Sun City 6-14-86 A Luxury Resort

By Bob Van Leer
(Sun City, Bophuthatswana, June 14, 1986) - Today was a day of relaxation. The only scheduled events were lunch and a tour of the facilities. In the morning I took a tour of a game reserve near here, in Bophuthatswana national park. This was different from Wildlife Safari in Winston. These are wild animals in a preserve that extends for many miles. I never did get a figure on the size of the park.

The tour was similar to what we might find while hunting at home, only with more game. A gray hump almost hidden in the brush could be a rhinoceros or a large rock (it was a rhino). Look a thousand yards across a stream and there are two giraffe and a few zebra. This was a binocular trip, not for cameras unless you had a long, long lens. We saw 14 kinds of animals from monkeys to rhinos with a lot of different antelopes. But the cutest by far was a baby rhino with its mother.
  Sun City is a Las Vegas south: far, far south. It was developed starting six years ago by a South African impresario, taking advantage of the semi-independent status of Bophuthatswana. Gambling isn't allowed in South Africa, but it is here. This is a luxury complex of three hotels. Ours was constructed only 18 months ago. It has 900 rooms in three units. The gaming and entertainment facilities include a 7000 seat auditorium being used tonight for a boxing match (and all seats are sold out).
  Tomorrow we leave at the very early hour of 4:30 a.m. for the drive back to Johannesburg and then a flight to Victoria Falls where we will spend the next couple of days. We will be in Victoria Falls on June 16, the day everyone around here is waiting for with apprehension, the 10th anniversary of the Soweto riots. We will find out soon if the country is to go up in flames.
  So far the State of Emergency has been the most evident in actions against news media. Two newspapers were taken off the street, two international camera crews arrested, at least one international news agency forced to censor its reports and a cameraman given deportation orders. It is one thing to talk about press censorship, but quite another to experience it.
  I now have about 15 rolls of exposed film. There is a serious question as to whether I will be allowed to take it out of the country. Our trip to Victoria Falls shows how much of Southern Africa depends on South Africa. We are a party of 15 going to Victoria Falls.
  We could not be going if we were not in South Africa first. If air service is cut off from the U. S. and Europe to South Africa, a lot of people not directly involved at all are going to get hurt and the U. S. Congress should consider some foreign aid for these non-combatants.