Port Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela Bay

A Working Port And Industrial City On A Warm Bay That Most Visitors Use Only As The Airport For Addo, With A Long Swimmable Beachfront, The Donkin Heritage Trail Through 1820 Settler Streets, And Townships Whose Place In The Struggle Is As Central As Soweto'S And Considerably Less Visited New Brighton, Red Location And The Graves Of The Eastern Cape Leadership · Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape

Port Elizabeth - officially Gqeberha since 2021 - is the city almost every visitor to Addo flies into and almost none of them stops in. It is a working port and motor-industry town on Algoa Bay with a long warm swimmable beachfront, which is more than most South African cities can offer, and a hill of 1820 settler streets above the harbour that the Donkin heritage trail runs through. The part that matters most is the part visitors skip: the Eastern Cape townships produced a very large share of the liberation leadership, New Brighton and the surrounding areas were central to the struggle in ways that are as significant as Soweto's, and the graves and sites are here. The Red Location Museum was built to tell that story and has been closed for years in a dispute with the community around it, which this row states rather than listing it as an attraction that visitors can actually go and see.

On Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape, with the Donkin heritage trail in the old town and Hobie Beach on the bay front, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa

A city. The beachfront, the promenade and the Donkin trail are open ground at any hour, with lifeguards on the patrolled beaches in daylight through the season. The Nelson Mandela Bay art museum, the Bayworld complex and the smaller museums keep daylight hours and most close one day a week. RED LOCATION MUSEUM HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR YEARS in a dispute with the surrounding community over service delivery, and should not be planned around. Township and struggle-history tours are run by local guides and are booked a day ahead, which is the right way to see that side of the city. The port itself is working and not a visitor area. Load-shedding affects the city as it does the rest of the country. The airport is ten minutes from the beachfront and is the gateway for Addo an hour north; the city is MALARIA-FREE.

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