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Heaven and HellAt first glance, South Africa looks like an affluent suburb superimposed on the African bush -- exactly the impression its former rulers, middleclass urban whites to a man, tried so hard to create. If it seems a little old-fashioned in some ways, it is also superficially comfortable, familiar, well tended, and nonthreatening.
South Africans used to pride themselves on clinging to the old virtues by which everyone went to church on Sunday, women stayed at home to look after their families, and the niceties of afternoon tea were strictly observed. It was a squeaky clean image based on the biggest conjuring trick in history -- nearly 40 million people were made to vanish. The harsh laws of apartheid kept Africa and poverty out of sight in huge settlements of corrugated iron and cardboard that appeared on no map or signpost. Black people were only allowed into view if they were smiling and subservient. Most towns were -- and are -- as European as possible, filled with chintz and antiques, trendy boutiques and coffee shops.
Tourism, designed largely for the South African home market, has always concentrated on the coast, whites-only game parks, and cool, green uplands where golf courses stretch amid the pine plantations.
Of course, this image of rich white/poor black, good black/bad white is as simplistic and unrealistic as any other cultural stereotype. The truth is far more complicated. South Africa has a population of about 41 million, with 11 official languages and cultural traditions from across Europe, Asia, and Africa. There has been violence and oppression, the nonwhites have been shamefully used, and the townships are a sin against humanity, but today luxury dwellings and run-down shanties stand side by side on the same street. Tribal chiefs and traditional healers live and work alongside pinstriped politicians and orthodox medical professionals. There are black millionaires and professors, white taxi drivers, waiters, and beggars, and even, astonishingly, black people who mourn the passing of apartheid.
The New South Africa is a mind-bending paradox: a sunny land of apparent peace and harmony with a boiling undercurrent of violent crime in its centers. Voices of doom mutter about chaos and corruption or talk of betrayal. A surprisingly large number of people embraced the Government of National Unity's call for "Masakhane" ("Working together for a better future"). Most people, of whatever color, are still waiting to see what will happen.
It may seem as if little has changed so far, but these are still early days for the New South Africa. It will take time for people to be rehoused, for economic as well as political power to shift, for the richness of African culture to emerge from the townships and villages, for the history books and museums to be revised, and for a people used to being invisible to take possession of their true heritage. Meanwhile, tourists still live largely in a luxurious and almost totally white world, with only a quick tour of black South Africa. The difference is that they can now wander the lush gardens, swim in limpid pools, and quaff fine wines without the slightest twinge of conscience.
South Africa has land borders with Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia, and totally surrounds the enclave of Lesotho. Since the 1994 elections, the country has been redivided into nine provinces, along roughly tribal lines -- Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, North -- West Province, Gauteng, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, the Free State, and KwaZulu-Natal. At the time of writing, it still has three capitals, a legacy from the Second Anglo-Boer War. The legislature is in Cape Town (the former British capital); the administration is in Pretoria (capital of the old Transvaal); and the judiciary is in Bloemfontein (capital of the Orange Free State). Pretoria is currently the favorite to become sole capital should it be decided to consolidate them into one.
The terrain ranges in altitude from sea level to South Africa's highest peak, Injasuti (11,178 feet) in the Drakensberg, near the border with Lesotho, and covers ecosystems from tropical forest to desert dunes. Almost every crop known to humanity can find a natural home somewhere in the country.
The Western Cape, cut off from the hinterland by the mountains of the Cederberg, Hex River, and Swartberg, has a distinct Mediterranean climate with cool, gray, wet, and windy winters and warmer, sunny summers. It is ideal for wine and deciduous fruits. The more northerly KwaZulu-Natal coast, also cut off by the vast wall of the Drakensberg, is subtropical, hot, and humid, clipped by the southwest monsoon. Here, the main crops are tropical fruits, such as bananas (the country's most profitable product), pineapples, and sugarcane.
Beyond the mountains is the Karoo, a dramatic semidesert capable of supporting only sheep, ostriches and, increasingly, antelope, while in the west blow the barren red sands of the Kalahari. In the center, the land climbs on to the high, flat central plateau, to the cattle and corn prairies of the Free State and, most importantly, the gold and diamond deposits of Kimberley and the Witwatersrand.
Finally, in the northeast, the highveld drops off a dramatic escarpment in a flurry of mountains where tea and avocados, cherries and bananas, eucalyptus and pine all flourish cheek by jowl. Below, the lowveld provides a hot, dry habitat for baobabs and acacias, elephant and lion.
