Where to start when wanting to relocate from SA to Netherlands

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

My advice initially is that you and your husband both check out the Discover link at the top of this page; within these are links to other parts, one of which is our guide to Netherlands, within which are articles written to help you plan your move.  The Dutch Government department that deals with Immigration is the IND, this link will take you to their website (it also has their contact details and a lot of other useful information).

Speaking generally, unless you have some kind of rights to claim a Dutch (or even another EU country) passport (for the rest of this, I'm going to assume you don't), then you will have to apply for a work/residence permit, in your case better known as the MVV process.  Put simply, you go through a process, part of which is a Dutch language exam, at the end of which you get a sticker in your passport, this acts as both a work and residence permit.  When you arrive in Holland, you have 5 days to register at the Town Hall (Gemeente), where you will obtain your BSN (burgerservicenummer), with which you can work, register at the doctors, open a bank account, register a car etc - it's basically your interface with the Dutch Government and the social systems.

Work will depend on you and your husband; you need to check out whether your qualifications are recognised and if any part of it is regulated, whether you need to register in Holland.  You haven't told us what he does, so we can't be more explicit in what to tell you.  Learning Dutch is an important part of your integration into Dutch society.

If either you or your husband are lucky enough to fall into the skilled migrant group, then your migration can be relatively swift (I'm talking weeks rather than months); the IND has a section on this; this link will take you there.  Most people find work by registering with work agencies (uitzendbureau); of which, looking for work from afar can be frustrating; in many cases, they will either hang up on you, or throw your CV in the bin, the moment that they realise you can't speak Dutch or start work tomorrow; speculative CV's tend to fail for the same reason.

You've mentioned you speak Afrikaans; as a language, it's a mixture of Dutch, German, English and African tribal languages as they spoke them 200 years ago; it's not used in Holland nowadays, but it should help you learn Dutch as there are many similarities between the 2 languages.  The only people in Holland who speak Afrikaans are other South Africans, that said, most Dutch people will understand most of what you say (if they can get past your accent).

Once you've read our guides and checked out any links I've given, if you have any further specific questions, please come back to us.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Thanks so much for the thorough feedback. My husband and I are both in the finance/ accounting fields. I will follow links you provided.