These pictures come from a time that already seems very far away in South Africa.
The country was irresistable to Europeans, once they had the power to take it. This is the Klip River, a branch of the Vaal.
Blacks once worked the Transvaal farms. Now, with round bales and other kinds of mechanized production, workers are hardly needed at all.
Montana? No: near Chrissiesmeer, east of Ermelo.
Africans were thrown back into reserves where the land was despoiled, notwithstanding soil-erosion measures that came too little, too late.
Meanwhile, the British needed a way-station to India. Here: the highway south to Cape Agulhas, the true "southpoint of Africa," around which ships sailed in the days before Suez.
Here's that "south point," Cape Agulhas or "needles."
Port Elizabeth is just east of Agulhas. The choice of a woman's name is explained by this somber plaque. It's history now: late in 2000, the city council voted to change the town's name to Nelson Mandela. Since then, it's been changed again, this time to the challenging Gqeberha.
As in the American South, White society was very religious. In this case the religion was that of the Dutch Reformed Church, housed in churches like this one at Wellington, northeast of Cape Town.
Speaking of which, a cloudfall tumbles off the city's Table Mountain.
