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South africa makes condé nast list of top 20 travel destinations.

Condé Nast (CN) Traveller has released its annual list of the world’s top 20 destinations for travellers for 2021, and South Africa has made the list.

Despite many nations still fighting the coronavirus pandemic, more and more countries are starting to receive the COVID-19 vaccine  which could mean more people will feel comfortable enough to travel internationally. This is a good sign for countries like South Africa, whose economy has been crippled by the lack of tourism.

South Africa was listed as one of the top 20 international destinations this year.

Thankfully, that could all be about to change. Condé Nast Traveller  ranks South Africa as number 15 on the list of best destinations to travel to for foreign travellers, especially during the warmer months. The travel magazine cited South Africa’s many national parks as one of the main attractions. The chance of seeing the iconic Big Five up close is a major draw for international tourists.

Another draw for foreign travellers is the fact that South Africa was one of the first countries in the world to certify tourist products like hotels and tours as Fair Trade, which means fair wages and working conditions for local people, and fair sourcing of products, according to CN traveller. 

South Africa as a whole was listed instead of a city in the country, making us beam with pride. The top five countries to make CN Traveller’s list of the world’s top 20 destinations include:

1- Borneo, Malaysia,

2- Delhi, India,

3- Oman, UAE,

4- Valencia, Spain,

5- Fez, Morocco.

Click here to view the full list of destinations.

Picture: Pixabay

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An inside guide to the Western Cape

Along the south-western coast of South Africa , just shy of the Great Escarpment, sits the wonder that is the Western Cape . Famed for its winelands, unspoilt scenery and endless list of activities, this populous locale has become a must-visit destination on the tourist trail. In fact, its landscape is so enticing that for a few travellers, one trip just didn’t feel like enough time to explore it all. Many of us know what it’s like to visit a dreamy destination and fantasise about what life might look like if we stayed an extra week or even came back for a longer stint, but for Adetola, Scott and Khobi-Jane that wanderlust dream became a reality when they packed up their lives and moved indefinitely to the Western Cape.

For Scott, it was the friendships and connections he built in South Africa that led him to stay in the Cape. A Northern Irishman who’s no stranger to travelling the globe, he now runs a foundation called the School of Hard Knocks, which uses sport and psycho-social counselling to help children's mental health. Khobi-Jane also lived in various locations across the world, but it was the promise of open skies that convinced her to relocate to the town of Wilderness, where she has worked as a paragliding instructor for more than 20 years. As for Adetola, a chance picture of St James Beach brought her to Cape Town , and after studying at the University of the Western Cape, she’s never looked back.

Taking on the collective title of the Neverending Tourists, these three travellers open up about some of the things that drew them to this corner of the world and highlight why the Western Cape should be bumped to the top of your travel list.

At what moment did you realise you wanted to stay in the Western Cape?

Scott: "I live my life outdoors so for me it was when I came to the Cape and realised it was essentially a mecca for my active lifestyle. The proximity to the ocean and mountains means you can name countless activities and they’re all doable within a two-hour radius of Cape Town. Following that, it was the relationships and friendships I built with people here that made me want to stay."

Adetola: "It wasn’t anything incredible actually. I was driving down the M3, just near Wynberg, and was immediately struck by the lushness of Cape Town. The fact that I was in the middle of the city, on a main motorway and surrounded by such natural beauty and these wide-open spaces made me realise the Cape is an amazing place to be."

Khobi-Jane: "It was during my first trip to South Africa. I’d been here for two weeks and I was driving back to Cape Town from Wilderness. I stopped for lunch in Caledon and right there I realised I needed to come back as I had fallen in love with the sky. Right at that moment I decided to become a paragliding instructor and I’m far happier for it."

What are three things that keep you in the Western Cape?

Scott: "The ocean, the mountains and the Spin Doctors – my local cricket club."

Adetola: "The great outdoors – from the amazing sunsets to the beautiful scenery – the complex and interesting history of Cape Town and its people, and finally the variety of amazing food and wine that’s so easily accessible."

Khobi-Jane: "The ability to be at one with nature and truly embrace outdoor living with ease, plus the availability of various adventurous activities and definitely the good food and wine."

Where would you take someone who only has three days in the Western Cape?

Scott: "We would have to ride Chapman's Peak on a motorbike, make time to hike Table Mountain and then eat at Clarke's before they leave – it's a diner in Cape Town that makes a great breakfast."

Adetola: "First I’d say drive around the Cape Peninsula making stops at Kalk Bay, the penguins at Simon’s Town, round Chapman's Peak for a view of Hout Bay and then on to town via Llandudno. I would recommend we visit Babylonstoren in the Cape Winelands for an amazing breakfast, a walk around the farm and wine tasting, and then probably suggest exploring the winelands, like Franschhoek for example, to go on the wine tram."

Khobi-Jane: "I’d suggest they fly to George rather than Cape Town and stay somewhere on the beach in Wilderness,. Then it’s all about filling our time with smaller trips. Spend a day in Knysna: visit the Knysna Heads and Knysna Elephant Park, then do dinner on one of the John Benn paddle-boat steamers. Have an activity day: paragliding at the Map of Africa, canoeing to the waterfall along the Kingfisher Trail, followed by sunset drinks and dinner at Salinas restaurant on the beach. Then maybe round things off with a day in Oudtshoorn by visiting the Cango Caves and the ostrich farm."

What’s something you wish more people knew about the Western Cape?

Scott: "The cost of living here is so affordable compared to other sunshine countries, with good access to healthcare and an endless choice of activities."

Adetola: "The vastness of experiences to be had here. The unique socio-cultural mix of the Cape partnered with the varied types of landscapes results in a melting pot of things to do for solo travellers, families with young children, couples – you name it."

Khobi-Jane: "That there is so much more to this province than Cape Town."

To find out more about the Western Cape and connect with one of the Neverending Tourists, visit @discoverctwc

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Zambia’s Psychedelic Zamrock Is Having a Second Life

This is part of Global Sounds , a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in 2024.

It’s 9:45 p.m. on a Sunday evening, and the packed auditorium of Greenwich Village’s Le Poisson Rouge is filled with the sound of Zamrock. On vocals is 72-year-old Emmanuel Chanda, who goes by the stage name Jagari Chanda, the charismatic, last surviving original member of Witch , once among the most popular bands in Zambia . He’s wearing a matching waistcoat and pants made of chitenge (an African wax print fabric), a yellow T-shirt, a floppy hat, and bracelets featuring the colors of the Zambian flag: red, green, orange, and black. His look is just as striking as his sound.

That sound is Zamrock, or Zambian rock, a genre born in the 1970s and inspired by American rock performers such as James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, and pioneered by bands such as Musi-o-Tunya, Amanaz, 5 Revolutions, and, of course, Witch (the name stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc). It’s a combination of psychedelic rock and traditional Zambian music like kalindula, and performed in a range of Zambian local languages, often with two lead guitars, drums, a bass guitar, and percussion, crescendoing into an up-tempo rhythm.

Early hits like “Introduction” (1972) and “In the Past” (1974)—both performed by Chanda the night that I see him—quickly shot Witch to fame. But after the 1980s the band hit pause: The AIDS epidemic claimed the lives of key members, while a crippling economy led many musicians in Zambia to seek alternative employment, including Chanda, who became a teacher and a miner. Plus, the music tastes of the Zambian people evolved after the fall of President Kaunda in 1991, who had a policy that dictated that 95% of music played on Zambian radio stations be made in Zambia.

But a decade or so ago, a renewed interest in the band emerged: There was a 2011 vinyl reissue through Now and Again Records; a 2013 documentary by Kabinda Lemba called Rikki and Jagari: The Zamrock Survivors and another in 2021 by Gio Carlotta; and in 2023, Witch finally released a new album titled Zango , featuring a lead single by the same name. Fast-forward to 2024, and if the roar of the crowd at Poisson Rouge is anything to go by, Zamrock is experiencing a revival. “In Zambia they think [music is] a career for failures,” Chanda shouts from the stage. “But in America it’s the other way around.”

As a child who grew up listening to my father’s Zamrock records—here in the United States and in Germany and Ethiopia —I was curious to find out whether, over 30 years later, Zamrock was also seeing a similar revival in Zambia. Armed with some music industry contacts, I flew to Lusaka, its capital.

A clip from the 2023 mini-documentary, Making of Zango , which takes a look at the making of the band's first album in nearly forty years, Zango

My first stop is Radio Cafe studios in Lusaka’s Olympia suburb, a historic neighborhood whose streets are lined with brick homes. It's where some of Zambia’s most popular artists, including Macky 2, Pompi, and Abel Chungu Musuka, have recorded—not to mention Grammy-nominated artist and Zambian rapper Sampa Tembo, better known as Sampa the Great, who recorded her Zamrock-inspired 2002 album, As Above, So Below. I’m there to catch up with her producer Mag 44 , or Magnus Mando, who shares that the album was something he and Sampa had been talking about since 2019, prior to her relocating from Australia to Zambia in 2020, which is when the recording process began. “She sent me some Zamrock sounds that she wanted to play with and had a fresh take on the genre,” he says. “She wanted to create a hybrid version, by adding modern hip-hop elements with Zamrock.”

“ Never Forget, ” one of the most popular singles off the album, is an ode to Zamrock and, more specifically, to Chanda who features on another track “ Can I Live .” Chanda’s contribution to that song is a series of traditional Zambian chants, an element that, according to Mag 44, gives Zamrock its unique Zambian identity. “There’s also the beat count,” he says. “It’s either a 3/4 or 6/8 in Zamrock, then you add the lead guitar.”

Duncan Sodala, the founder of Time Machine Zambia , a vinyl and comics retail company in Mimosa, Lusaka, agrees. “It’s the traditional chants and the lyrics which reference how the artists lived at the time that Zamrock started,” says Sodala, who has worked in the Zambian music industry for over two decades as an artist manager and hip-hop artist. Since founding Time Machine in 2016, he has seen sales of Zamrock records steadily increase. “The Witch albums are the most requested by my clients, followed by Rikki Ililonga and 5 Revolutions,” he says. He likes to use social media as a way to draw in a new generation of listeners. “On Instagram, sometimes I’ll post [about] an original Zamrock album [with the] hashtag #Zamrock. That leads to people asking questions about the genre and how they can access it.”

Over at the Zamrock Museum , a project by Modzi Arts (a multidisciplinary production and arts space) in the quiet suburb of Ibex Hill, I meet with Julia Taonga Kaseka, one of the founders. She describes the space as a living museum intended to “resurrect and celebrate Zamrock music,” and shows me a library filled with books about Zambian and other African music, and a record booth packed with Zamrock records, as well as pictures, hats, and other memorabilia. The latter, she tells me, was particularly popular with the 30 women DJs who have been trained through Rackless Kazi—an initiative at the museum that helps 18-to-35-year-old women improve their DJ skills over a five-day residency. Although the main focus of the project expands beyond the museum’s central genre, spanning everything from electronic music to South African house (amapiano), Kaseka is “trying to get them to play more Zamrock.”

So far, the museum has hosted 12 residences featuring emerging artists, curators, gallerists, and archivists, as well as documentary screenings, exhibitions, and concerts. Both Chanda and Rikki Ililonga, one of the last surviving original members of Musi-o-Tunya, have acted as mentors throughout, taking up the helm of an outdoor section of the museum called a zango (a traditional meeting spot where communities gather in conversation). “[Chanda and Ililonga] are the Zamrock museum,” says Kaseka. “The elders are the transmission point through memory and music.”

Witch on tour in Malawi, 1975

Jagari Chanda of Witch performing at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City earlier this year

Back in Olympia I meet up with Shadreck Mukenge, who goes by Mumba Yachi , a Congolese-born, Zambia-raised artist whose latest album, Mr Red 8 & The Zamrock Flood, was released this past May, for iced coffee and lemon cake at Taste by Rootz, a café and restaurant where he recently performed. Yachi sees his album as his own contribution to Zamrock. He sings in Lozi, a language you rarely hear in Zamrock because most of its stalwarts were from regions in the country where languages like Bemba and Nyanja are more prominent. Yachi’s packed tour schedule is proof that Zamrock is experiencing a resurgence globally, with dates lined up in the Netherlands, Malawi, and at home in Zambia. “I’m glad Zamrock is getting more recognition in the West,” says Yachi, but points to a recent show in Harare, Zimbabwe , and an upcoming one at Lake of Stars in Malawi as proof that Africans are also embracing the genre.

On my last day in Lusaka, I take a walk down Alik Nkhata Road, named after a famous Zambian musician and located in the working-class Kalingalinga neighborhood, on my way to Chilenje House 394, the former home of Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia and a significant supporter of Zamrock. I pass by Lusaka's ubiquitous red, yellow, and green metal mobile money booths, just like the ones depicted in Sampa’s “ Final Form ” video from 2019. Through the open doors of bars drift the sounds of gospel music and kalindula, another soulful Zambian genre. And then, right on cue, a burst of Zamrock—a blend of traditional and contemporary sounds honoring Zambia’s past, while embracing its future.

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