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Comment by nsomaru | Hacker News Reader

Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Both of these cities have loads of expats and intellectually stimulating environments.

Big and spacious apartments for $1000/mo or less. Fibre @ 40mbps for $100/mo or thereabouts. A country that has both tropical and Mediterranean climates (think of the fruit and veggies!) with beautiful nature (esp. CT where it's integrated with the city).

Eat out every night in style at prices cheaper than a European corner cafe. In my experience EU food is overrated and expensive. Have been to America many years ago an all I can remember is that people and portions are big!

Yes, there's crime. Happy to answer any questions.

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How bad is the crime? I've talked to a few who've lived there but they always tell me the crime forced them to move out. Do hijackings at robots still happen often?

The fact that you call a traffic light a "robot" makes me suspect you're a South African or your parents are :)

I have never been hijacked, robot or otherwise. The worst that happened to me was getting mugged in a dark alley around 7pm in Cape Town. Rely shouldn't have been walking around that neighbourhood well-dressed.

In general I leave my laptop in the trunk and ladies leave their bags there too. The most common form of traffic light theft is "smash and grab" which is entirely mitigated by getting the right kind of windows and not leaving your stuff on the seat/where it's visible.

In ZA 80% of the crime is committed against poor people, which really sucks but which realistically means that only 20% of the crime stats actually would apply to the affluent/expats. Ultimately you need to be a little more vigilant and aware, but not much more than you would be in any major city.

Most honest comment. Love how it unfolds.

>"The most common form of traffic light theft is "smash and grab" which is entirely mitigated by getting the right kind of windows and not leaving your stuff on the seat/where it's visible."

That's quite a statement that the experience of waiting at a stoplight would be improved by investing in special windows for your car. Does this to all of ZA or just Cape Town?

Its quite common for almost all new cars to come with driver and main passenger side windows with the “smash and grab” tint.

I would recommend this to anyone driving in South Africa. I’ve never been smash and grabbed because I generally pay attention to anyone approaching my car and try to make eye contact. Usually people are zoning out on their phone or whatever and make easy targets.

> How bad is the crime?

From experience (several yrs ago), you keep a gun in your lap when you drive the car. All the time.

From personal experience of being a South African, I have never ever heard of anything like this, unless you're in Joburg and paranoid about every second of your life.

Appreciate the perspective. I was visiting people who lived in Jberg for more than a decade or so, I wasn't about to question them.

Yeah way to escalate a smash and grab into a homicide! Getting a new phone is always cheaper than dealing with the dead guy pooling blood next to your car.

I’m a South African and out of all my friends and family only one carries a gun and never in his lap.

Capetonian here. Crime is generally relative to where you live. Bad crime mostly happens in the extremely poor townships in Cape Town. That said it does find it's way into the suburbs and the city. But if you're a relatively street smart person in Cape Town city and suburbs, petty crime probably won't affect you.

In terms of my personal experiences with crime I was mugged once when I was a teenager, and had a friend killed when he tried to stop a mugging. But neither have made me want to leave, the murder made me consider it, but this is still my home, and once you experience a Cape Town summer you'll understand why so many people come for a few weeks and end up staying a few years...

In terms of crime in Joburg, that's a whole other ball game. It can be wild up there, and for that reason I wouldn't move there. Although the pay is far better than Cape Town, it's nowhere near as idyllic place to live as Cape Town is.

Spent 2 years in Joburg (Otherwise split my time between Manhattan and Bangalore). Joburg has some of the best of the world in terms of food, sport and nature.

But.

The fear of being mugged or shot at always lingered - always. When you sleep, when you drive, when you go for a jog. We stayed in one of the expensive parts of Joburg (Sandhurst / Hyde Park) and still that did not help feel secure. Next door neighbors got shot at. The neighbors on the other side got their gate rammed in and plundered.

Our company refused to give us our rental allowance if the property did not have 24/7 surveillance including armed guards.

We did not mind losing our possessions, but a break in would have affected my wife for life. As sad as we were to leave Joburg, and South Africa in general, we were happy we left safe.

The northern parts of Durban (Umhlanga / Ballito) is also nice. Good fibre infrastructure, relatively safe. Well developed. Tropical Climate. Very English.

I'm actually a Durbanite living in Westville but I can't recommend Durban having lived in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Mumbai and Berlin. Spend too much time in Durban and I end up feeling like I'm intellectually frustrated. A lot of it might have to do with my race group and the fact that it is a minority nationally with a high concentration in KZN. You probably know what I'm saying ;) There's implicit racism in Durban which is very difficult to live with if you are not expat or white ("English").

There are very few tech meetups and general opportunity for intellectualism/tech in Durban. Shoutout here to OpenDataDurban and Code4SA! I'd love for you to correct me, though. And if you're in Durban, maybe we can get a coffee? hnusername@gmail.com

That being said Durban is really cheap and has the best beaches in the world!

Get Slack and check out ZA Tech slack: https://zatech.github.io/

A really great community, also the look for the #tech-for-good channel which is in conjunction with Codebridge SA is a really great resource.

Yeah for sure... I get exactly what you're saying. I surf so this is the main reason I'm here for now.. I am working remotely though and will be moving back to Asia later this year, before the vaalies pull in.

But otherwise, in terms of weather - you can't beat it.

And yes... I think this place is kinda giving me "island syndrome"... That's why I need to get out of this place for a bit. haha

Having lived in Durban my high-school years… I can't recommend it. I hated every second of it. I found the place to be utterly corrupt and demoralizing. It takes a toll on you to have to rely on private drivers and gated communities only to feel remotely safe. It's like living in a prison. Seeing the decline of the country via Jacob Zuma's rise, and the breakdown of infrastructure while I lived there was another level of depressing.

The traffic is horrendous too.

While I can see where you’re coming from with the other points, private drivers are not really a thing (you do need a car though).

Traffic is also basically non existent if you have lived in any other major city in the world. Like 15-30mins max in peak times and the max commute is 15mins anyways to get from most places to anywhere else.

According to a quick Google Maps check right now, my commute every day to school was ~20min by default, but probably closer to 40min in morning traffic. From the Bluff to Glenwood.

Granted private drivers aren't always a thing — but certainly driving from safe place to safe place is — whether it's driving yourself, being driven by family, or by a driver.

I agree with you and have often noted that it’s like you’re driving from one prison to another.

Re: commute time, was more in context of this thread, where one would be more likely to live in {Glenwood, Umhlanga, Westville, Morningside, Etc.}.

Durban isn’t the best, but there’s a good early morning beach culture and a cheap standard of living. Owning your own free standing property is relatively cheap by international standards and you can get one in a new secure gated estate on a golf course which you have no reason to ever leave if one of the old English/Dutch mansions doesn’t suit you ;)

I live on the South Coast. I deal with R1400/m (±$100) for 220gb data (LTE) to be able to work. Our Neighbourhood's Telkom copper got stolen 8 times this year. Shitty, I know.

But on the bright side, waking up with a gorgeous view over a river and the ocean every morning, nice and quiet does a lot of good mentally, especially having lived in one of the largest cities in the world for 5 years prior.

And yes, there's crime. Gotta activate the alarm system at night.

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