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South African National Gallery
The impressive permanent collection of the nation’s premier art space harks back to Dutch times and includes some extraordinary pieces. But it’s often contemporary works, such as the Butcher Boys sculpture by Jane Alexander – looking rather like a trio of Tolkienesque orcs who have
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Prestwich Memorial
Construction in 2003 along nearby Prestwich St unearthed many skeletons. These were the unmarked graves of slaves and others executed by the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries on what was then known as Gallows Hill. The bones were exhumed and this memorial building, with an attra
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University of Cape Town
For the non-academic there’s no pressing reason to visit the University of Cape Town, but it’s nonetheless an impressive place to walk around. UCT presents a fairly cohesive architectural front, with ivy-covered neoclassical facades and a fine set of stone steps leading to the temp
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Tembe Elephant Park
Heading west along a dirt road to the N2 from Kosi Bay, South Africa’s last free-ranging elephants are protected in the sandveld (dry, sandy coastal belt) forests of Tembe Elephant Park, a Transfrontier Park on the Mozambique border, owned by the Tembe Tribe and managed by Ezemvelo
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Basotho Cultural Village
Within the park you’ll find the small Basotho Cultural Village . It’s essentially an open-air museum, peopled by actors depicting various aspects of traditional Sotho life. A two-hour guided hiking trail (R60 per person) explores medicinal and other plants, and a rock-art site. You
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Victoria Mxenge Women’s Group
On a small plot of land just south of the junction of Lansdowne and Ottery Rds is the community of Victoria Mxenge, named after one of the heroes of the freedom struggle. At the community’s centre you can how local women, sick of living in shacks, started a joint savings scheme and
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Mahikeng Museum
Among the many displays in this excellent regional museum are an exhibit charting the rise of the Boy Scout Movement and a presentation on the famous 217-day siege, with original photographs and documents, and information about the role played by the town’s black population. It occ
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Table Mountain National Park
Stretching from Signal Hill to Cape Point, this 22,000 hectare park is a natural wonder, its range of environments including granite and sandstone mountains, giant boulder strewn beaches and shady forests. For the vast majority of visitors the main attraction is the 1086m-high moun
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uMkhuze Game Reserve
The uMkhuze Game Reserve is, in a phrase, a trip highlight. Established in 1912, and now part of iSimangaliso Wetland Park, this reserve of dense scrub and open acacia plains covers some 36,000 spectacular hectares. It may lack lions, but just about every other sought-after animal
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Cango Wildlife Ranch & Cheetahland
If you’re all ostriched out, head to this ranch. It feels a bit zoolike but contains a good collection of wildlife and big cats (in rather small enclosures). An encounter with cheetahs costs R140, and with the tiger cubs R300 (for over-16s only); funds go to the Cheetah Conservatio
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Wynberg Village
Declared an urban conservation area in 1981, Wynberg Village is also known as Little Chelsea or Chelsea Village, a nickname it gained in the 1950s in reference to London’s Chelsea. Like that British artsy quarter, the village’s Cape Georgian buildings (the densest collection in Sou
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Thaba
Thaba-Bosiu is the evocative mountain stronghold of Moshoeshoe the Great, who first occupied the place in 1824. Good views from here include those of the Qiloane pinnacle (inspiration for the Basotho hat), along with the remains of fortifications, Moshoeshoes grave, and parts of th
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Makapan’s Caves
Declared a Unesco World Heritage Site for their palaeontological significance, these caves yielded the famous 3.3-million-year-old Taung skull, which belonged to a humanoid known as Australopithecus africanus . In the Historic Cave, chief Makapan and 1000-plus followers were besieg
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Owl House
The idiosyncratic vision that inspired artist Helen Martins (1897–1976) to turn her home and studio into a singular work of outsider art is the bedrock of Bethesdas bohemian identity. Martins and her assistant Koos Malgas worked for years designing and constructing the menagerie of
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Hector Pieterson Museum
This powerful museum illuminates the role of Sowetan life in the history of the independence struggle. It follows the tragic incidents of 16 June 1976, when a peaceful student protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black secondary schools was
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Church Square
At the heart of Pretoria, Church Square is surrounded by imposing public buildings. These include the Palace of Justice , where the Rivonia Trial that sentenced Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment was held, on the northern side; the OuRaadsaal (Old Government) building on the south
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Willem Pretorius Game Reserve
Off the N1, about 70km south of Kroonstad, is the Willem Pretorius Game Reserve, one of Free State’s biggest recreation areas. Divided by the Sand River and Allemanskraal Dam, the reserve encompasses two ecosystems: grassy plains with large herds of elands, blesboks, springboks, bl
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Talana Heritage Park & Battlefield
Talana means ‘the shelf where precious items are stored’ – strangely appropriate for this excellent battlefield site turned heritage park. There are memorials, cairns and 27 historic buildings relating to the 1899 Anglo-Boer Battle of Talana (the first Anglo-Boer battle was fought
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Tatham Art Gallery
In keeping with Pietermaritzburg’s self-styled role as the ‘heritage city’, one of its finest sights, the art gallery, was started in 1903 by Mrs Ada Tatham. Housed in the beautiful Old Supreme Court, it contains a fine collection of French and English 19th- and early-20th-century
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Campbell Collections
These collections are well worth seeing. Muckleneuk, a superb house designed by Sir Herbert Baker, holds the documents and artefacts collected by Dr Killie Campbell and her father Sir Marshall Campbell (KwaMashu township is named after him), and these are extremely important record
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