Divan van Zyl

Divan van Zyl came to the Netherlands in January 2025. Read more about the experiences of Divan.

Divan, why did you emigrate to the Netherlands?
For me and my fiancee, we had the long term goal of moving to Europe together. The Netherlands was a natural choice because of the Dutch language being less of a challenge than other parts of Europe, as well as the career opportunities here.

Can you tell us something how you do like the Netherlands?
Safety is the first thing that comes to mind. There is a sense of freedom that you get, when you are able to explore your city, without having to worry about personal safety. This empowers you to experience a lot of culture and history, not only in NL but neighbouring countries.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the weather here. Contrary to stereotypes that many people in SA believe about the Dutch weather, the winter was actually very mild and comfortable! I prefer it to Cape Town’s rainy winters.

Public transport here is great. I’m really enjoying not owning a car, and the daily cycling and walking has improved my health and fitness. As opposed to SA, where I drove everywhere I needed to go.

Please tell us something about the projects you are currently working on.
I’m helping our client develop their own extension for a CAD program. What I like about it, is that it’s a bit of a different challenge to program in 2D/3D space. I get to solve different problems than in my past jobs where I wrote banking and logistics software.

Did the process of emigration go smoothly?
There will always be some short term sacrifices and discomfort when moving your life to another part of the world. But the emigration process itself went relatively smoothly. This was primarily due to summit developers providing me with all the information I needed at every step of the process.

Can you explain to the South Africans who are considering to go overseas how you did experience the support from us?
Moving your life overseas is a big endeavour, and can be stressful. Therefore I highly recommend that you do it with summit developers. They are experienced in the process of emigration from South Africa, and therefore help you on your journey. This process would have been a lot harder and more stressful, if I had accepted a job offer directly, instead of working through summit developers.