Why I Would Never Move Back to South Africa

 

Sometimes life's biggest decisions happen by accident. In 2020, my husband and I found ourselves stranded in Costa Rica as the world shut down around us. With borders closing and uncertainty everywhere, we faced a choice: try to return to South Africa, or reunite in the Netherlands, where my Dutch husband is from. We chose the Netherlands.

blissfully unaware that we wouldn't return to South Africa for 4 years

What started as a pandemic necessity became the best decision of my life. And now, five years later, I can say with absolute certainty: I would never move back to South Africa.

The Weight I Didn't Know I Was Carrying

There's a moment that perfectly encapsulates why. A few weeks after arriving in the Netherlands, I left my sunglasses in the car. Just sitting there, visible on the dashboard. When I realized what I'd done, my heart didn't race. My stomach didn't drop. I didn't rush back outside in a panic.

Because nothing happened. They were still there the next morning.

That's when I realized: I'd been living with anxiety for so long, I'd forgotten what it felt like to not be anxious. In South Africa, you simply don't leave anything visible in your car. Not sunglasses, not a phone charger, not loose change. You develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, always calculating risk, always alert. It becomes so normal that you don't even realize the constant low-level stress you're carrying.

Safety Isn't a Luxury, It's Everything

Living in the Netherlands has taught me that safety isn't just about crime statistics or security systems. It's about the mental and emotional space it creates in your life. It's about:

• Walking to the shops at any time of day or night without fear
• Not having bars on every window or electric fencing around every property
• Letting your children play outside without hypervigilance
• Not planning every journey around avoiding certain areas
• Answering your door without wondering who's on the other side
• Not living in what essentially becomes a self-imposed prison, no matter how beautiful the cage

In South Africa, I was constantly in survival mode. Here, I can actually live.

The Things You Can't Unsee

South Africa is a country of stunning beauty and incredible people, but it's also a country where the gap between haves and have-nots has created an environment of desperation and violence that touches everyone. The crime isn't an abstract concept or something that happens to "other people." It's personal. It's visceral. Everyone has stories.

The break-ins. The hijackings. The friends who've been held at gunpoint. The casual acceptance of trauma as just "part of life." The gallows humor South Africans develop as a coping mechanism. The way you learn to sleep through your alarm system going off because it happens so often.

What Freedom Actually Feels Like

In the Netherlands, I've discovered what it means to feel free. I can:

• Go for a run without carrying pepper spray or planning my route around safety
• Sit at a café without positioning myself to watch the door
• Focus on work and hobbies instead of constantly thinking about security
• Live without the background hum of anxiety that I'd normalized for decades
• Simply exist without that constant vigilance

The Guilt and the Love That Remains

I want to be clear: I don't judge anyone who stays in South Africa. Many don't have the option to leave. Others feel a deep responsibility to stay and fight for change. Some genuinely love their lives there and have found peace with the compromises required. I respect all of that.

I also still love South Africa in many ways. The landscapes, the weather, the warmth of the people, the humor, the resilience. There's a magic to South Africa that's hard to find anywhere else. But love isn't always enough.

What I've Gained Can't Be Measured

The pandemic forced my hand, but it gave me something I didn't even know I needed: peace of mind. The ability to sleep soundly. The freedom from constant hypervigilance. A life where I'm not just surviving, but thriving.

Could things change in South Africa? Could the country turn things around? Perhaps. I hope it does, for everyone still there.

But for me, I've found something I'm not willing to give up. I've found a place where leaving my sunglasses in the car is just... leaving my sunglasses in the car. Not an act of recklessness. Not an invitation to disaster. Just a small, unremarkable thing.

And that small, unremarkable thing represents everything I never want to lose again.

---

Living in the Netherlands since 2020 has shown me that the way I lived in South Africa wasn't normal—it was survival. And I'm grateful every single day for the accident of timing that led me here.