Tailor made holidays: Cape Town tours about Nelson Mandela's life are poignant

Groups planning tailor made holidays to South Africa's Western Cape could consider travelling through many places that were important in the life of Nobel Prize-winner Nelson Mandela.

Any tour taking in sites of momentous occasions in Mandala's life will have to pay a visit to Robben Island, where the future president was imprisoned for 18 years.

Cape Town Tourism Board has recommended that travellers in the city should see a poignant piece of public art during their tailor made holiday.

"On 27 August 2008, a huge bronze statue of a triumphant Nelson Mandela with his fist in the air was unveiled at the entrance to the Groot Drakenstein Prison and it stands on the very spot where Mandela took his first steps as a free man," they said.

There is another prison - Pollsmoor - that people can visit, but any tour will have elements of great hope as well, usually ending at Tuinhuis, the official Cape Town residence of the president.