PhD for as little as $1290,66 p/a at a top 150 school.

[EliEverIsAHero]

To be completely honest, if you were just able to keep a remote job (part-time) in the USA while doing your postgrad studies at UCT. 

Most American companies would not go for this. There are legal issues with overseas employees that they would have to deal with and most don't want to deal with the hassle.

What are you basing this on? I have several colleagues living in South America and Europe while having remote jobs in the US. My parents work with some of the largest companies in the world (e.g. Google, Genentech, Deloitte, Facebook), and per their experience, 'most companies' perspective is off. 

OP, thanks for all the information. My father has talked about moving to SA over the years for his Ph.D.; however, my mother talked him out of that option. Cape Town remains a holiday destination.

Yeah, to be honest even I have relatives that currently have remote jobs from the USA, that currently live in South Africa. So I wouldn't say it's impossible. Even if you are able to do just freelance work or something like that. If you can just source $1000 p/m you'll be more than fine in this country (assuming you have no dependents.)

Cape Town is great, I don't live there anymore but did for quite a while. Cape Town doesn't even feel part of South Africa it's so different, I honestly love that place so much. I think it's currently ranked the 11th best city to live in, in the world. Frequently keeping a spot within the top10/15 every year. (Beating out cities such as London, Manchester, NYC.)
https://www.goodthingsguy.com/environmen...out%20tops!

Definitely a worthy place to do a year abroad.

As someone else mentioned, remote work depends heavily on the context and sector in which you work. That said, the remote work well is drying up.

But while I "teleworked" in a U.S. government administrative role (I was still required to be in the office every now and then) due to COVID measures, I was literally not allowed to bring my job abroad. I would have most likely been thrown out on the street with a black mark on my professional record, or simply gotten a stern talking to from the same internal team that I needed to talk to after dealing with a member of the public who made a threat of violence. Or that someone would have needed to have turned themselves into if they'd looked up their own social security information in an internal database. Attempting to work from abroad would be treated the same way. Not to mention that bringing anything that identifies you as a U.S. government employee abroad, even to a friendly-ish country or for a non-security-oriented role like the one I had, is simply not a good idea. 

I did however work as a remote ESL teacher at one point, which is a job you can theoretically bring abroad.... depending on the employer. I had a job as an ESL teacher that very specifically required you to stay in the U.S. and/or Canada and would fire you on the spot for using a VPN. But that industry is rapidly disappearing, so perhaps that is a moot point.