Destination Evolution
Sun City, South Africa’s Golden City: Sun City or Sin City?
H
ome to four luxurious hotels, two Gary Player-designed golf courses and an artificial surfing beach, Sun City is South Africa’s (wilder) answer to Disney World. But those faux gold finishes are built on a crooked foundation. In the late 1970s, hotelier Sol Kerzner took advantage of apartheid-era rules to establish casinos in several supposedly independent Black homelands such as Bophuthatswana (gambling was outlawed in white South Africa at the time). Once built, Kerzner paid eye-watering sums to international musicians (Frank Sinatra, Queen, The Beach Boys) to bust the international sanctions imposed on apartheid South Africa and visit Sun City. Gary Player, meanwhile, attracted a stellar field to what was then the world’s richest golf tournament. When apartheid ended, Kerzner used “a working relationship” with Nelson Mandela to ensure the sun never set on Sun City (Gambling in the Bophuthatswana Sun: Sun City and the political economy of a Bantustan casino:1965-1994 Van der Merwe, Nicola Sarah. Image credits: bushbaby.travel, southafrica.to, sudafricasafaris. com, jets.com 32 | ABA Publications | Africa TRAVEL | May 2021
