Moving to South Africa

A high standard of living at a low hard-currency cost, gated behind one of the slowest immigration departments in the world.

South Africa is a country where the immigration law is more generous than the administration of it. The Immigration Act sets out a wide family of temporary residence visas — skilled work, intra-company transfer, business, study, spousal, retirement — and a permanent residence system that, on paper, lets a holder of a critical skills visa apply directly rather than waiting five years. The routes exist and they are published.

The obstacle is delivery. The Department of Home Affairs has carried a large backlog of undecided permanent residence and long-term visa applications for years, and processing times that the department itself has committed to are commonly exceeded. This is the single most frequent complaint from people who have moved, and it should be treated as the central planning assumption rather than a footnote.

What draws people anyway is the value proposition. Salaries denominated in rand look modest converted into euros or dollars, but a household earning in hard currency, or earning well locally, commonly lives at a standard that would be expensive elsewhere. Against that sit two realities that no honest guide should omit: electricity supply has been unreliable for years, and violent crime rates are high, though the experience of them varies enormously by neighbourhood and city.

Why people move to South Africa

• The critical skills work visa allows a skilled applicant to enter without a labour market test, and in principle to apply for permanent residence directly.
• The cost of living is low in hard-currency terms, so foreign or well-paid local income goes a long way.
• English is an official language and the working language of business, government and the courts.
• Private healthcare is of a high standard and, through medical schemes, costs a fraction of comparable private care in North America or Europe.
• A remote work visa category has been introduced for people earning from abroad, and a points-based system was gazetted to speed up skilled entry.
• Spouses and life partners of citizens and permanent residents have their own visa category, and it can lead to permanent residence.

What to know before you commit

• Departmental processing times are long and frequently exceed published targets; permanent residence decisions in particular have taken years for many applicants.
• Violent crime rates are high by international comparison, and the risk varies enormously between neighbourhoods, so location research matters more here than in most destinations.
• Electricity supply has been subject to scheduled load shedding, and many households and businesses pay for inverters, batteries or generators as a matter of course.
• The general work visa requires a Department of Employment and Labour certification that no suitable citizen or permanent resident is available; it is slow and refusals are common.
• South Africa restricts dual citizenship: a citizen who voluntarily acquires another nationality without prior permission under the Citizenship Act loses South African citizenship.
• The rand is volatile, so locally earned savings can lose value quickly measured against hard currency.

The eight guides

Official sources

• Department of Home Affairs
• South African Government services portal
• Department of Employment and Labour

Checked against these pages in September 2026. Fees and processing times change without notice — confirm before you act.