Cape Town, South Africa:
Under the southern sun

Welcome to one of the continent's world-class tourist destinations. The location is magnificent, nestled between the ocean, the southern tip of Africa and Table Mountain. It was also the venue for several of the 2010 World Cup matches. Cape Town attracts more than 2.5 million international visitors each year, with a whole ecosystem of restaurants, luxury hotels, excursions into the hinterland and along the wine route. Cape Town is South Africa's second largest city and one of its economic centres, with a metropolitan GDP exceeding $90 billion. This city under the southern sun cannot escape its history. It is home to profound socio-spatial inequalities. Four centuries of South African history are concentrated here – from the vestiges of Dutch colonisation to the museum on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years. Despite the fact that, during the apartheid era, the city was considered to be more tolerant, it is still surrounded by huge townships (Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain, Cape Flats, etc.), which bear witness to the tragedy of racial segregation. The “white ‘burbs” (Camps Bay, Sea Point, etc.) are where wealth, infrastructure and security are concentrated. And travellers and businesspeople are often taken in by this, missing a much more disturbing reality.