South Africa by Maxine Jones

After the first three hours of the 11-hour flight I was in virgin territory. Familiar with Europe and North Africa, I had now entered a vast and vastly different game park. Below passed the dark, mysterious reaches of Niger, Chad, Congo, Zambia. In the morning light over Botswana I gazed upon a baked clay landscape dotted with dull green shrubs, far emptier than anything I had ever imagined. Yet what I was eventually to encounter in South Africa were luxurious English-style country hotels complete with five o'clock tea and freshly sprinkled lawns.

At the Westcliff Hotel, Johannesburg's swankiest, I entered the world of the very rich. Or maybe not so very. For in South Africa you can live a millionaire's life cheaply. Staff in stiff white shirts and highly polished shoes are ready to attend politely to your needs, in between time cleaning already spotless dado rails. In the toilets miniature fluffy towels are rolled in a pretty formation. You dry your hands and throw the towel into a laundry basket. A porter was surprised when I took hold of one handle of my bag to help him carry it. I asked him about himself. He was a Zulu and spoke 11 languages. He laughed when I indicated how impressed I was.

I lay on a sunlounger beside the splendid rooftop swimming pool. A black man in blue shorts and t-shirt approached another sun-lounger and made some adjustments to it. When he lay down I was surprised. He was the first black guest I had seen. Black guests seemed as rare as white staff below managerial level.

Guests don't walk round the Westcliff complex, they are transported even 50 yards by the ever-circling buggies. I asked a hotel representative where I might go on foot or by bus to get a feel of the city. 'You can't catch a bus as such,' she said, 'but a taxi will take you to Rosebank or Sandton.' 'What's there?' I asked. 'Shops, cafes, rich ladies having lunch.' I didn't fancy it. What about the centre of Johannesberg? 'I wouldn't advise it,' she said. In the end she phoned a cab for me and off I went. The driver was an Orthodox Serb from Sarajevo who had lived in Johannesberg for seven years. He had been a bank worker, his wife an English professor. He regretted that they knew no black people. 'The areas are very segregated. I can tell you about all the areas because I am a taxi driver, but most people only know certain ones.' We were coming into Hillbrow, teeming with scurrying people - all black, babies colourfully strapped to backs, bags expertly balanced on heads. I was transfixed by the jostling crowds, the blasting horns. Packed minibuses were the main mode of public transport, the driver explained. You never saw a white person on one. They stop anywhere and everywhere according to a code of handsigns between the would-be passenger and the driver. He asked me where I wanted to get out. I looked at the fast-flowing sea of faces, the featureless, run-down, buildings. I wondered how I'd get back to the hotel. I chickened out. 'Would you mind giving me a tour by taxi?' I asked. He hesitated. 'I'm not very happy driving round here,' he said, ' there are a lot of hijacks.' We had just stopped at lights. I tensed, sensing curious eyes on us.

'Hillbrow has gone from all white to all black in two years,' the taxi-driver said, as we drove towards Yeoville. 'It used to be downtown but downtown has now moved north. All the offices have moved, and the big hotels, the Carlton, the Holiday Inn, even the stock exchange has moved. You can buy here for nothing now.' Along Rocky Street there was the occasional white face. 'This was the Jewish area,' he said, 'only the poor ones remain. There are many drug deals going on.' I asked him about crime. 'Thirty thousand are murdered in this country every year,' he said. 'Everyone has their windows barred. But I have had no bad experience. Only my house robbed once and a few things taken.' We drove north into Houghton's tree-lined streets of big houses and stopped in front of Nelson Mandela's house. 'More black people will eventually be buying here,' he said, with satisfaction.

'You can't go into the centre of Johannesburg now,' said a young Afrikaner woman in an estate agent in Magaliesburg. 'It's been taken over by our...,' her face crinkled, '...whatever you like to call them. They are demanding themselves out of jobs asking for things like a minimum wage. They look to the past all the time. They think we've diddled them out of their land. We only did what the Americans did. You can't go back. The country's getting worse. They're not educated. Thay have a different attitude. It's the same everywhere. Our only mistake was to give it a name, to use the word apartheid.' I took away some property details. For £59,000 in the magnificent countryside nearby you could buy the following lot: a four-bedroomed house with two bathrooms, a four-car garage, a swimming pool, a separate two-bedroomed thatched house with a two-car garage, 2,400 fruit trees, various outbuildings, 10 chicken houses, a shop, staff quarters with 25 rooms, a tractor.... the list went on.

Fifty white people live in Soweto, said our Belgian guide, and three million black people. Tiny 'matchbox' houses stretch into the distance. Only since the new regime can occupiers buy their houses. Several bear recent DIY flourishes, wrought iron gates, archways and extensions. One proud owner, surrounded by his three sons, stopped the minibus to say, beaming: 'It's nice to see you guys in Soweto. I'm very impressing. This is my house.' He indicated it with a sweeping gesture. Corrugated huts house additional families in backyards and the shanty towns overflow with new arrivals. The council has installed communal taps and chemical toilets but conditions remain poor. Soweto has 150 primary schools and 70 secondary schools. With 45% of the population under 18 there is a long way to go. In Wandie's Place we stop for lunch with other white tourists and locals. The atmosphere is buzzing and the food fantastic.

Later waiting for the luxurious Blue Train (£400 per night) to leave the dingy platform at Pretoria a pane of glass separated me from weary commuters sitting among binbags and boxes. I opened my free gift, a tiny gold carriage clock packed in a blue and gold box tied by a gold ribbon. With a remote control switch I could bring down the blind on the world outside. The bath taps were gold, the fluffy white slippers and dressing-gown complimentary. At dinner the waiter put my napkin on my lap for me. From Hoedspruit we toured the magnificent Blyde River Canyon - a much magnified version of Wicklow, green with gushing waterfalls and spectacular mountain views from such places as 'God's Window'. Food and accommodation, especially at the Cybele Forest Lodge, White River, were top-class and the rates surprisingly cheap.

In the middle of the bush near Kruger National Park we sat down to dinner under the stars - a lapa organised by Kapama private game reserve. Over the tinkling of wine glasses and click of cutlery came the roar of a lion. Flush toilets had been set up, with Crabtree and Evelyn handcream by the sink. We had just completed a night safari, coming nose to horn with a rhino who proceeded to chase the jeep. In the morning safari we'd seen lions, giraffes, elephants - our greatest fear that our film would run out. Our ranger drove the jeep, provided commentary and socialised with us, staying up till the last member of the group left the bar, sometimes 4am. At 5.30am he was driving us off in search of more game. For six weeks he would do this without a break then have six days' leave. A tracker perches on a small seat on the bonnet of the jeep. At Kapama there are no black rangers and no white trackers. Only one ranger, who spoke Zulu, socialised with the trackers. At the lapa he led a singing and dancing session with them. Another ranger, who said he had never encountered apartheid, considered his behaviour unfitting. The rangers live with their families on the camp. The waiters and trackers leave their families behind. According to one waiter: 'we are not allowed to bring our relatives here even to look around.'

On the freeway back to Johannesburg airport black men and women drove smart cars. Occasionally a white driver would sit alone in the cab of his truck while a black worker hugged his knees in the back. Black construction workers tight-rope walked along the high steel girders of the airport building. Inside, smartly suited black and white staff work alongside each other. Nine years ago they would have been forbidden by law to mix. A wrinkled English assistant in the airport shop, who had lived 16 years in South Africa, regretted the passing of that time. 'Things they said wouldn't happen have happened - blacks living near us, mixed marriages. They'll make us take blacks in next. I'd put a bomb under my house first. They've already asked us how many bedrooms and bathrooms we have. I've had a form. I've not filled mine in.' But you get on well with your colleagues? I suggested. 'Case of having to,' she said.

Fikile, originally from Zondi in Soweto, works in the shop nextdoor. 'In Soweto we had a four-roomed house with an outside toilet. Eight of us lived there. Now we have a nice house in Midrand. It was a white suburb and now it is mixed.' Young and beautiful, Fikile smiled when I mentioned the previous woman. 'I would say 80% of whites think like that about us. But we have no hatred. They cannot affect us now.'

With elections on June 2nd white politicians are desperate to disassociate themselves from apartheid. A Democratic Party candidate has apologised for comments about 'a surly tribesman with his thumb in the soup and one eye on the clock.' Much Afrikaner humour is underpinned by such derision. Pointing out a blue crane, the symbol of South Africa, one ranger wondered what the next symbol would be - 'a rainbow chicken?' As such attitudes fade, South Africa's future as a truly spectacular tourist destination looks assured. For me, however, the experience was colonial and theme-park. Routes to enjoying black South Africa as a tourist are still limited.