There is a particular kind of loneliness that catches new arrivals off guard: you have met dozens of people, you have half a dozen numbers in your phone, and you still spend most weekends alone. It is not that South Africans or fellow internationals are unfriendly — quite the opposite, generally. It is that meeting someone once and becoming actual friends with them are two completely different processes, and nobody warns you about the gap between them before you move.
The expat plateau is real, and it is not your fault
The first month or two after a move tends to be a flurry of social contact. There is a newcomers' welcome, a few work colleagues invite you for a drink, someone from your building introduces you to the WhatsApp group, and for a while it feels like you are meeting new people constantly. Then, somewhere around month three, it plateaus. The initial curiosity about "the new person" fades, everyone else already has their established plans for the weekend, and you are left with a phone full of pleasant acquaintances but no one to call on a Tuesday night.
This is the expat plateau, and almost everyone who has relocated internationally hits it. The mistake is assuming it means something is wrong with you or with the place you have moved to. It usually just means you have run out of one-off introductions and need a different strategy — one built around repetition rather than novelty.
Why it is harder here than you might expect
It is worth being honest about this: South African cities are not built for the kind of accidental, low-effort socialising that happens in denser, more walkable places. Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban are largely car-based, with suburbs, security estates and long distances between where people live, work and socialise. You cannot easily wander down to a corner café and expect to see the same faces three times a week, and public transport rarely puts you shoulder to shoulder with strangers the way a metro or a bus queue does elsewhere.
That is not a reason to give up on the idea of unstructured, organic friendship-building — it is the reason organised groups matter so much more here than they might in your last city. If casual bumping-into-people is scarce, you need to manufacture the repetition deliberately, by showing up to the same kind of thing, with roughly the same people, on a predictable schedule.
Where to actually find your people
None of these avenues are exotic or hard to find — the trick is picking two or three and committing to them for long enough that you stop being "the new person" and start being a regular.
Expat & interest-based communities
Groups built specifically around the shared experience of having moved somewhere new tend to be the fastest route to real friendship, because everyone in the room is looking for the same thing you are.
Sport & fitness
Padel, parkrun, hiking crews, cycling clubs and surf lessons all give you a reason to see the same people weekly, and shared effort tends to build trust faster than small talk over drinks.
Coworking spaces & meetups
If you work remotely or are building something of your own, a coworking membership or an entrepreneur meetup puts you around people on weekdays, not just weekends.
Hobby, language & wine groups
Book clubs, language exchanges and wine tastings are low-pressure ways to meet people who share a specific interest, which gives conversation an easy starting point.
Neighbourhood markets & sundowners
Saturday markets and sunset drinks spots are where locals and internationals mix casually — go often enough and you will start recognising faces.
Volunteering
Giving a few hours a month to a local cause puts you alongside people who are community-minded by nature, and the shared purpose makes conversation feel less like networking.
Turning familiar strangers into friends
Social scientists have a useful term for the people you recognise but do not yet know well: familiar strangers. The padel partner you have played with three times, the woman who always sets up the market stall next to the coffee van, the guy from the coworking space who always says hello — these are the raw material of your future friendships, but only if you push past recognition into actual connection.
The single most effective habit here is saying yes, repeatedly, even when you are tired or it would be easier to stay home. Friendship in a new country compounds slowly — the fifth time you see someone matters far more than the first, because that is usually when the conversation moves past "so how are you finding it here" into something real.
Tip: Be the one who suggests the specific plan. "We should catch up sometime" rarely turns into anything. "Coffee at 10am Saturday at [place]?" almost always does. Most people are relieved when someone else does the organising.
Meet your people in South Africa
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Making the first move, and the second, and the third
A lot of advice about making friends abroad stops at "join things," which is true but incomplete. The follow-through matters just as much as the joining. A few habits that make a genuine difference:
- Follow up within 48 hours. If a conversation went well, message before the memory of it fades — "great chatting on Saturday, let's grab coffee" costs nothing and rarely gets a no.
- Pick a recurring thing over a one-off. A weekly run club beats a single dinner party for building friendship, purely because of repetition.
- Host something small. You do not need a big dinner party — inviting two or three people round for a braai or a simple lunch does more for closeness than another group event.
- Give it time before judging a place. A quiet first few months is normal, not a sign that a city or a group is not for you.
- Say yes more than feels natural. The instinct to stay home after a long week is exactly the instinct that slows this whole process down.
None of this is complicated, but it does take a bit of deliberate effort, especially in cities where you cannot rely on geography to do the work for you. The people who build the strongest social circles here tend to be the ones who treat friendship-building as a project worth investing in for the first year, rather than something that should simply happen on its own.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it realistically take to make friends after moving to South Africa?
Most internationals say it takes six months to a year to move from friendly acquaintances to real friendships, not because South Africans are unwelcoming, but because deep friendship needs repeated, low-stakes contact over time. You will likely meet plenty of people in your first few weeks through work, your neighbourhood or newcomer events. The slower part is turning those familiar faces into people you would call in a crisis, which is exactly why joining a group that meets regularly speeds things up.
Where do expats usually meet people in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban?
Common starting points include expat and interest-based community events, sport and fitness groups such as padel, running clubs, hiking crews and surf lessons, coworking spaces and entrepreneur meetups, hobby and language exchange groups, wine tastings, neighbourhood markets and sundowners, and volunteering. Because South African cities are car-based and spread out, organised groups that meet on a set day and time tend to work better than hoping to bump into people casually.
Is it harder to make friends in South Africa because the cities are so spread out?
In many ways, yes. Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban are car-based cities with suburbs, security estates and long distances between neighbourhoods, so the casual, walkable bumping-into-people that happens naturally in denser cities is rarer here. The upside is that South Africans and fellow internationals are generally warm and quick to include newcomers once you show up somewhere regularly, so structured groups and recurring events matter more than they might elsewhere.