NickhUK

Hi There,

I am currently living in the UK (British Citizen) and am looking to move to South Africa with the intention of working there on a permanent basis.

I have a bachelors degree Law (LLB) and a post graduate diploma in legal practice however I am willing to take any job to begin with in order to obtain a work visa.

I was wondering how hard it will be to secure permanent employment in South Africa whilst applying from the UK without having already obtained a visa.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Pablo

The short answer is that it will be pretty much impossible unless there are other factors you haven't mentioned that make you somehow indispensible to the South African economy.

Ededed is more up-to-speed on this nowadays. He has commented on aspects of this a couple of threads down, and elsewhere too. See if any of that covers questions you may have.

ededed

Pablo's right. No job offer, no visa. You can't make it work the other way round.

The only way to do this is to find a company in SA who are looking for Brits to go and work there and will sponsor you, but this is going to be tricky. There are lots of South Africans with degrees and recruiting them is much cheaper and won't affect their BEE scores.

Good luck - it's going to be very difficult, but not impossible.

MartynK

Realistically, your chances of finding a SA company prepared to jump through all the hoops to offer you a job, and support the visa application process, are poor; unless you have exceptional skills that they require and can't source locally. A better option, if it's a possibility for you, is to join a British or other overseas company with a SA presence, and work on getting a transfer later. This would at least get you into the country, and give you a chance to network and market yourself.

SA isn't a very popular destination for relocation at the moment, for all sorts of reasons - most of which are valid - and I did wonder why you're keen to move there? It's none of my business, of course, but another thought crossed my mind. If there's a personal relationship with a SA citizen or permanent resident involved, there may be other visa options you can explore.