South Africa vacation proves instructive for kids, delightful for all

The Cape is part of the Table Mountain National Park, an extraordinarily biodiverse habitat

In 1993-94, during a year with the United Nations Peacekeeping mission in Mozambique, I discovered that neighbouring South Africa was the ideal spot for rest and recreation. Those were heady days, when a new South Africa was born from the ashes of apartheid, delivered by Nelson Mandela. For us in Mozambique, there was a special connect: Mandela was the “special friend” of Graca Machel, the charismatic widow of the first Mozambican president, Samora Machel (they were later to marry).

So when my wife, Sonia, and ten-year-old, Meera, buttonholed me in March and demanded to know where we were travelling last