Jeffrey Ring

Any advice accepted. I am a UK citizen who is going out to South Africa with a view to live in Cape Town from April 2004 to December 2004. My queries are as follows;
1) What are the practicalities of staying longer than the official 6 month stay? Is it similar to other countries where you do ‘visa runs’ to neighbouring countries? Is the overstay fine acceptable?
2) What areas would you recommend to live in? I would like a studio/1 bed in a fairly safe yet central part of cape town. Plenty to walk around during the day – including the seafront.
3) What would the approximate cost of such a flat be per month?
Kind Regards

bsmith1

I am a South African/UK living in the UK -have dual nationality.
I believe that the "visa run" is not allowed as you areonly allowed a maximum 6 months stay period in any 1 year. so if you stayed for 6 months and then went to Namibia for say a weekend and then re-entered SA you may be asked for a tempory resident visa. Im not 100% sure but check out www.southafricahouse.com

bear in mind it is very difficult to get hold of ANYONE to deal with your query and forget about getting the same answer from different people when asking the same questions. We had to deal with them as they wanted to revoke our SA citizenship because we (verygratefully) took on British citizenship-(got hijacked and robbed and forced redundancy in SA -I'm young and had nothing to do with the "old way of life"
Go to SA and then try to deal with staying longer when you are there.Local Home affairs department are not as useless!

Cape town is hellish expensive but it is very nice there. Check out muizenberg are but still you can never be too careful ANYWHERE in SA.
It is a beautiful part of the world-and most of the people are really really really nice and helpful.

banjo

My sister lives in Cape Town and she has suggested places like
Table view, Bloubergstrand and Milnerton. She is in Table View and says everything is very close by.....security complexes (houses as well as flats) some have their own parks. The beach is a 1 minute drive and ten minute walk. Has recommended you go to www.property24.co.za. for more info.

Hope that helps. Sorry......not to sure about the visa bits.

Recommends you look at

BlueScottyGirl

No idea about visa runs etc but I do know from personal experience that it is extremely difficult for a white European to get a work permit so secure that BEFORE you go if you require one. (you never mentioned whether you were working I just threw that in incase it was useful) I lived there for three months last year on a holiday visa, we wondered why they let us in so easily....and discovered that it's cos a work visa took three months to process and you are unlikely to get one if you are white European.

We paid approx £450 a month inclusive of all bills except the telephone for a two bedroom apartment in Seapoint. I think we paid a bit more than we should have done to be honest but we were happy with that.

Feel free to PM me if you wants some thoughts on the more mundane things like car hire, petrol costs and how to charge up your prepay home phone.

Can give you details of a wicked food delivery service as well