South Africa: Highlights of the Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape is a study in contrasts: the political womb of the country, the birthplace of the country’s first two democratic presidents, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, and a place of both extreme poverty, and extreme beauty.

Like the rest of South Africa, the Eastern Cape has wildlife-rich national parks and other conservation areas – but with a unique advantage. In the Eastern Cape, there is no risk, as there is in other natural areas, of malaria. The province’s attractions include the Addo Elephant Park, which contains five of South Africa’s seven major vegetation zones, and a unique combination of the Big Seven – elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo, leopard, whales and great white sharks, plus a rich heritage of archaeological and historical sites. The reserve also has the largest coastal dune field in the southern hemisphere.

Jeffrey’s Bay is said to be one of the top three surfing spots in the world. The town’s other attractions are scuba diving, rock fishing, dolphin and whale spotting, and the dazzling Gamtoos River valley, noted for its bird life.

Grahamstown, originally a military outpost, with its Georgian and Victorian buildings, is where the 1820 British settlers came ashore as part of the British colonial government’s efforts to populate the interior with white people from England. These days is it best known for the annual National Arts Festival, the largest of its kind in Africa. Grahamstown is also a vibrant university town, home to Rhodes University.

In the interior of the province is Cradock, a Karoo town known for resistance politics. It is also the place where Olive Schreiner lived, best known for her novel The Story of an African Farm. She is buried in the hills outside the town.

Also near the town is the Mountain Zebra National Park, a conservation success story, saving the mountain zebra species from extinction.

The historic town of Graaff-Reinet, with a town centre preserved largely intact from 1786, was the birthplace of Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress. Graaff-Reinet is in the centre of the 14 500ha Camdeboo National Park, in the Great Karoo.

Nieu Bethesda is a little dorp north of Graaff-Reinet, a place that may have disappeared from the map if it weren’t for Helen Martins, a reclusive and obsessive artist generally disliked in the village during her lifetime. For many decades of the early 20th century, Martins worked tirelessly on cramming her small home, today known as the Owl House, with visionary sculpture made from the prosaic materials of cement and parts of glass bottles.

King William’s Town marks a significant element of Xhosa history. A mass grave in the cemetery is where hundreds of Xhosa are buried, the result of the disastrous 1857 Nongqawuse prophesy to slaughter their entire stock of cattle and destroy their crops, and in return the ancestors would ensure that white settlers would be blown into the sea. Some 25 000 Xhosas subsequently died of starvation.

Another cemetery in the town is where Steve Biko, proponent of Black Consciousness, is buried. He died at the vindictive hands of the security police in 1977.

Some 60km west of King William’s Town is Fort Hare, originally a multiracial college set up by missionaries, and the place where Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela were educated.

On the northern edge of the Eastern Cape is Rhodes. San rock paintings can be explored in the vicinity of the town, while winter skiers make their way through Rhodes to Tiffindell, the country’s only ski resort, set up against the southern Drakensberg mountains bordering Lesotho.

The remote and undeveloped Wild Coast, stretching from East London to the beautiful Mkambati Nature Reserve, consists of unspoilt beaches, lush forest, green, undulating hills, complimented by hospitality from the local Xhosa community.

The town of Mthatha (previously Umtata) is in the middle of the Wild Coast region, and is home to the Nelson Mandela Museum. The museum offers guided tours to the nearby village of Qunu, where Mandela grew up. The remains of his primary school, the rock he used to play on and the graveyard where family members are buried are highlights.