A Walk in the Dark

This afternoon I saw an advert on CNN promoting South Africa as a tourist destination. The clip invited visitors to enjoy the beautiful beaches in the Eastern Cape, explore the traditions of South Africa’s many different cultures and get the thrill of seeing the Big Five up close in the wild. So far so good.

But the advert also recommended that tourists “go on a walk at night that you will never forget” to see a night sky like nowhere else in the World.

While there might be truth in that (after all, there is a reason why South Africa was recently chosen to host the Square Kilometer Array) everyone in South Africa knows that this recommendation violates the single most important rule for living and visiting the country:

Do not walk outside after dark. No matter how small the distance, do not try your luck in a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. Drive.

Why the film makers, who were clearly not South African and/or completed detached from reality, thought it was a good idea to encourage tourists to violate the single most important rule for safety in South Africa, is an absolute mystery to me…