South Africa

(Photo selection thanks to Caroline from Munich)

We're walking down an empty street in a suburb of Gansbaii on our way to a pub to catch that night's rugby match between the South Africa Springboks and Australia Wallabies. We enter the pub and the vibe is electric. No wonder there wasn't a soul outside; everyone is here. The game is on the big screen, the Boks handily routing the Wallabies, free shots going around, excitement and emotion. People greet us in Afrikaans and then seeing our incomprehension, make an immediate and friendly pivot to English. We look around and realize that every single person in the establishment is white.

What strikes us about this moment, one week into our time in South Africa and our initial stop outside of Cape Town, is that it's the first time we find ourselves in a white-majority community within this Black-majority nation, and that it's rugby on the TV. Matt and I can't help but see this experience through the filter of having recently watched the movie Invictus. The 2009 Eastwood film examines Nelson Mandela's incredible feat of leadership, transitioning the nation out from under a minority-led totalitarian government, through the lens of sport -- rugby. Watch the film if you haven’t seen it, but in short, rugby was (and...spoiler alert...still is) a white-majority sport in South Africa, on the pitch and in the stands. Upon the ending of apartheid and the initiation of the first free and inclusive elections that affirmed Mandela of the African National Congress Party (ANC) as leader, there was a movement to rename the national rugby team. Wait, the film recounts Mandela counseling, let’s not, as the first Black-led government, take from the Afrikaners something so valuable to their sense of identity; let’s not deprive ourselves as a new nation of an opportunity to get behind something together, with national pride. Instead, let’s support our Springboks and see them victorious in our upcoming World Cup. He met with the team, had an official audience with its captain and attended the matches to show his dedication to the sport, and of course invested national resources in the Rugby World Cup of 1995. In the happy ending of the film, the Springboks prevailed, pride in the new South Africa increased, and national unity won the day of this turbulent period of transition.

The longer Matt and I are in South Africa, the more apparent it becomes that it has actually not experienced the happy ending suggested by Invictus back in 2009. In 2023, from what we can tell, society remains largely segregated, with bedroom townships of Black domestic servants abutting the white communities they continue to work in to this day (white communities that we tourists will almost exclusively end up staying in); wealth is concentrated in a small minority of the population even as the value of the Rand plummets; the entire nation experiences daily power outages known as load shedding and resulting in increasing disparity between those who can afford generators and those who can’t, those hospitals that can provide care and those that can’t; the ANC, once a party of such promise under Mandela, has lost the trust of much of the public through years of rampant corruption; the central business districts (CBDs) of Johannesburg and Bloemfontein are now no-go zones for most professionals, their infrastructure crumbling around the folks who do still work there; there is a pervasive sense of danger reinforced by the electric fences, high gates, and barking dogs surrounding properties of means, the power outages of street signals at busy intersections where signs warn “high theft and hijacking area!” and the repeated admonition against walking or driving after dark.

All that we observe of any new place is filtered through the lens of our particular experiences and backgrounds, but most profoundly in South Africa of the places we've been do we feel the complexity of our American heritage influencing our impressions of the country. What is this feeling? It's something like what Robert F. Kennedy said in an address at the University of Cape Town in 1966: “I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.” You can’t visit South Africa as an American without peering into a mirror of the legacy of slavery, land dispossession, segregation, and racial prejudice in your own nation, and I am certain this skews our perception of what we experience here.

We spend almost the entire month of July in South Africa. We start out in Cape Town, then rent a car and drive the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth. From there we head north through the center of the country to the Panorama Route, east to Kruger Park, and back west to fly out from Johannesburg. There's no way to see everything, but we give it a fair shot and certainly come away with a deeper understanding of the place than when we started.

Part I: Powerful landscape

Table Mountain rises right out of the urban center of Cape Town, its plateau top soaked in sun, a cloak of clouds gathering on one side. Do people hike that? I ask the cab driver taking us to our Airbnb in the downtown De Waterkant neighborhood. Of course! He says. Indeed we do it first thing the next morning.

We settle into De Waterkant and walk the canalways to the Victoria & Alfred waterfront. At first it’s bare streets except for some homeless encampments and a couple pedestrians, but quickly we’re in a busy skatepark between two canals where the rainbow nation is out in full force — families of all backgrounds engaged in skate stunts, a basketball game, or lounging in the pristine grass in the golden late afternoon sunlight, the impossible urban mountain backdrop behind them. A few more turns along Dock Street and we’re at the waterfront, teeming with museums, sculptures, restaurants, shops, and more and more people. You can walk, bike, run, or drive the whole coast around Sea Point and you’ll have stunning views of mountains on one side and ocean on the other. If you’re in Cape Town looking for the action, definitely go to the waterfront. But be careful! In two days there are two fatalities at Sea Point -- a paraglider who crashes into the sea and a beachcomber who is snatched by a sudden wave.

Go to the Cape Peninsula to see Boulders National Park where South African penguins nest. There's the Cape of Good Hope, so named because European sailors knew that rounding this corner meant they were on the home stretch to Asia -- if a remaining journey of more than 5000 nautical miles can be considered the home stretch. There's also the southernmost point of the African continent where you can see the line in the sea where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, which was a joke a local told us.

Head north into the interior of the country up to the Panorama Route, and you’ll come upon geologic features that testify to the ancient formation of the continent itself, such as God's Window, the Three Rondavels, Mac Mac Falls, and Blyde River Canyon. You can plunge into the canyon at a Graskop Gorge attraction called The Big Swing, or, you know, perhaps not tempt death and instead watch other, braver, people fall backwards off a platform into the abyss.

Part II: Layers of modern history

What I knew about 19th - 20th century South African history prior to this trip could be summarized in three words: apartheid, Mandela, Tutu. Comprehensive, I know. I had a lot to learn.

Fortunately, you can cover much recent historical ground at the following sites. I'm putting them here in the reverse chronological order of the events they bear witness to, because that's how it felt to learn about them, like uncovering one deeper layer to the South African story at a time.

• 1995 - 2002 Desmond Tutu Truth Exhibition, Cape Town: This museum lays out the biography of the Anglican Archbishop who presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC started hearings in 1996 to record public testimony of the victims and perpetrators of apartheid. It was tasked with making recommendations from its findings to the government for granting amnesty in some cases and reparation or rehabilitation in others. I spent a long time at this exhibition. In Georgia I’d read Revolutionary Russia 1891 - 1991: A History by Orlando Figes, trying to better contextualize the post-Soviet republic we’d just visited. In his reflection on the aftermath of the bloody Soviet era, Figes writes, “perhaps what Russia needed was a commission on truth and reconciliation, something on the lines of the one established in South Africa" (2014). Wow! Now here I was, the very next nation on our trip, South Africa, and I had an opportunity to process just what a TRC like this one could achieve. So what was the verdict? In a panel titled "Unfinished Business" the Tutu exhibition summarizes the TRC's limitations: "the TRC identified 22,000 victims to receive reparations. But its proposals for reparation payments were never fully implemented. And although amnesty hearings revealed many new details of atrocities, the promise that those who failed to get amnesty would be prosecuted has proved empty." Specifically, "The TRC referred to the National Prosecuting Authority about 300 cases in which amnesty was refused, or not applied for. It emerged in 2019 that the government had discouraged prosecutions. By 2021 only one prosecution had been completed. The National Director of Public Prosecutions told Parliament in 2019 that 37 cases were being actively investigated." Penultimately, a judgment of failure: "The TRC worked to promote but did not achieve reconciliation." The South African TRC was not the first of this type of societal reckoning after prolonged and catastrophic trauma and it wasn’t the last. Reconciliation is a tall order for human beings -- some would say it's only possible through divine intervention, after all -- and it's pretty clear the process of healing from apartheid continues into the present day.

• 1948 - 1994 Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg: Upon admission, you are ticketed with an apartheid-era label based on race and must enter through the appropriate door under the laws of that time. This museum is comprehensive in its coverage of the period leading up to, during, and following apartheid using extensive primary source material.

• 1976 Hector Pietersen Museum, Soweto: It's the picture that many people say brought the situation of apartheid in South Africa to the world's attention -- the dying 12-year-old being carried by a schoolmate after he was shot by police. Pietersen and thousands of other students in Soweto had organized a protest against the exclusive use of Afrikaans, a language they did not speak, in schools. They were met with police response, resulting in at least 176 fatalities.

• 1966 District Six Museum, Cape Town: Under the Group Areas Act, the apartheid government imposed policies of racial segregation throughout the country. District Six in Cape Town had been a thriving, multi-racial community. Invoking the GAA, the government declared it a white-only area, resulting in the forced relocation of some 60,000 people to townships outside of the city. This museum celebrates, through wall-to-wall artifacts, the rich cultural heritage of the community.

• 1964 - 1990 Robben Island, Cape Town: You can tour the prison where many political and militant opponents of apartheid, famously among them Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan-Africanist Congress, were held. The most interesting part of our tour was during the Q&A with a guide who had actually served a seven-year sentence there leading up to 1991. During apartheid, Robben Island only held men designated Black, Indian or “Coloured” (a category of mixed race people in South Africa). These were political prisoners who, as in his case he said, had participated in banned political parties such as the PAC or ANC, or who had left South Africa to train with outposts of these groups in neighboring countries and then returned illegally. A group of three young women pressed him on a question I’ll paraphrase as “Given your experience, what would you recommend as a course of action or political party for today’s young people in South Africa to get behind?” They named a current politician, Julius Malema, who from what they said seems to have advocated for substantially more aggressive measures to achieve reparations and more equitable land distribution to benefit Black South Africans. The guide seemed to evade this question a bit, which only made Matt and me more interested in teasing out opinions on Malema later in the trip.

• 1899 - 1902 War Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein: The museum details Boer (Afrikaner farmer) history, centering on the 1899 - 1902 Anglo-Boer War. To summarize: Europeans arrived in what is now South Africa’s Western Cape in 1488. By the 1600s the Dutch East India Company had established outposts there. French Huguenots seeking religious tolerance migrated along with the Dutch, traders imported slave labor from Asia, and a whole new culture, Afrikaner, and language, Afrikaans, developed over time as these groups intermixed. Over the decades, the Boers pushed further inland, farming the land, exploring, and of course clashing with the local Xhosa and Zulu populations. By 1899, the British had been infringing on these territories as well and had ownership over the Western Cape and Natal colonies, while the Boers retained the Transvaal and the Free State. Finally the Boers launched a retaliatory campaign against the British. As the Boers employed guerrilla war tactics, the British resorted to a scorched earth policy of burning the Boer farms. In what they claimed was a humanitarian act, the British pulled the women, children, and servants from these homesteads into designated territories they called concentration camps. Conditions were terrible. The estimate is that 26,000 Boer women and children and 21,000 Black people died in these camps before the Boer generals surrendered. This museum seems to draw a direct line from the Anglo-Boer War to apartheid. In the aftermath of the war, British colonial government policy focused on reconciling Afrikaners and English-speaking people to the exclusion of Black South Africans, plenty of whom had fought on both sides of the conflict, from all political and economic processes. The South African Native National Congress, now the ANC, formed in response in 1912 to advocate for the rights of Black South Africans. In 1914, the National Party formed to advocate for the interests of the Afrikaner ethnic group. Upon winning the election of 1948 amidst increasing ethnic tensions, D. F. Malan, head of the National Party, initiated a formal apartheid regime.

• 1838 Voortrekker Monument to the Battle of Blood River, Pretoria: Commemorates the Battle of Blood River, December 16, 1838, when the Boers in their covered wagons defeated the Zulus and came to command the frontier. In case it’s not clear from the monument alone that this victory was a point of pride for the Afrikaners, the museum has plenty of paraphernalia to confirm that it was.

Part III: Politics in the unlikeliest places

At Cango Caves we got more insight into the nation’s cultural divides and into Julius Malema. The “heritage tour” of five main caverns took us to the largest subterranean space I’d ever been in. Still, to proceed more comfortably through the rest of the caves, our guides divided our group in two. Alone with our half after the first group proceeded into the caves, our Xhosa guide ran through the safety precautions. There would be snakes, roaches, and bats, “and that’s why we sent the Afrikaans-speaking group in first!” This was met by our remaining English-language group's thunderous applause and outright cackles. Matt and I realized two things right then: 1) we were probably the only foreigners on this tour and 2) we had an opportunity to get a few clues to the current English-speaking vs. Afrikaans-speaking dynamic in South Africa. Succinctly, it’s strained. See above about the concentration camps and the imposition of Afrikaans-only instruction in schools during apartheid.

On to the Malema anecdote: upon one rocky outcrop our guide shone a red flashlight and said, “some visitors see Santa Claus here, but others have told me they see a scarier face – that of Julius Malema!” “Oh, Juju…” a few people in the group said, shaking their heads. Well, this was an opening if ever there was one. Matt and I sidled up to the guide, who was indeed surprised to learn we were Americans, but who obligingly answered our questions about Malema. He explained that Malema is a Parliament member who leads the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). He's known for ruffling feathers by, among other quotable zingers over the years, continuing to lead chants of the apartheid-era protest song "kill the Boer." That said, we met at least one South African -- thoughtful, hardworking, and confident -- who believes the EFF offers the best vision for the country and has inspired hope in younger voters.

What’s our South African political party count at this point? PAC, ANC, EFF, National Party (defunct), right? Our next stop on the Garden Route brought us, perhaps surprisingly, into contact with a supporter of the Democratic Alliance (DA), a centrist party that is the main opposition to the governing ANC. The DA supporter we met was a Xhosa woman, Beaty, who was born and raised in Knysna township, whose parents had been born and raised there, and whose grandparents had been forcibly moved there under the Group Area Acts during apartheid. A former ANC chairperson for Knysna, she’s since forsworn the party. First, she feels the ANC has not improved life in the townships, clearly, nevermind the rolling power outages and corruption issues, which affect everyone. She said candidly that too many folks equate the ANC with freedom from apartheid and refuse to vote against it, willfully ignoring the problems in society. Managing the economy and the infrastructure is still a charge upon the national leadership and after 30 years the ANC seems to have lost its mandate. [As a side note, the last president, Jacob Zuma, has been repeatedly indicted for corruption and nepotism and sentenced for refusing to testify at a panel investigating “financial sleaze and cronyism under his presidency” (BBC News). The current government just granted him a remission from serving prison time due to overcrowding in the system. Our Cango Caves tour guide said, “it’s been a heyday for our local son Trevor Noah to be able to comment on Zuma and Trump during the same period.”] Meanwhile, Beaty wants better infrastructure so that the tourism industry can flourish; it’s a source of income, after all. If there’s no electricity and the roads are riven with potholes, there won’t be tourists. For actively working against the ANC, Beaty said she’s called “the white man’s dog” by her detractors. Nevertheless, she continues to advocate for improvement in her community and country.

Beaty trained as an official South African tour guide so that she could earn income to support programming for children at MADabout Art (“Make A Difference about Art”). This was a staple in Knysna that Beaty had benefited from in her teenage years, and she wanted to continue the legacy. The “sword” she says she wields is “education, education, education.” She’s hyper-focused on getting the facts, such as advocating that local government get an accurate count of the people residing in Knysna. A few times she said that when she works with the children, her goal is to get them “confused and questioning” — she means by this to get them to be critical thinkers. I couldn’t agree more with that objective.

Part IV: Cuisine

In Cape Town's CBD you can do a pan-African food tour, highlighting some of the many immigrant groups that call Cape Town home today: Somali, Ethiopian, and Senegalese. The guide we were lucky to have, Khofi theking, is a Capetonian renaissance man — musician, film producer, amateur cricket player and food historian. At downtown's oldest square, framed on one side by the City Hall building where a sculpture of Nelson Mandela commemorates his first speech after his release from prison, and on the other side by the Castle of Good Hope, built by people enslaved by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century, Khofi gave us our first taste of South African cuisine. Bonatu African served up pap, a cornmeal mash; chakalaka, a sort of saucy succotash of beans and other vegetables; beets, carrots, potatoes, and cooked cabbage arrayed in a pinwheel of color; pork with beef gravy and chicken with mashed beans. Khofi capped off his tour by taking us to Heaven Coffee in the Methodist Church beloved by the community for helping displaced people and buskers alike. In a side room he gave us a private concert of original songs on guitar, lyrics a mix of Xhosa, Zulu, and English.

Dessert: try the malva pudding wherever you can get it.

Three other culinary adventures to seek out in Cape Town: a night at Marco’s African Place for more South African fare such as grilled ostrich, kudu, oxtail soup, and more music; a lunch or even cooking class, if you time it right, at Faeeza’s Kitchen in the Bo Kaap community, featuring Cape Malay cuisine; a day-trip out to Franschhoek wine region to sample the local pinotage varietal while riding around on a tipsy train.

Part V: Safari luck

We stopped at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden on our way out of Cape Town and saw this cool sculpture. I photographed it a bunch of times trying to capture the perfect angle with the mountain behind it. Little did we know this presaged a sight we'd be lucky enough to see -- twice! -- on safari in Kruger Park.

A word about safaris for the uninitiated. I'd correctly pictured riding around in a Jeep; I’d been warned by a friend that it would be bumpy. Yet no amount of podcast talk seemed to illustrate just what exactly happens out there in the parks apart from “as long as you don’t break the silhouette of the vehicle, the animals don’t recognize you as prey.” It turns out that not only do the big predators not recognize you as prey, but for some reason most of the animals in these parks, from dung beetle to lion, don’t seem to recognize the vehicles driving around as anything worthy of their deep attention, at all. Kudu, which bolt at the rustle of a distant jackal, sort of just cock their ears towards you when you drive by but otherwise simply go about their business. Entire elephant families pass mere feet in front of your vehicle with only a hint of side-eye. A truly amazing sight was a group of giraffes taking a sunset stroll far up the dirt road ahead of us, their pendulous gait completely alien. And now to the leopards -- both times we saw the same scene: the big cat took down an impala right in the middle of the road, almost under the wheels of our vehicle as if we weren't there at all. Of course it was alert and watchful as it strategically bit its victim by the neck and dragged it bodily to the nearest tree, where it immediately fed a little to make the prize light enough to carry to a high bough. But it was alert to other threats like a pack of hyenas, not to us.

We had three different guided safari experiences, and I recommend all three.

The most affordable way to do a guided game drive is to sign up with rangers for a large group drive with them. Pro tip: get there early and take the seat directly behind the drivers. You'll hear what they're saying the whole time and maybe even get to help them out by sharing your binoculars with them. If you do a night drive you can be an extra special helper and aim a large spotlight at every passing shape for the duration of the drive. Wear gloves.

A middle-priced experience is to do a small group drive into Kruger organized by a budget lodge outside the park, such as Crocodile Bridge Safari Lodge. You stay in sturdy tents and eat your meals at communal tables. Everyone is treated to the incredible view, right across the river, of a corner of Kruger Park. We saw a hippo family, an elephant, a wildebeest, a herd of impala, and some warthogs within minutes of arriving. We took a game drive into the park with a guide named Dylan, his trainee Christo, and yet another friendly German family, mom, dad, and twin boys. Early in the day the Jeep stalled. "Not to worry," Dylan said, "it just started acting up, and I can fix it." He jumped out and used pliers under the hood; the engine roared to life. Hours later, we came upon a bunch of cars lined up watching a few lions lounging in high grass. I heard a low click and saw a look pass between Christo and Dylan. The look said, “not now, not here.” The car had stalled again. On the other side of the road was a herd of Cape buffalo. Two of the Big Five – incidentally, they are called the Big Five because the lion, buffalo, rhino, elephant, and leopard are the animals that killed most hunters back in the day – flanking the road our vehicle was now stuck on. Dylan motioned to the driver next to us to roll down his window and then he whispered, “hey, can you move forward a foot or so? My car died and I need you to shield me.” The driver, a private tourist in a minivan responded as I probably would have, “you’re joking, right?” “Unfortunately not,” whispered Dylan. So that’s how our game driver came to be breaking the silhouette of the vehicle, standing at the hood of his car fiddling with pliers, when I, the appointed lookout, saw through the binoculars the lion rise up on one front leg...It all ended up okay. Dylan waited the lion out back inside the car; when it was safe (enough) again, he finished the repair and on we went.

For a high-end yet still reasonably priced adventure, look no further than Camp Figtree at Addo Elephant Park near Port Elizabeth. Camp Figtree's 2-night package was the most luxurious getaway Matt and I have ever had; it left us wondering what else could you possibly get on the super luxury safaris that are easily double and triple the price of this one. We're talking a private cabin perched on a cliff-side, hot water bottles placed with care between our sheets at night, gourmet meals, and an included game drive, all provided by an eco-friendly, solar-powered establishment that prides itself on the littlest details to make your stay more comfortable and private. (I promise I receive no compensation for this description.) Our safari guide Norma was an expert in Addo’s wildlife who grew up visiting the park as a kid and then was recruited for a program designed to give more Xhosa women access to safari certification. It was the winter low-season but a bright sunny day, and Norma was so thrilled to get out into the park that she organized with us to start early and end late. Plus, we were the only passengers, so we got a personal tour. Norma's enthusiasm for the wonders of the park and precision of approach to the animals (up close to elephants without bothering them; deftly dodging dung beetles on the road) were absolute superpowers.

Part VI: Closing reflections

• We missed a lot. We didn't spend any time in Durban, and we didn't cover any of the historical sites dedicated to the heritage of the Zulu or Xhosa people, to the Bantu migration, to the Cradle of Civilization, or to any of South Africa's history prior to the 19th century. These are big misses and I would say a visit to South Africa is incomplete without them.

• We were limited by visiting in the winter. Yes, we avoided some crowds and the weather was crisp, clear, and mostly sunny, but winter meant that the daylight only lasted from 8am to 6pm, and daylight matters in this country.

• We made one very poor choice of tour guide, and we honestly should have known better. We toured the Apartheid Museum and the Hector Pietersen Memorial with an Afrikaner who had been a South African Defense Force (SADF) soldier during apartheid. Even in the capacity of official guide, over the course of the day he let loose such opinions as “Nelson Mandela was a terrorist” and “apartheid was a good system for building up the country.” On the one hand, it was informative to learn that these views and people who hold them still very much exist in South Africa and it was interesting to get to question and have him unpack these opinions a bit. On the other hand, it was impossible to get past the dissonance of “apartheid was good for the country” while looking at artifacts showing the exact opposite. Over the course of that day it also became increasingly hard to stomach the fact that we’d given this guy our tourist dollars, when they could have gone to someone else.

South Africa, thank you for the adventures and for the lessons. Thank you for preserving and sharing your stunning geography and wildlife, your distinct and proud cultures. Thank you for the commitment you’ve made to documenting and telling your history. We're rooting for you.