Introduction
South Africa is a stunning country of magnificent landscape, from desert dunes to rolling farmlands, savannah bush, subtropical hardwood forests and superb white sand coast. It has game viewing to equal the best in Africa from Kruger in Mpumalanga to the Zululand area of Kwazulu-Natal, and a host of small parks and reserves in the Northern Provinces and Eastern Capes. Where else can you find penguins and elephants living in the same country? There are over 1000 bird species in the country, and the Western Cape alone has one of the richest floral kingdoms in the world, with over 23,000 plant and flower species and spectacular displays that coat the desert in colour. The country also has a fascinating human and cultural history, stretching back to the aboriginal San (Bushmen) and Khoikhoi, through the black African peoples to the latest arrivals, the Afrikaans and British. It has never been an easy history – tribal wars raged long before the punishing and bitter conflicts between black and white, from the Zulu Wars to the Boer War and the segregation of apartheid society. Archbishop Desmond Tutu named the newly integrated South Africa ‘the rainbow nation’. It is a fitting name for a country with 11 official languages and people of all colours, race and creed, living in a vividly coloured and sculpted landscape.
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