South Africa - Ruffling Feathers at an ostrich rodeo | Steve Knipp | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

Ostrich feathers may have gone out of fashion, but racing this dumb, yet powerful, bird is the latest trend at Oudtshoorn, Cape Province, in the arid, Arizona-like heart of South Africa’s ostrich-farming country

• Read more

Chew the Fat | Yvonne Van Dongen | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

After the pale polite restraint of the braai, the Robben Island tour is a blast of fresh air. Europeans are in the minority and the guide even indulges in a little light humour

• Read more

Street Song | Susan Storm | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

"Hello lady, come, two rand a bunch." beckoned a rotund woman in a floral dress. This was cheap. I looked around, deciding which two to choose. She stepped forward out of the aromatic shadows, smiled widely and said, “Okay! "Rand a bunch. Rand a bunch." I selected two bunches, and gave her two rand. "Orright, these for free!" she said, shoving another two bunches into my surprised hands

• Read more

Riding a Harley in Cape Town | Binyavanga Wainaina | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

I stand on the veranda, and think about what to do for breakfast. I live in Cape Town. For those who live here, it is considered thoroughly uncool to rhapsodize about Table Mountain

• Read more

Cape Town | Binyavanga Wainaina | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

You may not notice it at first. At the airport, you will look at the mountains before you, and the strange plants around you and tell yourself this is ethereal: so soft, shadows arranging themselves to present subtle depths. It’s the light, you see. To an African like me, used to a sun above, this sunlight coming from strange angles seems so beautiful.I take for granted the stark simplicity of image the sun in East Africa provides me, and wonder when tourists ‘ohh’ and ‘ahhh’ when they encounter this crispness

• Read more

South Africa's Top 10 | Francisca Kellett | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

South African highlights, from watching wildlife in a game reserve to watching streetlife in Cape Town

• Read more

Cape Town's Kaleidescope | Gillian Ivory | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

Delicately spiced samoosas and deliciously sweet koeksisters top the menu in the Bo Kaap, with its psychedelic-coloured houses built into the hill. But venture two steps sideways and into De Waterkant and Polaine bread flown in from Paris is more the norm.

• Read more

Redcoats, Zulus and David Rattray | Barbara Erasmus | South Africa, Cape Town and around, Cape Town

It seems fitting that we heard the story of the victory at Isandlwana from a Zulu. It’s an unforgettable setting. An isolated sphinx-like hillock towering above a flat plain marked with mounds of white-painted rocks marking the graves of thirteen hundred British soldiers

• Read more

On the Trail of the Boer War | John Warburton-Lee | South Africa, Gauteng, Johannesburg

Set in spectacular country, with views far across the valley to the towering cliffs of the Drakensburg Mountains, Spion Kop rises 1,400 feet above the Tugela River

• Read more

A Reluctant Radical | Mark McCrum | South Africa, Gauteng, Johannesburg

Geraldine had been attempting to radicalize this man whose favourite occupation was lying in his big armchair with a copy of the Spectator and a large whisky

• Read more