Lining the walls of Die Mystic Boer bar and nightclub in Bloemfontein are colourised original portraits of Boer guerrillas, some of them children, who fought in the South African (Anglo-Boer) War of 1899 to 1902. (South African Tourism, CC BY 2.0)

The Sasol Infrachem chemicals processing plant in Sasolburg, an industrial town in the far north of the Free State near the Gauteng border. The town was founded in 1954 to support Sasol, a state-owned company created to manufacture oil from coal. South Africa has plenty of coal reserves, but no oil. Today Sasol is a giant multinational petrochemicals corporation. (Media Club South Africa)

Cosmos flowers in bloom are a common sight along Free State roadsides in spring and autumn. Cosmos are native to Mexico and found across South America. The plants are now widespread in South Africa, brought here in contaminated horse feed imported from Argentina during the South African (Anglo-Boer) War of 1899 to 1902. (Graeme Williams, Media Club South Africa)

An aerial view of circular crop fields watered by centre-pivot irrigation systems near the small farming town of Jacobsdal in the western Free State, near the Northern Cape border. (Jean Boris Hamon, CC BY-NC-ND)

Winter colours on farmland and snow on mountains near the town of Harrismith in the eastern Free State. (Steve Slater, CC BY 2.0)

A tree-lined stream runs through fields bordered by sandstone outcrops near the Free State town of Fouriesburg. (Jonathan Gill, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Late afternoon sun shines off sandstone cliffs in the Golden Gate National Park. In the 19th and early 20th centuries blocks of eastern Free State sandstone, prized for their softness and lovely colour, were used to build churches, public buildings and grand homes across the province. (Pieter Edelman, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

On Naval Hill a statue of Nelson Mandela, his fist raised in the amandla salute, overlooks the city of Bloemfontein. Naval Hill rises in the centre of the city and includes museums and a nature reserve. (South African Tourism, CC BY 2.0)

The Old Presidency building in Bloemfontein was the residence of presidents of the Orange Free State Boer republic from 1886 to 1900, the year the British captured the city during the South African (Anglo-Boer) War. It was designed by English architects Lennox Canning and F Goad, with later additions by Sir Herbert Baker. Today it is a museum focused on the lives and times of the Boer presidents. (Media Club South Africa)

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. The court is the second-highest court in South Africa – after the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg – with the power to judge appeals against decisions made in the High Court. Bloemfontein is both South Africa’s judicial capital and the capital of the Free State. (Media Club South Africa)

A late summer thunderstorm brews over the Maloti Mountains in the eastern Free State. The Maloti lie on the Kingdom of Lesotho’s northern boundary with the province. They are part of the Drakensberg system of mountains. The Maloti Drakensberg has been named a Unesco World Heritage Site for its outstanding natural beauty and the wealth of San Bushman rock art found in its caves and rock shelters. (Graeme Williams, Media Club South Africa)

The town of Graaff-Reinet lies in the Valley of Desolation in the northeast Karoo region of the Eastern Cape. Founded in 1786, exactly a century before Johannesburg, Graaff-Reinet is the fourth-oldest colonially established settlement in South Africa after Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Swellendam. Notable South Africans born here include anti-apartheid activists Robert Sobukwe, Matthew Goniwe and Beyers Naude, artist Helen Martins, 19th-century road builders Andrew Geddes Bain and Thomas Charles John Bain, palaeontologist James Kitching, and business mogul Anton Rupert. (South African Tourism, CC BY-2.0)

A plane passenger’s view of Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) harbour on the western curve of Algoa Bay. The port was established in 1825, five years after the first wave of British settlers into the Eastern Cape region in 1820. Today South African exports from the port include farming produce, manganese ore mined in the Northern Cape, and vehicles produced by the Eastern Cape’s large automotive manufacturing industry. Gqeberha also handles overflow sea traffic from the larger ports at Durban and Cape Town. (I Went Left, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Cars ready for export on the loading dock below the Mercedes-Benz factory in East London. Although it’s the second-largest city in the Eastern Cape, East London – founded by 1820 settlers from Britain in 1836 – is a small city with an economy largely sustained by the factory. (Rodger Bosch, Media Club South Africa)

With the Indian Ocean just over the next hill, the road into the coastal village of Qolora Mouth curves past homesteads and grazing cattle in the Wild Coast region of the Eastern Cape. (Rodger Bosch, Media Club South Africa)

Avid golfers Welcome Tolbadi (18 handicap) and Dickson Mboyi (10 handicap) head off for a round at the nine-hole golf course in the Wild Coast village of Qolora Mouth in the Eastern Cape. (Rodger Bosch, Media Club South Africa)

Fantastical concrete sculptures in the Camel Yard of the Owl House in Nieu-Bethesda, a small farming town in the northwest of the Eastern Cape. Created by artist Helen Martins from 1945 to 1976, in collaboration with Koos Malgas from 1964 onwards, the Owl House is a masterwork of visionary outsider art. The life of Helen Martins inspired “The Road to Mecca” by South African playwright Athol Fugard, which was later made as a film. Tourists drawn to Nieu-Bethesda to see the Owl House have revived the fortunes of the town. (South African Tourism, CC BY 2.0)

Hole in the Wall, a rock formation in the shallow waters of Coffee Bay beach on the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. The hole in this intertidal island, made of layers of sandstone and shale, was broken through by the force of waves over millennia. In isiXhosa, Hole in the Wall is called esiKhaleni, “place of noise”, from the reverberating of waves crashing between its rock walls. (Pieter Edelman, CC BY NC-ND)

The Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) Public Library was opened in 1902. The building is a lovely example of Victorian Gothic architecture, with its terracotta facade manufactured in England. The statue of Britain’s Queen Victoria out front was made from Sicilian marble. (South African Tourism, CC BY 2.0)

Rolling grasslands in the central Transkei, near the village of Qunu in the eastern region of the Eastern Cape. Qunu is the birthplace of South African statesman Nelson Mandela. (Rodger Bosch, Media Club South Africa)

The lighthouse, pyramid and mosaic in the Donkin Reserve in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth). The reserve is four hectares of green space off Belmont Terrace overlooking the city. It was set aside for the people of Gqeberha in perpetuity by Sir Rufane Donkin, acting governor of the Cape Colony from 1820 to 1821.
Donkin named the city after his wife Elizabeth, who had died in Meerut, India in 1818. The stone pyramid bears an inscription to her: “In memory of one of the most perfect of human beings, who has given her name to the Town below.”
While the pyramid and lighthouse were built in the 1800s, the mosaic was created in the 1990s. It visually tells the history of the people of Gqeberha and the Eastern Cape. (6000.co.za, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Storms River Bridge in the Tsitsikamma region of the Eastern Cape, with the Baviaanskloof Mountains in the distance. (Graeme Williams, Media Club South Africa)

The Etosha salt pan on the Ekuma River in the Kalahari Basin region of northern Namibia is a 120-kilometre (75-mile) dry lakebed in Etosha National Park. About 16,000 years ago, as the last ice age ended and ice sheets were melting across the northern hemisphere, a wetter climate in southern Africa filled Etosha Lake. Today the Kalahari is an arid desert and Etosha pan rarely covered with even a thin sheet of water. This image was captured by the International Space Station in June 2005. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Richat Structure near Ouadane in central Mauritania is known as the Eye of the Sahara. This magnificent 40-kilometre-wide dome is the result of deep and ancient erosion of a long-dead volcano. Click image for a larger view. (Axelspace Corporation, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Estuaries – where the waters of seas and rivers mix – on the northwestern coast of Madagascar, a large African island in the Indian Ocean. The Mozambique Channel (top) separates Madagascar from the southeastern coast of Africa. The Betsiboka River, which flows into Bombetoka Bay (upper left), leaves striking red floodplain sediments. Mahajamba Bay (right) is fed by several rivers including the Mahajamba and Sofia. Like the Betsiboka, the floodplains of these rivers contain reddish sediments eroded from their basins upstream. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Glaciers and snow top Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. A dormant volcano with three cones, Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa. From the base to the top of the mountain is about about 4,900 metres (16,100 feet). The peak lies at 5,895 metres (19,341 feet) above sea level. This image was captured by an Expedition 14 crewmember on board the International Space Station in April 2007. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

A night view of northern Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean Sea captured by the International Space Station in September 2016. The lights of the city of Cairo and settlements southwards along the Nile River can be clearly seen. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa Johnson, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Al-Jawf Oasis in eastern Libya photographed by the crew of the International Space Station in February 2017. The large circles in the desert sand are crops cultivated under center-pivot irrigation systems. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa Johnson, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ceuta is a Spanish city of some 85,000 people built on a narrow strip of Africa stretching into the western Mediterranean Sea. It lies on the southern coast of the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean. This enclave of Spain in Morocco is 14 kilometres by sea from the Spanish mainland. About half the city’s population is Moroccan. Ceuta and Melilla are Spain’s two territories on the African mainland. Ceuta has a long history as a strategic trade and military point, going back to its origins in the fifth century BCE as the Carthaginian city Abyla. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Islands and coral reefs on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea, a small country in eastern North Africa, in an image taken by a crewmember aboard the International Space Station during Expedition 13, in April 2006. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Freetown, an important West African port city and the capital of Sierra Leone, captured by Sentinel 2A satellite on 28 March 2016. Its harbour, the centre of the city’s economy, lies in the estuary of the Sierra Leone River and is one of the largest natural deep-water harbours in the world. The city of Freetown was founded in 1792 by freed African-American slaves. Click image for a larger view. (Antti Lipponen, CC BY 2.0)

A false-colour composite satellite image of the rivers, coast and islands of Guinea-Bissau. Infrared, red and blue light wavelengths bring out details of the complex patterns of the country’s shallow coastal waters, where silt carried by the Geba and other rivers washes out into the Atlantic Ocean. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa/USGS EROS Data Center, CC BY 2.0)

A view of the twin Congo capitals, facing each other across the Congo River. In this 2003 photo taken from the International Space Station, the smaller city of Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, is at upper left. The much larger grey area at lower left is Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The cities lie at the point where the Congo River becomes navigable upstream, widening to the east into Pool Malebo – previously named, in honour of himself, “Stanley Pool” by the brutal 19th century British-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who murderously prospected the region on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa Earth Observatory, CC BY 2.0)

Dakar, Senegal‘s capital city. This arrow-shaped peninsula is the westernmost point of the African continent. Click image for a larger view. (Antti Lipponen, CC BY 2.0)

The White Nile and Blue Nile rivers meet in the city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Here they form the great Nile River, which then flows north through Egypt to Cairo and empties into the Mediterranean Sea. In this image taken in the 2005 dry season, the still-flowing White Nile is at left, and the nearly dry Blue Nile curves at right. The source of the White Nile, near the equator in Uganda, produces a nearly constant flow throughout the year. The Blue Nile, by contrast, rises from the highlands of Ethiopia where it is fed by the rainfall of summer monsoons, producing floods in autumn but drying out in the spring. The scars of rainy season floodplains can be clearly seen on the banks of both rivers. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Created by rapidly erupting lava 31-million years ago, the Simien Mountains in northern Ethiopia, near Gondar in the Amhara region, look like a map of Middle Earth. The mountains are highest part of the Ethiopian Highlands, and surrounded by a steep, ragged escarpment with dramatic vertical cliffs, pinnacles, and rock spires – scenery that draws international tourists. Their basalt volcanic rock is more than three kilometres thick. The world’s only other mountains formed in this way, by massive floods of lava, are South Africa’s Drakensberg range. Ethiopia’s Simien National Park has been awarded Unesco World Heritage status for its “outstanding universal value” to humanity, which rivals that of Colorado’s Grand Canyon. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Sunglint illuminates the great Okavango delta in the Kalahari Desert region of Botswana, in a photo taken from the International Space Station in June 2014. The bright line of the Okavango River shows the annual summer flood advancing from the well-watered Angolan Highlands (upper margin) to the delta. These floodwaters slowly seep across the 150 kilometres of the delta, feeding forests and wetlands until they reach its lower margin in the middle of winter. Most of the river’s water is used up by the forests, or evaporates in the dry air. Only two percent of the water finally exits the delta. Okavango delta wetland supports high biodiversity in the middle of the otherwise semiarid Kalahari Desert, and is now one of the most famous tourist sites in Africa. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Brukkaros Mountain, a four-kilometre-wide extinct volcano rising out of the desert in the ǁKaras Region of southern Namibia. Unlike most volcanoes, Brukkaros was formed by a single event. Eighty million year ago a rising plug of superheated magma met groundwater, causing a massive explosion and creating the mountainous crater. Click image for a larger view. (Nasa, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Star trails curve over the massif of the Waterberg Mountains in a time-lapse night shot taken from the Tlopi Tented Camp in Marakele National Park, Limpopo province. The surface of Tlopi Dam can be seen in the foreground. (Martin Heigan, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Graffiti captured by a trail runner on Table Mountain’s Tafelberg Road near Cape Town. (JB Dodane, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Water floods through the opened sluice gates of the Grootdraai Dam near Standerton in Mpumalanga. (Jan Truter, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The coffins of those slain in the Langa Massacre of 21 March 1985. Twenty-five years to the day after the infamous Sharpeville Massacre, in which 69 people were killed, police opened fire on a crowd of people on their way to attend a funeral in Langa, Uitenhage, in the Eastern Cape. At least 20 people were killed. Today the 21st of March is commemorated as Human Rights Day, a public holiday. The United Nations marks 21 March as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In Namibia, South Africa’s northern neighbour, it’s Independence Day.   (UN Photo, CC BY-NC-ND)

Stained glass in the famous Regina Mundi Church in Soweto shows scenes from the township’s – and South Africa’s – liberation history. (Willem van Valkenburg, CC BY 2.0)

The Cosmopolitan building and a mural of Jan van Riebeeck in the Maboneng inner-city regeneration precinct in downtown Johannesburg. The Cosmopolitan was built in 1899, when the mining town was just 13 years old. (Adamina, CC BY 2.0)

An Nguni cow on the beach at Morgan’s Bay in the Wild Coast region of the Eastern Cape. Ngunis, a breed of Zebu cattle, are famous for their uniquely patterned colourful hides. (Gareth Photo, CC BY-NC-ND)

Quiver trees – “kokerboom” in Afrikaans – at sunrise in the Richtersveld National Park, in the far north of the Northern Cape. The Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape is one of South Africa’s nine Unesco World Heritage Sites. (Appalachian Dreamer, CC BY-NC 2.0)

An aerial view of circular crop fields watered by centre-pivot irrigation systems near the small farming town of Jacobsdal in the western Free State, near the Northern Cape border. (Jean Boris Hamon, CC BY-NC-ND)

A section of the Linton Panel, one of the richest examples of Stone Age San Bushman rock art, in South Africa’s Iziko National Museum in Cape Town. (H Bechen, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Big cat kittens but heads over a toy at the Cheetah Experience carnivore sanctuary near Bloemfontein in the Free State. At left is a caracal kitten, and at right a leopard kitten. Things will change. Grown caracals weigh, at the most, 18 kilograms. Adult male leopards can be as large as 60 kilograms. Adult domestic cats are only four to five kilograms. (Chris Parker, CC BY-SA 2.0)

A replica of a human skull on display at the Sterkfontein Museum in northeastern Gauteng, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. Important fossils of hominin species going back millions of years – the relatives and possible ancestors of modern humans – have been found in the nearby Sterkfontein Caves and other sites in the region. (Andrew Moore, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The clouds and lightning of a summertime thunderstorm over Johannesburg. The Brixton Tower is at right, and the buildings of the city’s old central business district towards the left. (Derek Keats, CC BY 2.0)

A satellite image of Cape Town’s Theewaterskloof Dam in early February 2018 shows the seriousness of the city’s drought. After three successive dry years, the dam, which supplies half of Cape Town’s water, was at only 13% capacity. (Antti Lipponen, CC BY 2.0)

The Young Vaal Eagles under-14 football team train on a field near Deneysville, a town on the banks of the Vaal Dam in the Free State. (John Hogg, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Holidaymakers on the way to the beach in the seaside resort of Strand (Afrikaans for “beach”) on the eastern shore of False Bay in the Western Cape in December 2018. (Steve Crane, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A 1988 image of young South African coal miners, little more than children, taken by legendary photographer Peter Magubane for the United Nations. (Peter Magubane, CC BY-NC-ND)

South Africa and the island of Madagascar are the only landmasses visible on the planet in this composite image captured by six orbits of the Nasa-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership spacecraft on 9 April 2015. Tropical cyclone Joalane can be seen over the Indian Ocean. (Nasa, CC BY 2.0)

Beauty Maswanganyi is the shop manager and a contributing artist at Piece, an enterprise in Johannesburg specialising in indigenous art and craft objects from around southern Africa. (John Hogg, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A lucky shot of a honey badger carrying her pup, in the Kgalagadi Tranfrontier Park region of the Northern Cape. The honey badger is one of the most fearless and intelligent carnivores on the planet. They live in fiercely defended underground burrows, so their young are rarely seen. (Derek Keats, CC BY 2.0)

Snapped in 1960 and rare in its record of black people’s daily lives during apartheid, this archive photo shows a fisherman in Saldanha Bay on the west coast moving his sun-dried snoek indoors as rain approaches. (Dr Mary Gillham Archive Project, CC BY 2.0)

Coal-fired power stations outside Emalahleni, a town previously known as Witbank, in Mpumalanga. Emalahleni means “place of coal” in South Africa’s Nguni languages. According to European Union research, the Emalahleni region has some of the most polluted air in the world, with chromium and barium levels higher than instruments could record. (Jane Flowers, CC BY 2.0)

Houses and gardens in Kleinmond, a small town in the Kogelberg Nature Reserve on the Atlantic coast some 90 kilometres east of Cape Town. (Kevin Rechts, CC BY-NC 2.0)

A still from More Sweetly Play the Dance, a large-scale 14-minute video projection by acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge, at the Zeitz Mocca museum of contemporary African art in Cape Town. (Hans Olofsson, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)