By convert do you mean validate?
If so then once you do so your SA validation will only be valid for the periods and privileges on your Australian licence.
You will need to write Ar Law and Procedures, pass mark 80% I think.
Then you'll need to do a flight test COM/iR with a Designated Flight Examiner to enable you to exercise those privileges.
The CAA website does have all the information on board but it is difficult to extract. If you're in SA, go and see them, if not in SA then contact the DFE's at Flight Training Centre/FAGC. Flight Training Acadamy/FAGG or Avex Air/FALA. The Avex notes, refined from years ago with Mr Steenberg and now supervised by a very bright chap who is also a DFE, are excellent.
If you want a South African licence in itself then unless you have a lot of experience you will almost certainly have to go the full route through medical, the exams, 75% pass, and training and flight tests. You may even have to get a student pilot licence to enable you to fly solo.
For that sort of inquiry, a clued up DFE might be able to help you but your probably best bet is to write to someone in flight operations at CAA here. You need a letter from the SA CAA setting out exactly what you must do, how many attempts you may have and wha, if any, exemptions they are prepared to make.
I think you said somewhere that you were a South African. Make sure you emphasize that point and I hope you have either an SA passport or a book of life -identity document. You need the latter before you can acquire the former anyway.
I hope the above information is more or less correct. I am a little rusty on these matters having had no need of the material for a while. I would suggest a few telephone calls to the three schools I listed whose websites are easily found on Google.
As for the doomsayers, well, I must agree that flying jobs are hard to come by here at the moment. SAA used to suck in all the stuff they wanted form the top and that left a vacuum which was gradually filled from the bottom. No one knows quite what goes on with SAA recruitment at the moment but the use of the word top in that context seems contentious.
South Africa doesn't like non citizens without work permits but you've got that covered?
Botswana has been banging on for a long time about requiring different experience levels for job entry work permits. It is an easier recruiting ground than SA but then many corpses litter the campsites at Maun unfulfilled other than in the matter of beer consumption and sometimes quite dangerous sex.
Namibia is another story which sounds similar to Botswana and in both cases a little outback experience might help. German language capability might also score you point or two in the old German West Africa.
I hope this is of some help. If you are thinking along the lines of getting some sort of SA licence to fly in this sub continent because you can't find work in Australia then I fear you may waste quite a lot of time and money.
If you already have 500hrs or even 1,000hrs, then you'll have a much better chance with the new minimum requirements that are starting to appear, both from insurance companies and from governments wishing to protect their own pilots work forces.
Lilflyboys Maun guide is excellent but perhaps since he has left it's a little less informative that it was. Competitiion for the few jobs up there can be tough so it's not to everyone's interest to encourage other qualified people to get up to Maun. Yu could have a look at the Botswana CAA site and what passes for the same information source in Namibia.
I hope there's an odd nugget of accuracy in all of this. Cheerio!
Just re read an earlier post on this thread. I thought that validating a licence and obtaining a full licence were two different things. A validation allowed you to exercsie the priviliges of your foreign licence in the country of validation for a short time only. Someone makes the point that in order to acquire a South African licence you first have to validate your non SA licence. Is this the case? I wonder if a simple student licence would serve an equally useful purpose for solo flight if you were going for the full national licence? Perhaps further clarification is available?
Last edited by cavortingcheetah; 15th Apr 2012 at 04:40.