South Africa Travel Tips
How to get there, how to get around, where to find stuff and how to ask for it. These are tips from the local insider to make your stay here a breeze
Shootout at Sodwana Bay
Sodwana Shootout
You will be forgiven for thinking that the Shootout at Sodwana Bay is yet another cowboy style cash-in-transit heist gone wrong in this country with its voracious appetite for exotic crime. In fact it is nothing of the sort. The Shootout is an annual gathering of national and international SCUBA diver photographers and videographers at one of Southern Africa’s finest coral reef sites, Sodwana Bay in the Maputaland region. This beautiful, sweeping bay on the northern borders of the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Area, itself a World Heritage Site, is home to one of the most exquisite stretches of coastal waters north of the country’s shipping capital of Durban.
Date: June 3rd, 2008 |
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Violence, Crime and the 2010 World Cup
There was something a little ironic this week about the erstwhile doyen of the African National Congress, Winnie Maikizela Mandela, trumpeting her dismay at the wave of xenophobic violence that has, and continues to sweep through South Africa. Considering that her immortal contribution to the catalogue of English language quotes was …with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country… it would seem that Winnie Mandela has little grounds to express any particular shock or outrage. She was, after all, one of the principal architects of that ghastly South African practice of necklaceing.
Prejudice & Awareness
Hypocrisy aside, the horrifying imagery that has been blazed across broadsheets and computer screens worldwide seems finally to have shocked a complacent South African administration into acknowledging that a disease is rampant within its society. If the 2010 World Cup is to be saved, time is perilously short, but it is not too late.
The 2010 World Cup Soccer tournament is a Holy Grail to Africans starved of respectability in a world that is weary of the age old blight of Africa. When the award was made by FIFA in 2004 there was an air of grudging symbolism that failed impress a good many observers. Included among them was soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer, who shook his head, and expressed his doubts in terms of logistical capacity, but probably had reasons far more visceral and difficult to define to explain his pessimism.
Date: May 30th, 2008 |
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Violence In South Africa: How serious is it?
Joburg in Flames?
With the crazy news coming out of South Africa over the past week it was Germany that issued the first travel warning, advising its nationals to steer clear of Johannesburg, and no doubt there will be others to follow. Johannesburg is a violent and dangerous place, it always has been, and chances are it always will be. It is the City of Gold with an appropriate gold rush mentality, and the current rash of street violence is nothing new.
However it always helps to keep these things in perspective. While not wanting to take too much of a let them eat cake approach to the social divide in South Africa, the xenophobic attacks taking place at various locations around the country are confined to the townships and shanty towns where the most violent and unpredictable elements exist, alongside the regional refugees and economic migrants against whom most of these attacks are directed. These are areas that no tourist would ever knowingly wander into and expect to get out alive, just as an outsider would avoid the Gaza Strip, or any number of Rio favellas, or indeed many areas of New York, LA or London after dark.
Date: May 20th, 2008 |
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Pigs, Warthog, Monkeys and Elephant
Not You Again!
Some things change, and some things don’t. Robert Mugabe, after almost five weeks of political hiatus, remains in power, while galloping inflation – touted now at about 355 000% – necessitated the issue of another new banknote, the third issue in a year. This time it was a Z$500 million bill, up 400 million from the last. Currently the rate of exchange is Z$52 million to £1 sterling. A letter I recently received from a friend in Harare told me that a brief trip to the supermarket to purchase 2 onions, 4 bread rolls, 1 packet of coffee, 2 litres of milk and a cucumber came to a total of Z$1.25 billion, which would have been Z$1.25 trillion had the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe not recently removed several zeros from the local currency. You may ask me how does a man who presides over such unimaginable economic lunacy survive in power, and the truth is I haven’t got a clue.
Warthog’s Revenge
While on the subject of swine species, warthogs have been creating a bit of a stir in the industry recently, contributing their share to the regular, but admittedly infrequent incidences of bitings, maulings, stingings and occasional deaths. These often result from the too-close commerce encouraged by wilderness guides between soft skinned urban tourists and wild animals. In this case it was a Canadian tourist, Brunhilde Galke, 69, visiting Huntershill private game park in the Eastern Cape, who ran foul of a ‘tame’ warthog in the dining room of the lodge. It was probably neither her fault nor the warthog’s, but a waiter who should have known better than kick the animal after it upset a dustbin in the bar area. The warthog rushed the waiter, but then vented it’s spleen more effectively against Brunhilde as she left the dining room and was making her way across the yard to her accommodations.
Date: May 15th, 2008 |
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Vulture Restaurants: Dining with Vultures
An Empty Place At The Table
At one time the vulture was one of the most ubiquitous species of the African plains, the harbinger of death, the clean up man of the veld, but most visible these days, it seems, only when it is not there.
There is nothing that quite captures the morbid quintessence of survival on the African plains quite like the image of a congregation of vultures tearing to shreds the rotting carcase of a wildebeest. From this it is easy to imagine various vulture species surviving mankind long into the post-nuclear era, but in truth vultures are just another of the many species falling behind in the race to survive the adaptation of Africa, and the world, to the needs of mankind.
Vultures, of which there are nine species listed in the SASOL Birds of Southern Africa, are one of those peculiar indicators that scientists look at to establish the general health of an environment. If vultures are visible in numbers, then all is well on the ground, if not, then grounds for concern exist. In recent years vulture populations have been falling dramatically, and not only in Africa. Countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal and Cambodia are all currently documenting dangerous declines in their vulture populations.
Date: May 6th, 2008 |
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The Surfing Hippo of KwaZulu/Natal
A curious story of a surfing hippo has been doing the rounds in South Africa recently. First spotted in the KNZ coastal resort town of Ballito, situated about 40km north of Durban, the vagrant hippo has been steadily making its way south from the area of the St Lucia wetlands in Maputaland, where the species is very common. Reminiscent of the early 20th century odyssey of Huberta, this travelling hippo has generated enormous local sympathy and interest.
Huberta
Huberta was born in the St Lucia wetland system in 1927, and a year later was on the move, migrating south on an epic 1600km journey that would take her all the way to the Eastern Cape. She was initially thought to be male, and was named Hubert, which was later changed when it was discovered she was female. Her journey took her three years during which time she became something of a local and international celebrity. She successfully evaded many attempts at capture before eventually making her way as far south as East London. There, although having been declared en-route to be Royal Game, and thus protected by the Crown, she was shot and killed by hunters. Her body was then reverently shipped to a taxidermist in London, after which she was returned to South Africa where she can still be seen at the Amathole Museum in King William’s Town.
Date: June 2nd, 2008 |
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5 Reasons Why South Africa is Not Ready for World Cup 2010
The State of Disorganisation
There must have been from the onset a public relations hill to climb in the Fifa decision to award the 2010 soccer world cup tournament to an African country. Fair or not, Africa’s image abroad does not suggest the kind of economic muscle and logistical wherewithal necessary to stage an event of such international significance. This, however, is a prejudice, and does not take into account the fact that South Africa has a general transport and communications infrastructure that is by world standards impressive, and by African standards miraculous. However a recent report in the UK Guardian, suggesting that Fifa had put in place a £400 million slush fund against the high likelihood of a collapse of the 2010 World Cup, attracted just enough vitriolic denial from Fifa to suggest that it might be true.
British sports journalist Matt Scott, in an article in his Digger Column, reported that German insurance giant Munich Re was holding off on a decision to provide coverage for the event citing fears of inadequate progress, crime and insecurity, and an uncertain political climate. ‘The situation is quite difficult and fluid.’ Said a spokesman for Munich Re. ‘The problem is they need 10 stadiums and some of these are rugby grounds that are run down and in very bad condition.’
This, it would seem, is just the beginning, so how prepared is South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup?
Date: May 23rd, 2008 |
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South Africa Scoops Top Awards at World Travel Awards Ceremony
World Travel Awards Africa
Unsurprisingly South Africa shone at the recent World Travel Awards Ceremony held at the ICC in Durban on 12 May. The first World Travel Awards Africa Ceremony was opened on Monday evening by Zulu King Zwelithini Goodwill kBhekuzulu, and was attended by 400 VIPs and leading industry figures. South Africa scooped awards for Africa’s leading airline SAA, Africa’s leading family resort Western Cape Hotel & Spa, Africa’s leading destination Cape Town, and Africa’s leading travel agency Club Travel. Also SA Tourism was named as best destination marketing organisation in Africa, while Indaba Explorations was named Africa’s premier travel exhibition.
All this serves to confirm South Africa’s leading position on the continent as not only a destination in itself but as a force for the development of African tourism continent wide. ‘The awards are evidence that the creativity, application and hard work of the South African Tourism and Indaba teams have been justly recognised,’ said SA Tourism CEO Moeketsi Mosola.
Date: May 15th, 2008 |
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Malawi: The Warm Heart of Africa
Smoke on the Water
Malawi used to be famous for two things: some of the best bud on the planet, and the lake. These days it is famous for Madonna, which is better, because Madonna carries more weight than the bud and the lake combined, so now is without doubt the time to say a few words on Malawi for the sake of our curious readers.
Malawi is a tiny landlocked country situated more or less between 10º and 15º of south, and dominated by the lake that is the most southerly of the defining features of the Great Rift Valley. It is a demographically mixed society, with a small white population, a slightly larger Indian community, and a polyglot jumble of black people made up of a variety of indigenous language groups, alongside many others that have immigrated into the country during the course of the colonial and liberation periods.
Slavery
Malawi began life as the Central African Protectorate, a British dependency dominated somewhat by Scottish missionary and trade interests, and famous at that time for being the front line of the British assault against the incredibly persistent east coast slave trade. Readers will no doubt be aware that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished by convention in Britain in 1833, and had more or less been eradicated in the western hemisphere by mid century. However the Indian Ocean trade, serving India itself, the various potentates of Arabia, and the French Mascarene islands, persisted off the east coast of Africa until beyond the turn of the 20th century.
Once under British protection, however, notwithstanding current liberation philosophy, the Arab and Swahili perpetrators of what Dr. David Livingstone referred to as the ‘open sore of the world’ where banished, and some peace and sanity returned to a highly traumatised little corner of the continent.
Date: May 7th, 2008 |
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Swaziland
An African Oddity
Swaziland certainly is an oddity. It is a tiny landlocked country that is viable as an independent nation only in the loosest sense of the word. It is also one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world. Statistically notable for both its extreme rates of poverty and having one of the single largest concentrations of aids sufferers globally, Swaziland is ruled by a fickle, anachronistic, self serving, preening and pampered multiple polygamist who goes by the name of King Mswati III. Bordered to the west by fiercely republican South Africa, and to the east by thoroughly revolutionary Mozambique, it is hard sometimes to determined exactly where Swaziland fits in.
Controversy
In the interests of getting the ugly bits over first, the myths surrounding King Mswati’s personal indulgence read somewhat like the habits of a feted dauphin of an oil saturated Middle East principality. Inasmuch as Swaziland is indeed an absolute monarchy, Mswati has cultivated an almost medieval approach to governance, characterised by his prevailing attitude of I am very much alright, and be damned to the rest of you.
Date: May 1st, 2008 |
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