My brother in law in South Africa - should he get a UK pension?

I spent 4 years in Canada in the 1970s and paid NI (or equivalent) there as well as in the UK before and after. when I hit 60 here I received a reduced UK pension as I only had 35 years (not the required 40 (?) as it then was ) BUT when I reached 65 I was able to apply to have the years I spent in Canada counted as 'NI years' and from then received an extra £7 a week - whooptedo! - I would assume other countries may have this 'reciprocal arrangement' but not sure about SA
have to agree about the apartheid question when I emigrated to Canada in the early 70s it was possible to be a £10 pom or emigrate to South Africa (in fact they were easier options) but I could not countenance living in what I saw as an 'evil' system in SA

My OH's grand-father was British, his grand-mother was Indonesian (slave stock) on his father's side. On his mother's side the mix was Norwegian/Dutch + African (farm owners regularly using their awful 'droit de cuissage' [eg allowed to rape slaves as and when they wanted). When apartheid came in 1946 when my OH was born - all SA residents were arbitrarily placed in 3 racial groups, acccording to looks and colour - so the family was split, not allowed to live together any longer.

granjura re your final sentence, the mind boggles.

I know KittyL - it is not easy and I didn't mean to sound unkind. Goalposts do change sadly - and in our case linked to the exchange rate. When we decided to move back to my home country (having spent all my working life in the UK) the rate was £2.50 to the £ - November 2011 it was down to 1.18!! Now back to about 1.40- so our income has almost halved. If the worst comes to the worst, we will have to sell up here and go back to UK- where of course we would be entitled to our State and professional pensions.

I do hope your brother finds a way (my OH's family had to flee the apartheid regime as the family was split into 3 racial groups - which was absolutely a ghastly tragedy).

Sorry kittylester I rambled a bit there in my previous post. I meant to say that my husband came back to the UK as a young man and worked here too before returning to SA. So he will get a statutory pension based on that, but again it is proportional. There is a very complicated "buy back" system to boost statutory pensions which I found almost impenetrable to understand. Like so much bureaucracy, instead of fixing a problem, another layer is added so it has to do with "if you were born before ... and you are not yet 60 on ..." etc etc. Anyway, apparently he is not eligible to pay in to 'catch up' as it were. But your brother may be, of course. As an aside, my husband had his own business in SA too, couldn't find work when we got here, went back "on the tools" as an electrician, and 12 years later he now earns a very good living as a highly sought after lighting consultant. He earns more now than he ever did! Life is endlessly fascinating.

It's easy to be smug when everything works out just dandy, but sometimes things happen and best laid plans go awry. In our case, after living in SA for all our lives (me 3rd generation South African and husband emigrant from the age of 10, born in Scotland).

We came to live in the UK in our early 50s because DH wanted to reconnect with his roots, and he - like so many white South African males of his age group, had no job prospects after being replaced in his position - as part of redressing the wrongs of the past. We "gave away" our house in SA because a huge informal settlement sprang up across the road where we had happily lived for 18 years, and the crime rate shot up, fuelled to by the opportunistic arrival of 'amaKwereKwere' - foreigners from other African countries as the borders were now open. What I mean is that we sold it for a lot less than it was worth, because home owners in our street were abandoning their homes.

The year we arrived here our savings were depleted, because for every sixteen rands we had, we got one pound in exchange. So we started over. I have worked my socks off in this country since then, contributed to my community, taxes, rebuilt a career. I am not eligible for a full UK statutory pension - I think I will get about £20 a week, because I was 3 months short of contributing for 10 years. I'm not complaining, we're happy, we live on a council estate (bought what we could afford) and we've got lovely neighbours. Ourselves, our Korean and Eastern European neigbours, as well as English neighbours on the other side who have lived on this estate since they were young, have all upgraded our houses and have wonderful shared communal gardens. Life is about making the best of things sometimes.

granjura he did make provision for his old age but then someone moved the goalposts, as I said in my op. He also provided employment and paid taxes in SA.

I also asked if anyone knew what he would be entitled to should he return to the UK.

Grannyknot, there are European reciprocal agreements in Europe and also with Switzerland- but not with SA, hence the problem. We have paid all our working life into the UK system and therefore are entitled to our UK pension here in Switzerland where we moved on retirement (back to my roots).

I do wish your brother the very best, but really, why should he be entitled to a UK pension if he moved abroad and made a good living there for almost 40 years without making provision for his old age? (sorry )

Bluebell it was, perhaps, unnecessary for you to pass any comment at all in that case.

Everyone else, thank you for taking the time to reply.

My sister in NZ gets a UK pension, frozen as it was almost ten years ago, but her NZ pension is reduced by the same amount, so annual increases would give her no advantage.

And in Canada! I think it is any commonwealth country.

My mother, who lives in Australia, gets her pension but it is frozen at the amount she was receiving when she emigrated.

kittylester my MIL has lived in SA for most of her adult life and her daughters are involved in the campaign (on her behalf because she now has Alzheimers) that is lobbying for UK expats in SA re 'frozen pensions' - people in certain countries do not get whatever they are due in full (quite complicated and I have never really understood it). All I know is that my SILs are 'up in arms' because my MIL does not get what she would get if e.g. she lived in Spain, purely because she lives in South Africa. But then I find myself thinking - but she chose to live there ... pensionjustice.org/case-studies/mrs-simpson/ bluebell you can't lump all people that emigrated to apartheid South Africa together without knowing individual circumstances. Perhaps kittylester's BIL was an anti-apartheid activist. I know that my late FIL emigrated there in the 1960s because he had 6 children to support and there was no work for him here in the UK. In other words he did what he had to do at the time, possibly he was ignorant, but I wouldn't judge him for it.

My views about people who emigrated to apartheid South Africa are unprintable

You have to have contributed for a minimum of 10 years to qualify for a UK State Pension. You will then get a 25% of the basic pension and it increases pro-rata with each extra year of contributions.

I think they would be entitled to some pension based on the amount of contributions they made - but as they left when they were 25 I don't think it would be very much. I would suggest he contact DWP (if you look on the internet they have a department which deals with people living abroad).