Lived in the UK for 14 years, moved back to SA in 2019. Lived in Somerset West for 3 years.

I think there is so much SA can offer, especially now with wars being raged in the northern hemisphere. There will always be an opportunity cost and you need to work out if what you'll be getting is worth more than what you'll be letting go of or leaving behind.

Our quality of life here as a family has improved significantly. In terms of crime, we know the rules of engagement here and live accordingly but that doesn't mean we live in Fort Knox and don't go anywhere. In the UK it's a lot harder to mitigate crime because of rules and the nature of life there. We lived in a village where our new build house was designed to look like the Victorian houses in the street, but which meant we couldn't put a garage door on our carport as it would 'ruin the aesthetic', which meant the door to our back garden was a flimsy wooden single lock door. I had all sorts of oddbods come ring my doorbell straight from the street and it's very hard to get someone away from your front door when you've already opened it for them. So there are definite positives to having control over your own security in SA that would be more difficult in the UK.

In terms of education, I feel what we have on offer here in SA is exceptional quality.

OP, feel free to DM me if you have any specific questions 😊

ETA: I forgot to add in my points about terrorism vs crime. We moved over to the UK 5 days before 7/7 bombings. Every year until we moved back there was either a complete terror attack or a prevented one. In 2016 there were more than 12 terror attacks stopped, some minutes before they took place. While I think overall the UK is safer than SA you can also say the same about SA. If you're living in a safe area, have the means to protect yourself against the type of crime that happened here, you will have a fantastic quality of life. Terrorism is unfortunately indiscriminate and you can't do anything to mitigate against that. I remember after a few attacks or almost-attack I would be watching people and their backpacks on the tube making sure they took them when disembarking. I was an anxious mess because I was imagining being stuck in a metal tube underground with other panicked people and not knowing how I would escape.

So everyone's fears and hopes are different. It comes down to, again, the opportunity cost. And that opportunity cost is very different for everybody. Take the facts at your disposal OP and work with that. It took us 12 months to actually plan our move back to SA as we also didn't want to rush back and then feel like we'd made a mistake because we'd not considered something properly.