Jan Hugo: Welcome to the Relocated South African, the show for navigating immigration from South Africa for a better future. I’m your host, Jan Hugo, from Lagos in Portugal. Check out our website, therelocatedsouthafrican.com. It contains a whole lot of useful information and details of all episodes to date.
If you want to interact with us or comment on our discussions or participate in an interview, contact me on jan@therelocatedsouthafrican.com. And if you like our content, why not subscribe on your favourite platform.
So it’s my great pleasure tonight to welcome Andy Rissik, the Group International Director of Sable International. Welcome, Andy.
Andrew Rissik: Hi, Jan. Thanks very much for reaching out and asking me to come and appear on your podcast. I’m very excited.
Jan Hugo: Awesome. Well, we can tell the listeners that we’re both in Portugal, so there is no juggling with time that I sometimes have when I talk to people in America and Australia and so on.
But for the listeners who don’t know Sable, their slogan is global mobility solutions for international citizens and also internationalise yourself, your wealth and your business. I think it sounds like an awesome business to be in, especially for our listeners.
Andy, maybe to start, can you give us just a wee bit of background about yourself, where you are from, school, university, family, etc.?
Andrew Rissik: Yes, Jan, thanks a lot. Well, my name’s Andrew, which is after my Scottish grandfather. My second name is Johan, after my great grandfather, a Huguenot, after whom Johannesburg was named. It’s relevant for the South African audience. We’re a passionate South African family.
So I always tell people when I meet them internationally, I’m from South Africa. If they drill down, I always say Johannesburg because that is our home. I currently live between Portugal and South Africa. So when we’re in South Africa for four or five months a year, we’re in Cape Town, which is kind of where everyone wants to be these days if they’re in SA. But Portugal is our home now.
And just a little bit about my history. I was schooled, junior school in Joburg, and then was in high school in KwaZulu-Natal. I did my National Service in the South African Navy in the Western Cape. So the one province in the Old South Africa where I didn’t spend any meaningful time was the Free State. But I know South Africa well. Like you, like all of us, it’s in our blood forever.
And then I had the fortune of getting a transfer with McCarthy Motor Holdings. I was a trainee manager with them when they were still part of the Anglo-American group when the McCarthy family was still shareholders. So that was the motor industry and I went and worked for them in the UK. And that was kind of where my opportunities opened up.
But what I learned very young as a student when I went travelling, is being on a South African passport was not fun. Even in those days, we could travel visa free to the UK and Switzerland, etc. It was not a nice passport to have. I was with a friend of mine who I knew from Stellenbosch, a chap by the name of Craig Gouws. His father was a train driver for South Africa, and we made it our goal, 1988, by hook or by crook, that we were going to become international citizens and we were going to get passports.
Really, the opportunity for me came with a work permit in the UK and I lived and worked there for 10 years and managed to get myself naturalised in the UK. My children obviously benefit from that. They were both born there. So what I’m just trying to say is that very early on I realised that being international in the world that we live in is actually quite important. And the irony is that I’ve actually spent my whole life trying to help other people do it. So Sable International, that’s basically what we do.
Jan Hugo: That’s amazing. Just obviously with the Rissik, is that where Rissik Street comes from, your family name?
Andrew Rissik: Yes, yes. There’s your Rissik Drive in Pretoria, and then the famous Rissik Street that runs through the heart of Joburg, which is not a very pretty street to drive down anymore.
Jan Hugo: Not anymore, yeah. I used to work in the old Carlton Centre, so many, many moons ago when it was still proper, but yeah. That’s absolutely amazing. So great heritage. And as you say, we’ll always be South African, no matter where we find ourselves.
So I saw a stat the other day that they say about 900,000 South Africans have left the country since 2020. Obviously, some have returned. I’ve spoken to some that have returned. And if you think about in the process of helping people, what is the biggest misconception about leaving that you hear from people on the verge of emigrating?
Andrew Rissik: I think, look, you get different people. And I meet people where they’re sort of just exploring possibilities and there are many reasons that people look to leave. And some people are concerned about the future of their children. And some people may have experienced a terrible crime incident. I met a lady a couple of years ago who had been shot in an attempted hijacking in Johannesburg and it was very much a knee-jerk reaction, very emotional.
So we see people in different decision-making modes and sadly an international move, depending on the time of your life, is something that you really have to think hard about and plan. And I always say, you’ve got to either be very young, very skilled, very wealthy, and you’ve got to be healthy if you’re going to be moving abroad. Otherwise, it really is questionable whether it’s worth it or not. And we can drill down into a little bit more depth.
Jan Hugo: OK. Yeah, I was going to say because in that process with that knee-jerk reaction, and I think we’ll talk about it, there’s not one shoe fits all solution for everybody, but in that process of that knee-jerk reaction, you must have seen people who wanted to emigrate but it was really a bad decision for them.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, and we’ve met people. I mean, you always hear the stories of people who go to, you’ll always hear a story of somebody who rushed off to New Zealand or Australia. And then two, three years later, one of the partners would be unhappy and they’ll end up coming home and it causes an enormous amount of stress in families because the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
And there’s a massive capital cost. I think the one thing that people need to take into account, and the relevance being a South African, is we’re coming from a very weak currency environment. The rand is very heavily undervalued just because of all the country risk. And we are classified as an emerging market. And we’re kind of seen as a third world country, although we ourselves may live in a pretty first world bubble, but our currency reflects the third world situation.
To make a mistake when you’re using rands, going into a hard currency environment can be really destructive. So as I say, if you’re very wealthy, it might hurt, but if it’s a formidable part of your wealth, making the move and then having to come back again, it can actually wipe you out. And we do see that, sadly.
Jan Hugo: I think in an interview, Paul Harris, he left to Australia and came back from Australia, and he said immigration takes at least five years out of your life if you try and turn it around. It’s a massive cost in every respect. So yeah, I agree with you.
Do people always know where they want to go? I mean, because one of the services you guys offer, we’ll get to that, is visa services. But sometimes you get people who, as you say, they run off to, they can get into New Zealand quickly, but not so easy in Australia. So we’ll take New Zealand and then they end up desperately unhappy. But do you see people kind of know where they want to be?
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, I think a lot of people do. I mean, the UK is always going to be popular as a destination. That’s where our head office is, that’s where our business was seated back in 1994, because historically, there’s just such a long history between Britain and South Africa.
And ironically, when we lived there, I was setting up a branch for my business in the Netherlands. I had a lot of Afrikaans friends in the UK and they felt more at home in the UK than they did in the Netherlands because culturally and business-wise, South Africa actually is very like the UK. But obviously, from a heritage point of view, the Dutch did have a big influence in South Africa.
In Europe, Europe is very socialist. Britain is more like SA. I mean, they are becoming more and more socialist as time goes on. But English speaking, language is a big thing because it forms the basis of the culture, the legal system, the familiarity, et cetera.
People, there’s a perception that New Zealand and Australia are very similar to South Africa because they’re Southern Hemisphere and we all play rugby. But New Zealand and Australia are two totally different countries. They’re both very different to South Africa. Again, if you can get in young enough and you’re taking your family and your kids go to school, you start to integrate. And again, it all depends on the phase and the time of the life that you go.
And if you’re going into a city environment or if you’re going into a rural environment, these are all things that will really impact your experience because it’s more difficult to integrate when you’re not in a city working with people and integrating with like-minded people.
So, and then you have the other ones who want to go to Hong Kong, Dubai and those kind of places where I would just say those are areas where you want to maybe go spend 10 years of your life, make a lot of money and then possibly come home or look to relocate to a place like Portugal. Again, it’s really down to the motives, but what we do and what we always try and do is the first thing we do is we’ll talk to a client and we’ll ask them, what are you actually trying to achieve? Why are you doing this? Are you doing it for yourself? Are you doing it for your children?
Lots of people at a very critical stage of their life will make a big decision for their children and they will relocate, and they could be early 50s, late 40s, which is a critical time in your career. I’m going to Paul Harris’ point, you miss a very critical five years of continuing to build wealth for your retirement because you’re chasing a dream overseas for your children.
And if it doesn’t work out, your kids might actually end up being brought up in Portugal or in Australia, but they may actually immigrate. They might marry somebody and move to a different country. And then you’re sitting there. So it’s very important for us to understand, A, what they’re doing it for, even if they come with a preconceived idea of where they want to go.
And then we’ll sort of go through the motions. And it’s quite interesting because you start seeing people thinking, oh, wow, OK, I hadn’t thought about that. And it’s all the considerations. And it goes to what you said earlier on. If you take time to plan it, you’re going to discover a lot more of the pitfalls before you pull the trigger. So I always say, just take as long to plan it as possible.
Jan Hugo: Yeah and I mean just a thought that came up in my mind now, so within a family situation, we can all agree that we want to leave and we’re gung-ho to go but we haven’t really, because it seems like when people decide they’re going they just want to get on that plane. And maybe talking to you guys, a consultant who’s going to sit back and say, let me just advise you what can happen if you make the wrong call. Because it is such a critical call. That is my impression. It is one of the biggest decisions you can make in your life.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah. I mean, not only are you, I mean, they say moving house is like a big trauma, but you’re moving house, you’re putting a border between yourself and your home actually and where you’re from. So there is all the other trauma and we chatted about it the other day that people don’t really understand the impact of leaving their community and it’s quite fun when you land in a place like Portugal because actually there’s a big expat community here and you’ll know down where you are what I’m talking about.
We’re all highly motivated to meet people. There are fantastic groups you can go mountain bike, you can go and sail, you can do all that stuff. We’re going to meet like-minded people but something’s always missing. You’re not at home. So if you’re a social person and you’re proactive, it’s easier. If you’re not, it’s actually more difficult.
The other considerations I said earlier is your health and your age. In Portugal, it’s all good and well when things are going well here, but if you’re in a crisis and you are in a far-lying area and you need to go and see a doctor or you have an emergency, trying to communicate the nuances that you would to a normal doctor at home in a medical system you don’t understand is actually very stressful and as you get older these health issues become a reality.
So people think we’re going to go to Europe because it’s got a good health system but actually you’ve got to think really hard about what does it mean and where do you want to be. It’s just, and this is stuff that people like you and I learn the hard way and we pay the school fees so it’s always good to consult, not to put you off doing it, it’s just like just to understand what you’re getting yourself into.
Jan Hugo: Yeah, just anecdotally on the medical side, I spoke to a lady in Canada a while ago. After 23 years she went back because she’s got an autistic son and she said she couldn’t get the care in Canada. We all have this impression, I’ve got this great medical system and she’s gone back to South Africa, a single mum with an autistic child to get better care.
The guy I interviewed, that episode that went out on Monday, he is heading back from the UK after 20 years, same story, kid with special needs. The system just doesn’t care, doesn’t help him, and he talked a lot about this community thing where when you really have need, your own community is very important.
Andrew Rissik: No, and that’s something that’s very close to my heart. We have a daughter who’s 25. She and my wife are actually flying back to South Africa tomorrow. We’ll come back probably in March or April next year. We’ve explored the UK. Both my kids were born there. She loves Portugal because she’s got an independence here. She can walk to work and all that sort of thing. But in the end the pull is always back to SA because it’s about friends. It’s about family. It’s about people who understand you and these northern countries have got good systems but you’ve got to fit in. It’s like why are you making the decision?
And we heard another horror story about somebody we know quite well who went off to Ireland because they had a severely cerebral palsy child and actually what happened is the husband couldn’t get a job and it was a total wealth decimation and they literally can’t even afford to go back to SA now. And so again my message to anybody who’s making that move is don’t believe the systems. Climb on a plane, go over, thoroughly research it and understand what there is for your child because there are definitely solutions offshore.
But don’t jump on a plane and go and think it’s just going to work out. Go and do your research, go and spend R50,000, jump on a plane, go and spend a month in the UK and do whatever you’ve got to do because there are good solutions but you’ve got to understand whether they’re accessible or not. And depending on how you go there, you may have to pay and then you’re paying in pounds and you’re funding it maybe from a rand base and again it’s like is South Africa that bad? Maybe not.
Jan Hugo: No, that’s very true. And talking about, we know about Portugal, but if you need state health, it’s not that great unless you’re dying. They look after you if you’re dying. But if you need basic services, you’ve got to have private health. Yeah, and that’s costly.
Andrew Rissik: It’s the same in the UK, the NHS, I mean the Brits complain about it, but for South Africans where we don’t have a public health system of any great shape, the NHS is great if you’re in a car crash or you pass out somewhere in a shopping centre and you’re having a fit, they’ll pick you up in an ambulance and they’ll deal with you and it’s fantastic.
But again, if you need a hip replacement, you might be waiting three, four, five years. So again, you do need the private. And I think as South Africans who can afford to immigrate and travel the world and stuff, we use a very, very high standard of medical health care. And actually it’s quite affordable.
Jan Hugo: No, very much so. I had to have full eye tests this afternoon and you look at the equipment and everything and you walk out of there with private health, didn’t cost me one penny, seeing specialists and everything. But as you say, it’s like being on Discovery, basically the same story.
And if we can maybe delve into a little bit more of the matters that you guys deal with and your consultants deal with, I’ve listed some. Obviously, tax is becoming a big issue every day. When you open South African press, you read that SARS is after the people who work overseas and live overseas. Advice on ceasing tax residency. When should you start doing that? Any thoughts on that one?
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, I think, look, just to maybe explain, just sort of from a broad bubble perspective, Sable, we’re an international group. We’ve got, we’re multi-service and multi-jurisdictional. So in our core services sit immigration, then we’ve got financial services, and then we have education.
And within each of those bubbles, there’s a lot of complexity and it’ll depend on who our target market is and where the destination is, where those clients will be going. But just going back to the question on tax, the areas where we’ve got a very strong tax capability is South Africa, UK, Europe, particularly Portugal, because we’ve got loads of people who’ve moved here to retire and a lot of people who came in here on the non-habitual tax thing which is obviously no longer. And more and more are we building a strong US capability because of our presence in Portugal. We are picking up US and obviously lots of UK clients moving here for lifestyle and all the reasons that they’re being pushed out of their countries.
It’s quite funny to see British and American people, 10 years ago, nobody would have ever thought you’d see an American looking for a plan B. At the end of the day, taxes are a big issue. Yes, SARS are like all governments globally very hungry for tax revenue because they’re all spending more than they’re earning.
I think I do bump into a lot of South Africans internationally who sort of say that they’re still tax residents in South Africa, but they’re living abroad. It is not your choice to make. If you leave South Africa and you go and live abroad, you trigger that tax event, whether you like it or not. It’s fine if you’ve got a backpack on your back when you’re 25 years old. It really doesn’t matter. Or even if you’re 55 and you don’t have a lot of wealth, SARS aren’t going to take an interest in you.
It’s always people who’ve got a lot of assets and investments. Just understand the playing field and it’s always good to take advice. It’s not expensive. Honestly, I mean, we had a very nice South African woman get hold of me through my sister in London about eight months ago and we’ve just helped her settle her bill with HMRC in the UK, and she had been unknowingly living in the UK for many, many years, drawing a South African pension, which she was happily paying tax on in SA, but the British government turned around and said “Hello” with all the information exchange that’s happening now.
And unfortunately, ignorance is not an excuse. Her penalty was £60,000. And then there was obviously all the actual tax payment and the interest, et cetera. Again, just somebody who was just totally not a bad bone in their body, just never even realised what you had to do.
So there are people who are totally ignorant and there are people who I think probably do know that they should do something and maybe they just sort of keep quiet. If you’ve got wealth and you are earning money overseas as a South African, I would just make sure that your ducks are in a row. And if you, I think where you are at risk is that if you’re somebody who’s working abroad, earning money, say for instance in the Middle East, if you’re in the UAE or in Saudi, loads of South Africans working in Saudi Arabia, the families are living at home in SA.
Those are the ones that are very easy to target because they are still tax residents in South Africa because of the physical presence test. Where do you return from your wanderings? I’m not personally a tax advisor, but you just don’t want to get it wrong. And SARS are also saying like in some of these jurisdictions, if you’re not paying tax, you can’t not pay tax in two places. So they kind of want their pound of flesh.
So again, it’s just understanding if you don’t want to pay tax, then you must leave the country. But if you leave, you trigger the tax exit. And if you’ve got assets, then it becomes a capital gains event. And we’ve got a client who started his business that was worth nothing. It’s worth R60, 70 million now. He wants to emigrate. But to tax emigrate, he’s going to have to pay capital gains tax on his business.
Now, the problem is he doesn’t want to sell his business. And it’s not a progressive tax. SARS want their pound of flesh before you leave. So if you don’t have the cash to pay the tax, you’re going to have to liquidate something. He actually basically can’t afford to tax emigrate. So he’s made peace with it. And he’s happily living in South Africa making money.
So again, it’s not one size fits all. And it again goes down to what are you looking to achieve. And I often say to people, where do you want to die? When you retire and you hang up your boots, are you going to be overseas or are you going to be in SA? Because these are all things you’ve got to think about in your planning. Because a lot of us will only go over for a 10-year stint or 15 years. I mean, I’m not sure where I want to get buried, but I don’t know if it’s in Portugal.
Jan Hugo: Yeah, who knows. Hopefully I don’t have to worry about that one day. Someone else has this problem. But yeah, it is quite a, in that respect, we always say, when you go and you immigrate like we did, we haven’t been back to South Africa for five years. So we’ve kind of said, okay, we’re done. This is where we are now. And we’ve tried France and we tried other places. But yeah, these are big, big, big decisions. That’s why it’s, the sense I’m getting is just get advice long before you actually get on that plane.
Andrew Rissik: Make sure you, yeah, really. I was actually with one of my wealth advisors here yesterday chatting to a client. And one of the things that we see, they all see, is people who’ve started planning once they’ve already made the move. And the problem is that you’ve triggered tax events that you weren’t even aware of.
So we have our foreign exchange business, which I mean, we move probably a couple of billion rand a year out of South Africa through our South African forex business, most of it’s private investment capital. We do quite a lot of corporate forex, but we always say to the clients, what are you doing with your funds when they go abroad?
Because that business just operates and it’s not necessarily one of our wealth clients moving the money. Have you taken advice? Because if you’re going to go and dump R2 million or R5 million in the UK every year, or you’re taking up to R10 million, are you sure that when it lands there that it’s being structured correctly?
Again, I would say the minute you put a border between yourself and either your wealth or your business or your family, there’s complexity and just understand it. And it’s not really that difficult, but to go and have a consultation for a couple of thousand rand, convert that into dollars or euros, is really, it’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things, just to know what you need to be looking out for.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely and I think in that same respect we talk about a lot of people that go cash in pensions for instance before they retire. They try and ship, they try and take as much of that out into another country and this is where they need forex advice. I don’t think the local branch of your bank is the right place to go to. It might be cheaper, but in the end it’s going to be more expensive. So again, when you move money, get proper advice. Definitely.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, because it’s just key timing to ask the questions, and if you don’t ask the questions at the right time, you often don’t have the answer.
Jan Hugo: Exactly. And when it comes to visas and immigration, you said that you also deal with immigration and more so into the UK. I know there’s businesses that emigrate to the US. Kirsten’s business, where they are advising people with visas. But that’s obviously part of your business as well.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, so our absolute DNA is first and foremost, we’re a South African company. All the shareholders, everybody. I mean, we do have quite a few foreign people who work for us, but we are fundamentally a South African business.
Yeah, it started off when South Africa became part of the Commonwealth in 1994 and then suddenly we were availed of the working holiday visa and if you remember that under the age of 27 you could go and work for two years in the UK and that kind of fuelled an incredible rush of South African young professionals into the UK.
So that’s kind of where our headquarters sits. We have a very strong capability in British nationality. So that’s anybody around the world who’s got a birthright to being British. You don’t necessarily have to be at face value a Brit. We had a fantastic incident in Pretoria. I think it was back in about 2013-14 where a guy came to one of our British nationality seminars.
And he actually looked like Eugene Terre’Blanche’s brother. I mean, he could have been. He had khakis on. He looked exactly the same. I actually expected to find a horse tied up in the car park outside. During the Q&A he actually started asking some questions of my partner Philip Gamble who’s a world authority on nationality. He used to work for the British Home Office and this guy’s some relative of his was born in the Transvaal when it was a British protectorate for a period of four years.
And that date range and that gap, and I can’t remember, Philip at the end said you’ve got a claim to British and six months later the guy got a British passport. The next night we were in Cape Town and somebody walked in with a half a little double-barrel British surname and gave her history and no, you’re one generation too far. She even spoke with a British accent like they do in Cape Town.
So, um, yeah, it’s fascinating, but that’s an element of what we do. We’ve got the visa and immigration business, which is people who’ve got maybe a spouse with a British passport. We do a lot of spousal visas for British citizen spouses wanting to go live in the UK, work permits.
We’ve got a very, very strong work permit business where we work with British corporates looking to employ foreigners because since Brexit, end of 2020, Europeans are no longer allowed to freely work in the UK. Unless you’re British, you basically have to have a work permit to go and work in the UK. So we do corporate work permits, but we also work with individuals who have got their own companies sponsoring them or have found employment.
We do, yeah, and in Australia, we’ve got an office in Melbourne as well. Australia is a big market for us and very popular with South Africans. Then the US, we will work with immigration lawyers in the US. It’s not a huge market for us, but we do do it.
We also then do the investment visas. So like the Portugal Golden Visa, the American, the US EB-5, and there are lots of different solutions where one can invest and get either a residency or a second citizenship, very complex. As you know, it’s very well reported in the media globally, these golden visas are not liked by the EU. So they’re getting tougher and tougher.
But again, it’s understanding, what are you looking to achieve? Who are you doing it for? How much money have you got? Is this something you can really afford to do? €500,000 tied up for minimum 15 years. I can tell you, it never takes five plus one. They’re talking about making naturalisation 10 years.
So again, there’s actually a big financial planning side to the investment migration. But yes, we’re very good at helping people once they know where they want to go, and then we can guide them on whether it’s a visa or an investment or actually a birthright plan. We do European nationality as well.
Jan Hugo: Okay. And interesting, I mean, it’s a practical issue, but you see it everywhere in discussion groups on Facebook. People are battling with documentation in South Africa. So again, the advice is get those docs early on. Don’t wait till you sit overseas and then try and pay someone to go and get your unabridged birth certificate or marriage certificate because it is a nightmare.
Andrew Rissik: Yes, it is a nightmare and I don’t think the world has recovered since COVID and all governments globally are reeling with backlogs and it just seems like the whole world is, I think COVID was a massive shock to the world and I remember saying when COVID was kind of coming to an end it’s going to take 10 years for governments to get back on their feet because we broke this chain and just to make it worse people are uncertain, the world has really changed. So everybody thought that remote work was lovely. Now there seems to be a trend back to office so people are moving and with that comes a lot of demand on government departments for documents plus you’ve got general inefficiencies in government.
Ironically I mean I actually think the South African government in many respects, Home Affairs, is more efficient than some of the European authorities. I won’t mention it but it’s just driving people mad. And we get a passport very quickly or a driver’s licence so quickly in South Africa compared to, whereas the UK, if you apply for a driver’s licence renewal, it takes two days.
So again, it depends where you are. And also in terms of the documentation, it depends what documentation they need and whether it needs to be apostilled or if it just needs to be certified. A certificate might be valid for 12 months, but the authority you’re dealing with might only see the validity for six months.
And so again, it comes down to timing and we try and help people get the timing right. But as delays become more and more apparent in these overseas authorities, timing is actually quite difficult to plan. So we see people spending huge amounts of money on documents and apostille. But we do, we understand what needs to be done and we work with service providers who we believe are quite good. And if they’re not, then we’ll either try and get them to sort their service out or we’ll identify somebody else. But yeah, we work with a lot of documentation companies.
Jan Hugo: Yeah, I think my experience having tried it in France and Monaco and Portugal is you massively underestimate the pain of red tape. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, red tape will always find you.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah. Yeah, and the worst thing is is that as much as we’d like to do as much work as possible for our clients, there’s just certain things that you have to do yourself. And where we’ll add value is giving you the guidance on where to go and get it done and the timing. And we do that to the best of our ability.
But yeah, it is, and it’s frustrating, especially for wealthy people because generally they like to pay and everything just gets sorted. And when it comes to dealing with governments, it’s like that, I don’t really care how wealthy you are. That’s it, my friend.
Jan Hugo: No, that’s very true. And just a few practical matters. Obviously, when you leave, there’s a lot of stuff to do, selling your house and so forth. But just on the other side, securing accommodation and from a guy who’s got to rent something or buy something. But that is a big, big issue. And again, the financial planning and finding the right place and knowing what you’re looking for and what’s the art of the possible. I sometimes think people underestimate it. It gets back to the rand, cashed in your pension, now you want to go and get something in London and you can get absolutely nothing for it.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, and I think that everywhere there seems to be a shortage of decent accommodation. And again, South Africans are spoiled when you look at what we, in global terms, the lifestyle that we live in, the type of accommodation we’re used to, to replicate that in Europe is very difficult.
And one of the things that I always say to people when you move to Europe or the UK, you just have to understand, if you want to replicate your life, you’re going to spend probably six, seven times the amount on a property to get life for life. And it might even be more but you’ve got to understand that your house is where you go and sleep, you go and entertain and do it in a pub in England or maybe a coffee shop in Portugal. But if you want to have a big mansion on a villa like you had in Bishop’s Court, that’s fine but you’re going to pay for it.
And my advice around people who are selling and moving again is before you sell your house, be damn sure that you are very happy to be making this move because again, just horrible stories. I mean I met a lovely couple who live in Germany. They sold their house, their smallholding, a beautiful place in Hilton during the riots back in 2021 I think it was and they literally got the equivalent of €200,000.
They phoned me and they came down to Portugal and they wanted to buy a kind of a villa here that they could get their family to come and spend Christmas every year in. And when they saw what they could buy with €200,000 in the Cascais region, Lisbon area, they were absolutely shocked. You will not even, you will get a terrible studio apartment for that price.
So I suspect they’re going to go back to South Africa because they’re not enjoying Germany. They were just far better suited. The worst thing is they’ll go back with that €200,000. They will never buy their property back because those prices have come back. Again, it goes back to that, are you sure? Have you gone and done your research? That’s just sort of addressing that.
Coming overseas, I would say that if you can afford to, is get somebody to help you go and find accommodation. There are concierge services. We’re actually starting to offer it in the UK now because we’re also seeing a lot of Americans moving to the UK. The Americans are clever people and they are very happy to pay for professional advice and they like to work with somebody they trust.
South Africans, we tend to try and do everything on the cheap and we try and do it ourselves. That’s fine, but then I would still say before you go and start doing stuff yourself, just do the planning properly. To rent a place in London now, my son’s 27, he’s renting a bedroom in Putney and all in, it’s about £1,200 a month. That is a lot of money.
Jan Hugo: It’s a lot of rent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily, he doesn’t have a lot of expenses and they drink, any spare cash, they buy beers and things.
Andrew Rissik: It is actually really scary what it costs. You’ve got, and then you misunderstand what you’ve got to earn because you’ve got to pay tax. What does this all look like? Now you’ve got to send your kids to school.
Jan Hugo: That all again just, what do you need, what do you need? I mean that’s exactly the other question. I spoke to a couple in Holland the other day. He’s 48, he’s got a great job with one of the big electronics companies, an engineer, took their kids over, sort of teenager level and they were working with some immigration consultants but they never got the true story. These kids had to go back a year, they had to go and learn Dutch before they could get into the school system.
He can’t afford to go back. He’s got a good job. So the wife’s now going back to South Africa with the kids and he’s going to commute, which is a terrible solution. So that’s, you mentioned education. Is that schooling and helping people with the advice of that?
Andrew Rissik: So yeah, so during COVID, we acquired a business. It’s called Sable Study Abroad. And that business, essentially what we do is we find university placements for children to go and study abroad. So it’s tertiary education. Could be undergrad or postgrad, again, depending. It’s actually a great way for a youngster to actually get a break overseas because if you go and study there and you meet people, it’s just a funny thing. If you’re in country, opportunities arise and you can take them.
So it’s a good way for a family that doesn’t want to upsticks and relocate for their kids and you give your kid that exposure. But what we’ll do is we’ll sit down, we’ll understand what matric the kid’s doing. Again, it’s a consultative approach. What does he or she want to study? Because there are restrictions in SA. It’s very difficult to go and study veterinary or medicine if you’re certain demographics. If that’s your passion, what are your opportunities overseas?
And then we also have an interesting education business in the UK, but this was really born on the back of our business immigration business. We help probably 50-60% of the British private schools with all the visas for their foreign students, because foreign students are a very big part of the British education business plan. And that’s also becoming so difficult now.
Education, we see people spend a fortune educating their children. Again, you want to be making the right decision because the pathway to get, if you’re coming from a foreign country, like you’re talking about that chap in the Netherlands, if you get the wrong advice and your kid can’t get going. So yeah, again, just come and chat to us. We’ve got really good knowledge of what a kid needs depending on what pathway they’re taking.
Jan Hugo: Awesome. Andy, we’ve spoken about some of the practical things, but just from an emotional side, there’s a huge culture shock in moving and moving away from what’s familiar to you. Weather in the northern hemisphere is obviously an issue. And again, maybe the advice is get on that plane, go and check the place out. Don’t just go and be surprised because you want to reduce the level of surprises to as low as possible, I would imagine.
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, and my dad, when I first went over to the UK as a student, I went during the December holiday from university to the end of my fourth year, and I was still coming back. It was only three months, and he said, you’ll never last because he knows I love sailing and I love being in the sun.
But when you’re young and you’re determined, weather is not an issue and you’re going to earn pounds and it’s fun and you’re independent and there’s a great energy as a foreigner when you’re building, that’s all good and well. But if you’re retiring and you enjoy playing golf, well then you’ve got to think really hard about where you want to go and live. Where you’re living is a fantastic part of the world.
And so, again, it comes down to what are you going for? And the culture thing, we have so many South Africans grumbling, it’s like, we’re going to do it, we’re going to start doing things the South African way in Portugal. I’ve learned one thing. Being a Johannesburger who moved to Cape Town after having spent 11 years in the UK, you’re never going to change the way Cape Town works. Cape Town’s Cape Town, you either adapt or you die.
And it’s the same thing. If you’re coming to Portugal or you go to London, you’re just going to have to fit in. You’re never going to change it. And the sooner you actually accept that, the happier you will be because you’re in a foreign country and embrace, embrace. And I’ve always really made it as much of my mission to mix with locals.
It’s quite difficult in a place like Portugal because they’re very family-oriented, so they don’t invite strangers into the home. But we have a great expat community here. And one thing that really struck me is I’ve become friendly with a lot of Americans and they’re all very positive about being here. They get frustrated with the bureaucracy but they’re thankful that they are in a place that is so beautiful and it’s giving them their plan B. It’s not often you’ll hear an American complain.
Whereas you can meet some very negative South Africans. And I think it’s quite an important thing to touch on is there’s no point in being negative about South Africa. We all are what we are because we got brought up there. And I never ever wanted to run away from SA and not go back. And the best of both worlds is being able to have both. And it comes with a bit of complexity, but never, never shoot your homeland down because it’s not good for your mindset when you’re overseas and equally when you’re overseas, don’t criticise the host country because it’s not going to help. Embrace it. And if you don’t like it, you can always head home.
Jan Hugo: I totally support that. I think what I often laugh about, and maybe it’s a British and Irish thing, but it’s almost like they try and recreate their home life. Maybe they’re so close to the UK, they’re there for a weekend and back here and they forget where they are. But they love their pubs and their Irish and British pubs. And I’m saying that’s not where I want to go, to a small Portuguese cafe and mix with the locals and eat their food and drink their beer.
Andrew Rissik: It’s much more affordable as well.
Jan Hugo: That is absolutely for sure. Now, I agree with you. You want to feel Portugal. You want to feel, if you’re in Austria, obviously on these sort of sunny coasts of the Med, you do find quite a strong British and Irish influence in certain areas. And Irish pubs are a good thing for us as Springbok rugby supporters because, talking about your social cohesion and we’ve been involved, I think in three or four South African rugby legend tours to Portugal, 2016, 2018, ’23.
Andrew Rissik: That’s right, yeah.
Jan Hugo: And one of the things that I said to the guys when we were at the golf day on this recent one in June, is don’t underestimate what an unbelievable impact and influence that you have on South Africans abroad, because I can tell you that I watched that World Cup final in 1995 in a pub in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands.
And at the Oosterbeek rugby club, thank God I found a rugby club. I walked in there and actually they were quite hostile in 1995. They were very pro-New Zealand. And I had a new South African flag and I said to them, look, if you guys support us and we win, I’ll actually donate this flag. It’s a new South African flag. Anyway, by the end of it, we were all drinking beer, and thank heavens we won. That flag is still hanging there.
So there’s great community. We have a chapter in Cascais, and I know down in Praia da Rocha, there’s quite a nice little crew of South Africans who get together when there’s a good game on.
Jan Hugo: At Wim’s?
Andrew Rissik: Yes.
Jan Hugo: Yeah. So, Wim and I went to the same school in South Africa. We learned when we, in Bethel?
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, yeah.
Jan Hugo: He was a few years behind me, but yeah.
Andrew Rissik: Amazing, yeah. Crazy, crazy. It’s crazy. So, that’s fun. I dip into that. But then you’ve got to crack on and live your life because you are not in SA. But it is quite, I’m not a guy who will go out and walk a hundred miles to buy biltong. Some people do. So you’ve just got to do what kind of makes you happy.
But I was in a cafe here, which is run by a very nice South African Portuguese lady. And I heard somebody complaining about Durban, constantly slagging South Africa off. It’s just like, it’s really not nice. We all try to make our lives here and everything. But yeah, it’s very interesting. But South Africans are generally, I think, positive and great contributors to the countries that they move to.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. In this community where we live, there’s another South African couple as well. He’s from Mount Edgecombe. And our sense of humour is just so completely different. These people, they can’t relate to what we laugh about. But I think that’s the one thing that makes us so unique. I think it’s our survival mechanism.
Andrew Rissik: I agree with you. I think you’re right.
Jan Hugo: Andy, just before we end, I mean, one of the things that has come up in a lot of discussions lately is people that stay behind and caring for people who stay behind. It just seems to me like something that we forget. I spoke to a psychologist the other day who’s got a practice specialising in parents who stay behind. So often we plan for immigration and we’ve got this focus on we want to just get out and start a new life. But there’s people behind. I mean, that’s something, I don’t know how you plan for it.
I spoke to a lady in Australia on Sunday who’s written a book about, it’s a caregiver’s guide. She was caring for her parents in Durban and when they passed she wrote a book about it. But I sometimes think it’s something we overlook in the process of immigration.
Andrew Rissik: It is such a very, very, very valid point because a lot of people said to me, I was 36, my kids were two and four. And we upsticked and we went back to SA. But I had created an estate and I had my long-term strategy. But why did we do that? It was because it was critically important for me to give our grandparents and my wife and my parents, her parents, my parents, the ability to get to know their grandchildren and for my kids to be able to have grandparents around or whatever.
That pull factor is very, very strong when your kids are around two and four. And you either make the decision then, you’re going to keep them in like the UK school system or wherever you are in the US or Australia. Once they go to school in a foreign country, then you are there because they become Australian or British or whatever. So that’s quite a key decision-making time.
And we see it quite a lot. A lot of our staff who are working for us in London have moved back to South Africa. The kids, very similar age. Same calling. I also see, I met a lady, one of our clients here, she flew back to Cape Town last night because her mother’s 90 something. She’s 64. And she just knows her time is very, very short.
And her mother’s terribly stressed, lost her son during COVID who lived in America and the daughter’s now moved from America to Portugal. And so it’s a much easier trip north-south, but it’s traumatic. It is, it’s very traumatic. And particularly it’s even worse if people are financially not well off because a lot of elderly people are suffering in SA and people don’t realise it when they’re kids.
I met a lady flying back to see her parents when I lived in England years ago and she hadn’t been back to South Africa for about eight years. She hadn’t seen her family. Now, we can just hop on a plane. And if you have to, not everyone can. And that really is something again to consider because you only live once. And I think Steve Jobs or somebody said, when you’re lying on your death bed, in the end, what is really important? And it actually comes down to your family. And we run this journey and we all try to make money and we’ve got to educate our kids and we just go crazy and we’re charging down and we’re on this hamster wheel but in the end when you’re heading off, it gets back to basics. So it is, it’s a big consideration.
Jan Hugo: Well, maybe last thought. If somebody had to approach you today and you’re saying, I don’t know where I’m going, but I want to get out of whatever country. What would your advice be?
Andrew Rissik: My advice would be engage with somebody who is trusted and who’s also got broad knowledge of what you’re trying to achieve because there’s loads of people who will try and sell you a dream. And then when you find out that they didn’t, A, they might just not have done the right questioning or B, they’re just trying to sell you something and we see a lot of that.
And also people giving advice where they don’t understand the advice that you need on the other side. And that’s why we’ve kind of built that very complicated matrix of having all the knowledge in-house. But I would just say engage with a trusted partner because it doesn’t cost you anything in the beginning. It only starts costing you when you execute. The planning is not expensive.
You start your own business. It’s always a lot harder than you think. And it’s that energy and belief that actually drives you to go and do it. And you always look back and think, oh my word. That was a lot harder than I thought. And I think that’s kind of how humans operate. But there’s so much knowledge that we can share in these type of decisions. Let somebody else help you, pay a little bit of money because the school fees you’re going to pay if you don’t are going to be like a hundredfold what your initial investigations will cost.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely. And Andy, what’s the best way for somebody to contact Sable on your website?
Andrew Rissik: Yeah, www.sableinternational.com. And yeah, we look, we’re all on LinkedIn and everywhere, but yeah, www.sableinternational.com. And you’ll see all the different services and things, but people can Google me. I’d be very happy. I mean, I’m very active in talking to people. I’m actually a bit more like a traffic controller now. I talk to people and I say, okay, you need to be talking to Neil about tax or you need to talk to Claudio or whatever. But yeah, very happy for them to get hold of me.
Jan Hugo: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing. I think in line with what we’ve spoken about and what this podcast is about, to help people in this journey whichever way they’re going, but it’s just to share the real stories and I think this advice tonight is just invaluable and it will be awesome to share with our listeners. So I can only say thank you for your time. I really, really appreciate you being here.
Andrew Rissik: Thank you. It’s an absolute pleasure, Jan. I look forward to meeting you. I don’t know if I’ll get down to the Algarve before I head back. I’m going on the 12th of November, but I’ve got a little London trip in between, but if I do, I will come and drink a Super Bock with you.
Jan Hugo: Awesome. Thank you.
Well, if you enjoyed my discussion with Andy and would like to hear more about experiences of South Africans who have lived or are thinking about leaving, why not subscribe on your favourite platform? If you’d like to share your own story, contact me on jan@therelocatedsouthafrican.com. Until next time.
