South Africa welcomes skilled employees if Canada won't let us in

[HamdenRice]

It's a sad day to have to think about it, but from the SA govt website:

http://www.southafrica.info/public_services/foreigners/work_seekers/workpermits.htm

Working in SA: work permits

Do you wish to stay in SA temporarily in order to explore or take up a job offer, or to set up or run a business, or because you've been recruited or transferred to the country? Here's information on work permit categories, requirements and application procedures, and the answers to some frequently asked questions

Protecting & creating job opportunities

There are limited employment opportunities in South Africa, particularly for the country's vast reserve of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Accordingly, work permits will normally NOT be issued to people who follow an occupation for which there are already sufficient people available to meet SA's needs - particularly unskilled and semi-skilled workers - and employers wishing to bring workers into the country from abroad will have to satisfy the Department of Home Affairs that they are unable to secure the required personnel locally.

Conversely, applications for work permits from people who are in a position to contribute to the broadening of South Africa's economic base will be welcomed. Applications by skilled workers in occupations for which there is a shortage in the country are encouraged, as are applications from people wishing to set up a business in South Africa where this will result in:

*Capital being brought into South Africa from abroad;
*The manufacture of goods for export; or
*The employment of South Africans.

[BlooInBloo]

1. lol! Good thing there aren't any brown skinned skilled Americans...

... else that would be an awkward invitation...

Lethal Weapon (2?):

Roger
"I wanna emigrate to South Africa."

S.A. ambassador
"But'chor blick."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[HamdenRice]

3. Uhhhm, you realize that apartheid is over right?

That South Africa has a progressive black government, right? In fact, they love having black Americans come over.

In fact, South African tourism is promoting a black history and African jazz heritage week early in 2007 specifically to attract black Americans to travel to South Africa.

http://www.blackhistorymonthjazzheritage.com/

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Yeah, I thought that was odd, too

Not to mention that that Gibson movie was revolting nonsense even as a description of Apartheid-era South Africans.

[BlooInBloo]

12. lol! you guys slay me!

[DavidDvorkin]

2. I've thought about it

I lived there into my teens and still occasionally miss the country.

Crime's a problem, but it's always been a country with immense potential and diverse and talented population.

[HamdenRice]

4. That's cool!

Where did you live? I've been to South Africa several times since 1986, almost always focused on Johannesburg, and needless to say the changes have been remarkable -- almost inconceivable 20 years ago.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Last place was Rustenburg

I've been listening to a classical music station in Johannesburg via streaming lately. It's been neat to hear familiar place names being mentioned (and pronounced correctly) in the traffic reports -- although those places were farm towns out in the boonies when I lived there, not part of the Joburg traffic grid!

Next year will mark 50 years since I left, so of course the changes must be enormous. It also might well be that I'm too old for South Africa to want me.

[HamdenRice]

6. Holy Shit!

I spent two years researching the history of the Rustenburg area! In 1988-89, I lived in Johannesburg and travelled most days to Pretoria to do research in the archives. On weekends, I would drive out to the African villages around Rustenburg to interview elderly people about their history.

If you are from Rustenburg, you must remember the Bafokeng people of Phokeng. I ended up focusing more though on the Bakwena ba Mogopa of Bethanie, closer to Brits.

I just spent a few days hanging out with the people from South African tourism in New York on a junket, and they brought people from the Rustenburg area, now incorporated in Northwest province. I met the wife of the chief of Bafokeng, whom I couldn't meet in '88-89 because they had fled to Botswana. (I'm black American, so I noticed the different attitudes in different places.)

In the 80s, Rustenburg was quite liberal for an Afrikaner dorp, because of Sun City. All those black and white and Asian and Coloured and international tourists going to Sun City would stop and spend money in Rustenburg, which made them quite hospitable. Another strange aspect of Rustenburg was that the top Afrikaner families were very close to the top Tswana families in Bafokeng -- it was a kind of strange respect of the elites.

What was Rustenburg like in the 1950s?

[DavidDvorkin]

7. It was the Afrikaner heartland

Dominated by the Dutch Reformed Church.

One one street, there was the trunk of the tree under which Potgieter and Pretorius signed their peace treaty. As an English South African, I was brought up to sneer at the Afrikaners and their worship of those old Boers and the Great Trek, but I've always loved history, and so I used to look at that big tree trunk and think that was really cool.

A few times, I rode my bike/walked up the mountainsides in the Magaliesberge outside town and poked around in the ruins of the old British forts left over from the Boer War. That was cool, too.

These are boyhood memories, of course, the kind of things that impress a kid. I'd love to go back and see it all through an adult's eyes.

[lapislzi]

11. Rustenberg is lovely

Too many zoom through it on their way to Sun City. When I lived near Krugersdorp, it used to be a Sunday destination for my (ex) husband and me. Should be time for jacarandas right about now--and rains.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. By the way, self-advertising alert

I worked some of my memories of Apartheid-era attitudes into my novel, Business Secrets from the Stars, which is advertised in my sig, below.

[lapislzi]

9. I lived in SA for 10 years

I would consider going back. It has much to recommend it, not the least of which is a people of good will.

[shadowknows69]

13. That's no bull either

my uncle just went there to work for a few months and made stupid money. He is a miner though, as in he runs whole mining operations.