Sun City

Sun City, a huge entertainment complex 160km/100mi northwest of Johannesburg, draws a daily 25,000 visitors, who travel from Johannesburg by air or by car. It consists of four hotel complexes, of which the fairytale palace called the Lost City is the most exclusive, and offers every conceivable facility for the entertainment of its visitors, including cinemas, discotheques, a huge range of water sports and a golf course of international standing. There is a large stadium used for sporting events and pop concerts. This "Las Vegas of southern Africa" lies on the territory of the former homeland of Bophuthatswana, surrounded by lush green parkland - an area which in 1977 was still a barren savanna steppe.

The concept of Sun City seems to have proved itself. In recent years its hotels have had occupancy rates of 80%, a figure that other luxury hotels can only hope for. In the days when Bophuthatswana was (at any rate in theory) independent of South Africa, well-to-do South Africans flocked from their relatively prudish country, in which gambling was strictly prohibited, to the more relaxed atmosphere of this pleasure city over the border, and Sun City has continued to flourish since Bophuthatswana was incorporated in the new South Africa.