Moving to the coast in later life is a pattern with decades behind it in Australia, Britain and the United States. Australians call it sea change, and in England’s smaller seaside towns 30% of residents are over 65, against 22% in comparable non-coastal towns. South Africa now shows the same movement, and the KwaZulu-Natal coast has become one of its strongest draws.
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The recent launch of Coral Cove, Auria Senior Living’s new community at Sheffield Beach on the North Coast, has brought the trend into focus.
Close to 281 000 people moved into KwaZulu-Natal from other provinces between 2021 and 2026, with the largest numbers arriving from Gauteng and the Eastern Cape. The exchange with Gauteng has shifted furthest. Arrivals from the province have climbed across three five-year cycles, from 90 100 to 113 213, while departures in the opposite direction have fallen from 208 358 to 160 638.
Alongside that movement, the country is ageing. South Africans aged 60 and over now number 6,79 million, or 10,7% of the population, and that group has been growing at 2,66% a year against 1,20% for the population as a whole. Expansion at more than twice the national rate leaves a large and rising number of people deciding where to spend their later years, at an age when they can still expect a long stretch of them.
The national record does not isolate the point where those two trends meet. Movement across provincial boundaries is dominated by adults between 20 and 39, and employment and economic opportunity accounts for 44,8% of all stated reasons for moving, with family reasons a further 30,8%. Health and retirement together make up 3,1%, and that category also covers people relocating because their health has failed, so later-life moves made by choice sit somewhere below it.
A diary worth looking at
Barry Kaganson, CEO of Auria Senior Living, hears the reasoning directly from residents. “People are arriving in their seventies in good health, with a long stretch of life still ahead of them. That has changed what the move is for. It has become a decision an older person makes while they still have the energy to enjoy what they are choosing, rather than an arrangement a family makes on their behalf after a fall or a diagnosis. That assumption is what we built Coral Cove around.”
The climate is the reason people raise with him most often. “What they describe is wanting to be outside and wanting that to be possible in July as well as December. Whether they walk, swim or sit in a garden matters less than the fact that they can do it without planning around the weather.”
Distance from family is the other consideration he hears. “The North Coast is within easy reach of Johannesburg, which counts for a great deal when the grandchildren are still inland, and the visits have to be simple in both directions. Nobody wants to choose between the life they want and seeing the people they want to see.”
Kaganson says the decision is widely misread. “People assume a coastal move is about slowing down. The residents I meet want to swim in the morning and still have a diary worth looking at. They are healthier at 75 than their parents were at 65, they have watched what happened to that generation, and they are not waiting to be told what to do next.”
For more information, visit auria.co.za
