South africa

It’s no secret that You could come here only South Africa’s ethnic and cultural diversity influences You can hike, surf, kayak, fish, whale watch, horseback ride, dive with sharks and crocodiles and stargaze under some of the planet’s darkest skies. The only problem is how to even begin planning a visit to this immensely blessed, multifaceted land. Start planning your trip with this list of the top things to do in South Africa. A South African safari is the ultimate wildlife experience © Londolozi Images / Mint Images / Getty Images 1. Spot the Big 5 and even more wildlife in South Africa’s parks As the early morning sun rises over the bushveld, a herd of elephants thunders past, a leopard enjoys a snack up in a tree, and a lion stalks its prey. These are the joys of going on safari in South Africa, where you have an excellent chance of spotting the Big 5 (lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo and elephant) in In all, South Africa has 19 national parks and countless private game reserves, each offering an unforgettable wildlife experience where no two days are ever the same. Planning tip: Plan your trip 2. Smell the wildflowers of Namaqua Most of the year, the remote region known as Little Namaqualand is parched, a seemingly sunbaked wasteland in South Africa’s Northern Cape. But for a short period in July, as winter rains begin to fall, the area bursts to life with billions of blooms. Endless carpets of flowers in every hue cover its diverse topography, from deserty plains to fer...

Southern African climates are seasonal, ranging from arid to semiarid and from temperate to tropical. The seasonality is an important control on plant growth and a regulator of river flows. Droughts are common in much of the region. Four main types of vegetation are found: savanna woodlands (known as miombo forest) in the north, a series of dry woodlands to the south of these, arid and semiarid The Black peoples of Southern Africa—the overwhelming majority of the region’s population—can be divided into speakers of two language families, The history of Southern Africa cannot be written as a single narrative. Shifting geographic and political boundaries and changing historiographical perspectives render this impossible. Research into local history in the late 20th and early 21st century has presented fragmented historical knowledge, and older generalizations have given way to a complex polyphony of voices as new subfields of history—gender and sexuality, health, and the The uncertainties of evidence for the long preliterate past—where a bone or potsherd can undermine previous interpretations and where recent research has subverted even terminology—are matched by conflicting representations of the colonial and postcolonial periods. In Southern Africa, history is not a set of neutrally observed and agreed-upon facts: present concerns colour interpretations of even the remote past. For all the contestants in contemporary Southern Africa there has been a conscious struggle to co...