Customs abuse against visiting yachts A posting on Noonsite has again attracted attention. This is incredible. One cannot believe the audacity of these people. See noonsite/Countries/SouthAfrica/south-africa-richards-bay-durban-foreign-yachts-charged-new-tax : - "Update 23rd August 2013 By David Frost of SV Taipan The events of last year reported at Richards Bay and Durban have been repeated again on the Western Cape. See last years post on this subject -bwsailing/cc/2012/10/24/foreign-yachts-charged-new-tax-in-south-africa/ We are aware of the impounding or detention of a number of yachts at port Owen and Suldana and have been told these actions have also been reported on the Eastern coast again. Our yacht was impounded at Suldahna along with several others. We have only been cleared into the country for two and a half months. We spent 3 days in Cape Town sorting this debacle out and were told it was not supposed to have happened. This does not help much. The officer responsible for issuing all the notices was absent from work for the whole time we were in Cape Town. We have been granted a 21 day extension of stay for the boat." "Comment received 23 October, 2012 I was interested to see the article regarding South African Officials targeting foreign yachts, I have recently had a similar experience. I am a UK citizen resident in South Africa and a keen sailor. Some years ago I re-registered my South African built boat in the UK. I did this for consular protection while sailing off Africa. It also helps to cut through some of the extensive red tape that has been created in recent years. I did undertake extensive research of the legal implications before re-registering. As far as I could see there was nothing precluding UK registration, the SA Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) actually makes provision for foreign registered boats in their regulations. This was not a problem for a number of years as I cleared in and out of ports easily. However, prior to clearing out earlier this year, I was warned that I had to re-register my boat in SA. I then spent three months between the Port Authority, Customs and SAMSA requesting sight of the relevant regulation. Needless to say, to date this hasn’t been provided, but I was threatened by officials resulting in a rapid re-registration of the boat in SA. Customs still threaten import duty and VAT based on the re-registration even though the boat has been based in South Africa since being built, has never been to the UK and VAT was paid originally in South Africa. My experience is that officials do not understand the regulations that they are supposed to enforce. They regularly twist the meaning of straight forward clauses to include anything that they consider to be fair game and they see yachties as a soft target. My advice is don’t argue, being right won’t help. If you can, get through South Africa quickly."
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:24:24 +0000
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