It’s time for South Africans to discover how extraordinary their own country really is.  

South Africans of all hues and persuasions are in such a habit of blaming the past and each other that we completely miss out on what we really have and on the magic and poetry of our shared history. I took American friends of mine on a journey of South African history a few years ago. We started at Sterkfontein Caves with its abundant fossils of our hominid ancestors; then to the caves at De Kelders and Stilbaai where modern human beings made some of the earliest art; to the mind-blowing rock paintings of the Cederberg and the Drakensberg, some of it thousands of years old; to the Castle and the Slave Lodge in Cape Town; to Thaba Bosiu, mountain stronghold of King Moshoeshoe; to the It’s time for South Africans to discover how extraordinary their own country really is. WORDS: Max du Preez Anglo Boer War battlefields near Kimberley; to Robben Island; to the Hector Petersen Museum in Soweto; ending with Constitution Hill in Johannesburg.