Dear Mr President Ramaphosa, please fix the sole of South Africa….❤️??writes businessman and regular SAPeople contributor Stan Sanetra. I bought a new pair of shoes only two weeks ago. I undid the shoe laces… placed my one shoe on the heel of the other, and proceeded to push the shoe off. The sole of the […]

After 20 years living abroad, we’re moving back to South Africa to raise our family on a farm… writes Lauren from Wild Country Farm Blog. If anyone had suggested this idea to me 12 months ago, I’d have called you a raving lunatic. Land reforms, an election year in South Africa, fluctuating exchange rates, the […]

Lizzy was born on the other side of town, on a farm called Noorspoort, owned by the legendary Craven family. “I learnt from my mother how to bake and cook. She in turn learnt it from old Mrs Maria Craven, [rugby legend] Doc Danie Craven’s wife. “Later on I worked on another farm at Baroe, […]

The desperate search for an escaped lion in the Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West in the Western Cape continued into its sixth day. According to Park Manager, Nico van der Walt, the trackers started with the spoor where they left off the previous night. “As they were tracking in a very deep gorge they […]

Tuesday marked the fifth day since a lion escape in the Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West, Western Cape. This is according to Nico van der Walt, Park Manager at Karoo National Park who said the search party consisting of 14 Rangers and about six volunteers from neighbouring farms breathed a sigh of relief late […]

The transcript of an address – titled ‘My South Africa’ – by Prof Jonathan Jansen is going viral yet again. The man many South Africans wish was in politics first delivered the speech to a meeting of Rachel’s Angels in September 2013. Eighteen months later it went viral again to unite the nation after xenophobic […]

In summer, the familiar rushing sound of the Great Fish River pumping through our home town of Cradock in the Eastern Cape is often punctuated by the excited babble of youngsters as they navigate the gentle rapids on the inner tubes of tractor tyres… writes Julienne du Toit. In the late afternoons, while pensioners watch […]

We received a Christmas card a month late the first year we arrived in Cradock, brought to us by our neighbour across the road, Frans Smit. We weren’t disappointed in the crap postal service, and I didn’t curse anyone’s ineptitude. In fact, my husband Chris and I stood staring at the envelope in silent awe. […]

Before I had kids, I watched a friend clear their newborn baby’s nose by sucking out the mucous, as the infant simply could not breathe. With a mixture of incredulousness and admiration, I wondered how on earth he did that, without even thinking twice. Then I became a parent. And with every fibre in my body, […]

It seems, for some of us, that the older we get the more inclined we are to be reckless. Who but the very bravest of long-distance drinkers, big-bike riders and hardened shoppers would take on the awesome pubs and padstalle of Route 62 in the Western Cape? Who but the youngest and silliest of us […]

People who live in the desert love rain. They love it in ways city people don’t understand. In the Karoo and the Kalahari, the horizons are so wide you can see the weather coming while it is still hours away. You can see clouds coalesce and darken over the mountains, then advance, walking on legs […]

Decades ago and deep in the Namaqualand desert at a point between Springbok, Steinkopf and the sea, a Cape Town housewife with a squeaky voice steals our hearts. This mommy from the suburbs has requested a tune that plays into our early years, way before Disco, Johnny Rotten, Duran Duran and Really Big Hair stole […]

“The Côte d’Azur is a mysterious place,” says Fered. “We cannot even begin to understand this.” Fered and my paths have just crossed, here on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice; it’s Friday, 22 July, days after the unspeakable truck attack that left 84 people dead and over 300 injured. I am not too sure […]

I love old signs when I’m on the road. They tell me where I’m going, who lived here, what brands were promoted and what the travelling salesmen flogged to the locals over the decades. Sometimes, on a dusty Karoo trail in the back of beyond, they’re all I have for company. I run across old […]

When Winter comes around in the Northern Hemisphere, we Southern Africans don’t know exactly how to cope with the spine chilling weather and that weird icy stuff these people call snow. I grew up in Swaziland, was at boarding school in South Africa, and now find myself in Geneva… so lately I’ve been taking what you could […]

Proving old friendships never die, a South African expat living in Canada has offered her kidney to her former schoolmate in Johannesburg, whom she hasn’t seen for decades. And together they are now on a journey to make sure Di gets the kidney she desperately needs, and that awareness is raised about live kidney donations. […]

Four days ago there was a terrorist attack in Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), in a resort town called Grand Bassam not far from the capital city of Abidjan. About 19 people were killed, plus the six gunmen who were reportedly affiliated with Al-Qaeda. My friend Henrike Grohs was one of the people killed… I hadn’t spoken with Henrike in […]

There is no obvious way to sneak up on herbalist Antoinette Pienaar and Karoo healer Oom Johannes Willemse. As documented in her well-loved book The Griqua’s Apprentice (translated from Kruitjie Roer My), they live on Theefontein Farm near Beaufort West, which can only be found via an intricate set of directions involving small dirt roads with middelmannetjies […]

Ek is nie ‘n boer nie, ek en my man het ‘n hoewe buite Bloemfontein waar ons met lusern boer en ‘n paar skape het. Vandag was vir my ‘n sielsdodende dag. Ons Damara ram Oupa het vandag net gaan lê. Hy het goeie jare gehad en het vir ons baie dragtige ooie gegee. Ek […]

I am not a farmer. My husband and myself have a small holding just outside Bloemfontein where we farm with a few sheep and lucerne. Today was a heart wrenching day for me. My Damara ram “Oupa” refused to stand up. I tried everything to get him to get back up but alas. He was […]

The vicious El Nino conditions of 2015 have created democratic South Africa’s first truly devastating drought. Not since 1992 has so little rain fallen on the land. Never has our water supply infrastructure been so vulnerable. Six out of the nine provinces have been declared disaster areas. Just before Christmas, the Director-General of the Department […]

Someone from Cape Town recently told me that living in this city for 6 years does not make me a Capetonian. Apparently the official integration period is ten years, and I had to work a lot harder on my accent. Eish. Problematically, this caused my identity crisis to reach new heights as I already felt […]

After my accident, whilst in a coma, Absa, set up an account for me. They generously deposited money into this and let it be known that it was available for public donations towards my medical expenses. Twenty-five years later, I am still banking with them! Recently I wrote to the Chief Financial Officer and I […]

A Climax windmill spins and creaks quietly alongside a dirt road linking Colesberg with the blue horizon. There is a cool morning breeze and a few sheep bleat in the distance. Soon, though, they are drowned out by the distant roar of a straining engine. A school bus appears, emblazoned with the words ‘Hantam Community Education […]

It’s about 160km, give or take a metre or two on either side, from the House of Light & Shadow in Richmond, Northern Cape, to the Karoo Roos padstal outside Middelburg, Eastern Cape. That’s if you venture out on the R398, a dirt road that embodies all that is intriguing about the Karoo: big spaces, […]