexit loving, intolerant chavs or snooty Dukes and Duchesses.

@EnidSpyton I have immediate family who live in Cape Town, in an affluent coastal suburb. They're not armed, have no dog (their next door neighbour has a tiny Yorkie!) and don't live in a gated community. They walk to the shop etc.

I'm not downplaying anything, crime is a serious concern in South Africa as well as some of the neighbouring countries and I unfortunately know several people who have been killed, but I'm trying to give a realistic picture.

There’s also a lot of people downplaying the very real and present dangers of the place, as if beautiful scenery cancels everything else out.

There’s quite the difference between disaffected emigrants complaining about chavs and snobbery, and disaffected emigrants complaining about murder, robbery, kidnapping, carjackings, and gang rape that occur to such a degree that those that can afford it live in compounds (if they haven’t indeed left).

and I do have direct experience of Cape Town, for what it’s worth.

For those of you saying horrific violence isn’t random in Cape Town … my friends uncle and aunt were tied up and had boiling water poured on them during a house robbery. They could have just tied them up and then let them go, but violence is just SO common there and racial tensions so high that they felt the need to do what they did. That’s not even the worst experience of my South African friends. They describe what’s going on as a genocide simply due to the vast numbers of people being horrifically murdered and the lack of action being taken.

My SA friend and her entire family moved to Ireland and the UK a number of years ago for most of the reasons mentioned above - their safety and to live a hopefully safe and peaceful life. One thing that she told me about was how a number of her school friends had suffered from strokes and heart attacks which she put down to the stress of just existing there. She was about 40 when she told me this.

@KimberleyClark

I’m going in February. Will be about the 25th time I’ve been. My dd and I will be doing the 7 hour drive from Joburg to the most northerly gate of the Kruger. A drive we have done many times.

Fear not.

OP, I have not read all the replies as they are all incredibly negative. You are always going to get the 'well my neighbour said' on threads relating to SA.

I live in SA, I am not in CT now though, but hail from that way. My dd lives in CT so I go often.

Please feel free to DM me. I would personally jump at the chance, Cape Town is an amazing place to live.

These aren’t just ‘well my neighbour said’ comments though. The chance of horrific violence is very, very real and has clearly been experience both by people on this thread as well as their close friends and family members.

As I said, all of my South African family (from Cape Town) have left because they felt unsafe. My family have literally lived in Cape Town for a hundred years yet in recently years have seen and experienced terrible things that mean that they now feel safer almost anywhere else.

Yes, it’s a gorgeous place and yes, most of the people are friendly and welcoming. Is that enough to risk the safety and well-being of your children for? Well, that’s up for OP to decide but personally I wouldn’t do it. Those of us telling OP the ‘negative’ side are actually just trying to be realistic, not just negative for the sake of it.

No way. Although I'm sure it's great for a "controlled conditions" holiday, living there would be vastly different.

Cape Town is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

If you want the "Africa experience", you'd be much safer in somewhere like Kenya, Tanzania or Ethiopia.

Sigh.

This is not the case at all.

I am pretty well travelled, and you will struggle to find a more hospitable, friendly and adventurous nation than South Africans.

This is the problem with these threads. Most of the replies are from people who used to live here, and know someone who used to live here. Not many from those who live here now.

Those who have lived here and left, have to believe that they made the right and better choice in leaving. Otherwise you will not settle as easily in your new country. I see this all the time. And you might be quite surprised at the amount of South Africans returning at the moment. As they made the move, to find out there are issues everywhere. Ok, they may not be the same issues, but they would rather live with the ones they know.

I remember you from other SA bashing threads @JayAlfredPrufrock 😀

So glad to hear you are able to visit the Kruger once again.

@isthismylifenow I agree wholeheartedly. It is very depressing to see how people view SA and yes, the people that move away must convince everyone and themselves that they made the right choice.

That is fine for them. But there are millions of people that happily live here.

There are plenty of comments saying the same thing by people with direct experience. Negative comments aren’t negated because there’s a lot of them, and alternative views aren’t somehow more trustworthy because they’re in the minority. There’s no downplaying or excusing the level of violence that occurs in South Africa. Even if you want to discount personal or second hand experience the statistics speak for themselves. No one is lying here, there’s a very good reason why the feedback is overwhelmingly negative.

There are far more people leaving South Africa than there are returning to it. The number emigrating tripled between 2015 to 2020 compared to what it was from 2010 to 2015:
https://solidariteit.co.za/en/sa-is-losing-skills-1-million-have-emigrated/amp/