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South African cultural experiences

From modern art galleries to rock art centres, state-of-the-art museums to remote cultural villages, city jazz clubs to open air festivals - there are countless ways to experience South Africa's rich culture and heritage for yourself.

The rhythm of South Africa
The live music, dance and theatre scene is buzzing in South Africa, at venues ranging from bushveld festivals and botanical gardens to dark nightclubs and posh theatre complexes.

Music is in our blood. Buy a CD, go to a club, listen to street buskers, visit a cultural village or walk past a church on a Sunday morning - however you experience South African music, you'll find it difficult to keep your feet still.

Hanging with South Africans
Nothing beats actually meeting people. South Africa's many cultural villages offer a close-up insight into the country's traditional cultures. In the major centres, township tours - conducted with sensitivity and pride - will put you in touch with real South Africans and their history.

Arts and crafts South Africans adapt every possible medium to produce a remarkable range of craftwork.

In the rural areas, community tours will help you get to know the country through the eyes of those who live here. You can discover ancient Setswana astronomy through the lens of a grandmother with an intimate knowledge of the ancient traditions. Or how about being taught to cook line fish the traditional way by the fishing community in Kalk Bay?

Cradle of Humankind
And remember, no matter where you're from, this is where your roots are. It's pretty much accepted that human life started in South Africa. Most people look at the world differently after a tour of the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg - one of the richest hominid fossil sites in the world.

Fossilised footprints near Cape Town, and the wealth of rock paintings and surviving shelters in KwaZulu-Natal's Drakensberg mountains and elsewhere in the country, all testify to humanity's origins on this ancient continent.

Wars, apartheid, reconciliation
More recently, South Africa's history has been one of confrontation, but also of reconciliation. You can explore the battlegrounds where the bloody events that shaped the country took place.

World heritage We're home to seven World Heritage sites, places of "outstanding value to humanity".

From Isandlwana or Talana in KwaZulu-Natal to Soweto in Johannesburg or Langa in Cape Town, our land tells a story - but one that can be hard to interpret, so it's worth doing a guided tour.

We show the wounds of our past - visit the Women's Monument in Bloemfontein, or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

But we also announce our new-found unity. A trip to Robben Island will show just how powerful that attitude can be. We've taken a place of oppression, isolation and despair and turned it into a symbol of forgiveness and hope. That's what South Africans are doing with the whole country.

SouthAfrica.info reporter, incorporating material from South African Tourism