On a nostalgic return journey, Janice Warman wonders why the Eastern Cape is not thronged with tourists… The Eastern Cape has a bloody past: it’s where the English were settled to defend the frontier against the Xhosas in the 1820s, and where the terrible forced removals of the apartheid years happened. It’s the birthplace of
The hills of Michimikuru are a little piece of heaven: pickers in brightly coloured scarves move slowly through the chest-high bushes of the vivid green tea-fields beneath the slopes of Mount Kenya. But as the saying goes, local colour is other people’s poverty. Just ten kilometres to either side, the desert is encroaching; the mountain’s
Sit Philip Hammond in front of our very own Fraser Nelson, and you know that one topic’s bound to come up: the Tories’ commitment to the 50p tax rate. And so it was at this morning’s DLA Piper and Spectator Business Breakfast Debate at the Merchant Taylors¹ Hall in Threadneedle Street. Fraser chided the shadow
Janice Warman looks at two ‘ethical’ banks that are drawing customers away from the shamed high-street giants The credit crunch left most of our major banks in disarray, not to say disgrace. But it has been remarkably good for some of their smaller competitors. ‘Ethical banks’ might once have been dismissed by the high-street giants
If you’re spending this weekend listening to music in a muddy field, you’re part of a significant economic trend, says Janice Warman: festivals are Britain’s boom sector There was no doubt about it. I was irretrievably stuck. Each boot was lapped by a shining circle of mud which, as I tried to move, made ominous
As we circle out into Table Bay and back towards the mountain, the pilot welcomes us to Cape Town – and warns us about the burgeoning violence. For the first time, locals are talking about it too. ‘We all know people who have been raped and murdered,’ says one friend who delivers me to my guesthouse
On the eve of South Africa’s election, Janice Warman says its economy remains relatively attractive to investors, despite doubts about incoming president Jacob Zuma In South Africa, everything is not as it seems. If you drive along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean from Muizenberg in Cape Town, you will see a sea of glittering
On my walk from Charing Cross station each morning I see Steven outside Boots, rain or shine, his outstretched arm holding the latest Big Issue at eye level for passing commuters. He’s part vendor, part performance artist. Many, like me, stop to buy; others look down and hurry on. Though passers-by might pretend he’s invisible,