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Travel to South Africa: an overview
South Africa has more tourist attractions than it cares to count. While this is undoubtedly a good thing for travel agents in South Africa who want to organise extensive packages, it can be difficult for holiday makers to decide what to include in their tours. Further complicating the issue is the fact that South Africa is quite large and its attractions are spread over great distances, which means that unless you have a long holiday planned, you’ll have to choose which activities you want to include in your travel itinerary and leave the rest f...
Travel to South Africa: an overview
South Africa has more tourist attractions than it cares to count. While this is undoubtedly a good thing for travel agents in South Africa who want to organise extensive packages, it can be difficult for holiday makers to decide what to include in their tours. Further complicating the issue is the fact that South Africa is quite large and its attractions are spread over great distances, which means that unless you have a long holiday planned, you’ll have to choose which activities you want to include in your travel itinerary and leave the rest for another time.
South Africa is comprised of nine provinces and each province has its own unique things to do. The primary draw cards for tourists, however, are the Western and Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Mpumalanga.
South African travel destinations not to be missed
Visitors flock to the Western Cape primarily to see Cape Town and Table Mountain. Table Mountain is arguably the most famous attraction in South Africa. Its iconic flat top, occasionally covered by a table cloth of clouds, is legendary. It’s possible to hike up the mountain, which allows you to see some of its wildlife, or take the easy way to the top and hop in a cable car.
The various wine routes are also popular attractions, with both Cape Town and nearby Stellenbosch providing some of the best wines in the world, let alone South Africa.
Follow the N2 from Stellenbosh up the coast and you’ll hit the Garden Route. As you travel along the Garden Route, which includes the beautiful cities of Knysna and George, you’ll see some of the best scenery that South Africa has to offer.
Keep on going and you’ll reach KwaZulu-Natal, with its warm ocean water and tropical climate. Durban is the most obvious destination but don’t forget about Balito Bay and Unshlanaga Rocks. Turn inland and travel through the Natal Midlands, the only cultural route in South Africa. It’s full of artistic communities, galleries and crafts shops.
Go far enough and you’ll reach the Drakensberg, the most famous mountain range in the country. There is any number of things to do, including horse riding, mountain climbing, fishing, bird watching and plain old lazing under the South African sun.
Turn your car towards Mpumalanga and you’ll reach Nelspruit, or Mbombela. There you’ll see the Sudwala Caves – lesser known cousin to the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn – and, finally, the Kruger Park. The Kruger Park is the most popular game reserve in South Africa and offers visitors a number of opportunities to get up close and personal with the country’s wild animals, including guided safaris and walking tours.
Accommodation in South Africa
South Africa has a very strong tourism industry, which means that no matter where you go you’ll be able to find holiday accommodation options to suit your needs and your budget. The Kruger Park, for instance, contains a number of luxury resorts and lodges and even 5-star tented camping facilities so that you can enjoy your safaris in extreme comfort, South Africa style.
Cape Town, of course, has a number of hotels, hostels, bed and breakfasts, guest houses and self-catering apartments where you can take part in the most popular dining pastime in South Africa: the braai.
The smaller towns you’ll encounter on your long distance travels in South Africa also provide varied accommodation options, even the luxury kind, of sorts. You’ll be made to feel right at home in the guest houses and B&Bs that dot the country and get to experience proper South African home cooking.
Travel in South Africa
The easiest way to travel in South Africa is by car, but rail is also fairly popular, although not as popular as air travel. Flying cuts down on your travel time significantly, so you can squeeze in more sights.
In terms of public transport, South Africa is a little lacking, but new initiatives in Gauteng and Cape Town make train and bus travel much easier and more convenient.
Safety in South Africa
South Africa gets a lot of bad press for its high levels of violent crime, but the truth is that provided you’re not careless you’ll be safe. All you have to do is take the proper precautions: don’t carry all your valuables with you when you go out, keep your valuables on your person, and don’t go into dangerous areas alone or at night.
The only area in South Africa that is a malaria zone is the Kruger Park, but that is largely season dependent. Talk to your doctor about whether you need to take anti-malaria tablets.
The tap water in South Africa is safe to drink.
South Africa is a beautiful country filled with friendly and hospitable people keen to make your trip one of the most memorable vacations you’ll ever take.
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South Africa
South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological sites in the world. Extensive fossil remains at the Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat caves suggest that various australopithecines existed in South Africa from about three million years ago. These were succeeded by various species of Homo, including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and modern humans, Homo sapiens.
Settlements of Bantu-speaking peoples, who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen, were already present south of the Limpopo River by the fourth or fifth century CE. (see Bantu expansion). They displaced, conquered and absorbed the original Khoisan speakers. The Bantu slowly moved south. The earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier KhoiSan people. The Xhhosa reached the Great Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. As they migrated, these larger Iron Age populations displaced or assimilated earlier peoples, who often had hunter-gatherer societies.
In 1487, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to reach the southernmost point of Africa. Initially named the Cape of Storms, The King of Portugal, John II, renamed it the Cabo da Boa Esperança or Cape of Good Hope, as it led to the riches of India. Dias' great feat of navigation was later immortalised in Camões' epic Portuguese poem, The Lusiads (1572). In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch transported slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India as labour for the colonists in Cape Town. As they expanded east, the Dutch settlers met the south-westerly expanding Xhosa people in the region of the Fish River. A series of wars, called the Cape Frontier Wars, ensued, mainly caused by conflicting land and livestock interests.
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South Africa has three capital cities: Cape Town, the largest of the three, is the legislative capital; Pretoria is the administrative capital; and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. South Africa has a bicameral parliament: the National Council of Provinces (the upper house) has 90 members, while the National Assembly (the lower house) has 400 members.
Members of the lower house are elected on a population basis by proportional representation: half of the members are elected from national lists and the other half are elected from provincial lists. Ten members are elected to represent each province in the National Council of Provinces, regardless of the population of the province. Elections for both chambers are held every five years. The government is formed in the lower house, and the leader of the majority party in the National Assembly is the President.
The primary sources of South Africa law are Roman-Dutch mercantile law and personal law with English Common law, as imports of Dutch settlements and British colonialism. The first European based law in South Africa was brought by the Dutch East India Company and is called Roman-Dutch law. It was
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Since the end of apartheid, the South African foreign policy has focused on its African partners particularly in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union. South Africa has played a key role as a mediator in African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Comoros, and Zimbabwe. After apartheid ended, South Africa was readmitted to the Commonwealth of Nations.
As the Union of South Africa, South Africa was a founding member of the United Nations. The then Prime Minister Jan Smuts wrote the preamble to the United Nations Charter. South Africa was a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council between 2007 and 2008, and has attracted controversy by voting against a resolution criticising the Burmese government in 2006 and against the implementation of sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2008. South Africa is a member of the Group of 77 and chaired the organisation in 2006. South Africa is a member of the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, Southern African Customs Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, G20 and G8+5.
The South African National Defence Force was created in 1994, as an all volunteer force composed of as the former South African Defence Force, the forces of the African nationalist groups (Umkhonto we Sizwe and Azanian People's Liberation Army), and the former Bantustan defence forces. The SANDF is subdivided into four branches, the South African Army, the South African Air Force, the South African Navy, and the South African Medical Service.
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South Africa is located at the southernmost region of Africa, with a long coastline that stretches more than 2,500 km (1,553 mi) and along two oceans (the South Atlantic and the Indian). At 1,219,912 km2 (471,011 sq mi), South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world and is comparable in size to Colombia. Njesuthi in the Drakensberg at 3,408 m (11,180 ft) is the highest peak in South Africa.
South Africa has a generally temperate climate, due in part to being surrounded by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans on three sides, by its location in the climatically milder southern hemisphere and due to the average elevation rising steadily towards the north (towards the equator) and further inland. Due to this varied topography and oceanic influence, a great variety of climatic zones exist.
The climatic zones vary, from the extreme desert of the southern Namib in the farthest northwest to the lush subtropical climate in the east along the Mozambique border and the Indian ocean. From the east, the land quickly rises over a mountainous escarpment towards the interior plateau known as the Highveld. Even though South Africa is classified as semi-arid, there is considerable variation in climate as well as topography.
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By UN classification South Africa is a middle-income country with an abundant supply of resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors, a stock exchange that ranks among the top twenty in the world, and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the entire region. South Africa is ranked 25th in the world in terms of GDP (PPP) as of 2007.
Advanced development is significantly localised around four areas: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Pretoria/Johannesburg. Beyond these four economic centres, development is marginal and poverty is still prevalent despite government efforts. Consequently the vast majority of South Africans are poor. However, key marginal areas have experienced rapid growth recently. Such areas include Mossel Bay to Plettenberg Bay; Rustenburg area; Nelspruit area; Bloemfontein; Cape West Coast; and the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast.
Unemployment is extremely high and income inequality is approximately equal to Brazil. During 1995–2003, the number of formal jobs decreased and informal jobs increased; overall unemployment worsened. The average South African household income decreased considerably between 1995 and 2000. As for racial inequality, Statistics South Africa reported that in 1995 the average white household earned four times as much as the average black household. In 2000 the average white household was earning six times more than the average black household. The affirmative action policies have seen a rise in black economic wealth and an emerging black middle class. Other problems are crime, corruption, and HIV/AIDS. South Africa suffers from relatively heavy overall regulation burden compared to developed countries. State ownership and interference impose high barriers to entry in many areas. Restrictive labour regulations have contributed to the unemployment malaise.
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South Africa is a nation of more than 50 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions. The last census was held in 2001 and the next will be in 2011. Statistics South Africa provided five racial categories by which people could classify themselves, the last of which, "unspecified/other" drew negligible responses, and these results were omitted. The 2006 midyear estimated figures for the other categories were Black African at 79.5%, White at 9.2%, Coloured at 8.9%, and Indian or Asian at 2.5%.
Even though the population of South Africa has increased in the past decade (primarily due to immigration), the country had an annual population growth rate of −0.501% in 2008 (CIA est.), including immigration. South Africa is home to an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants, including some 3 million Zimbabweans. A series of anti-immigrant riots occurred in South Africa beginning on 11 May 2008.
By far the major part of the population classified itself as African or black, but it is not culturally or linguistically homogeneous. Major ethnic groups include the Zulu, Xhosa, Basotho (South Sotho), Bapedi (North Sotho), Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele, all of which speak Bantu languages.
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