Becoming a south african and working

Hi Luke,
Interesting family structure. I am Dutch living in Johannesburg for 7 years so if you wish we can also communicate in Dutch.

Its difficult to give you a straight answer but I will try to give you at least some direction. However I do have a few questions first:
- what was your mother's immigrationstatus when she lived in South Africa? Did she have permanent residence?
- is your father still a South African or has he given it up in favour of Belgian citizenship?

You should be able to claim citizenship or at least permanent residence. Citizenship depends on whether the Netherlands would allow you a second citizenship. Permanent residence would give you more or less the same advantages as citizenship.

Based on permanent residence (or citizenship) your girlfriend can apply for a spousal permit granting her permission to stay in South Africa. An endorsement to work is usually a relatively easy process once she has received a job offer.

There is indeed quite a shortage of engineers in South Africa so that might definitely work in your benefit and make you in demand. Starter's salary expectations I unfortunately cannot advise you on.

Internships as far as I know get paid for, although this would be an allowance.

This is all I can tell you at this stage.
Hope this helps you in the right direction.

Regards,
Hans Kroll

Hi Hans,
Thanks for the quick response. If you don't mind I will answer in English, it's good for me to practise my English as much as possible.
Do you like living in South Africa/Joburg ? Was it easy to find a job ?
Answers to the questions:
•    My mother was a permanent resident during the time she lived there.
•    My father has lost his South African nationality, because he forget to fill in a form to keep his nationality ( happened only 4 years ago). I do know, he can get it back. And dual citizenship is allowed in Belgium.
I'm hoping Holland will allow me to have dual citizenship (it's also not that clear, my younger brother has both Dutch and Belgium nationality), otherwise I will have to become a Belgium first and then a SA.
I'm thinking it will be good for me to do a training ship. So I'm glad to hear that training ships at least get paid a little.

Thanks again,
Luke

If you were born in South Africa and your father only lost his citizenship four years ago, are you not already a citizen?  If you are a citizen then it shall be relatively easy to get a life partner visa.  There is a great deal of information about this in the South Africa section of this website.

Many questions are answered here
https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43808

Hi Luke,

I love living in South Africa. It is a country with so many faces. Although not everything good I do not intend to
move back to Holland any time soon.
However it is not always easy to find employment here especially as a foreign national. For that reason you might have to accept employment that is not exactly what you want or below your salary expectations.

Like MiaCulpa notes you might already be a citizen without you even knowing. Have you ever checked with Home Affairs?  They should be able to give you a final answer.
Anyhow I believe in your circumstances it would be very easy to claim citizenship and/or permanent residence.
I advise you to do this through the SA Embassy in your current country of residence.

You need to submit a Determination Of Citizenship form together with ur paperwork proving birth in RSA. But then again, I have a feeling that ur father has not necessarily lost his citizenship. I've seen a lot of cases in my line of work of people thinking they lost it when they actually have not. My advice would be to get ur father in contact with Pretoria and verify if his citizenship is really no longer valid.