South Africa, Day 5 by David Whetstone

This was Elizabeth Frances, Lady Donkin who died of fever, far away in India, in 1818 at the age of 27. Thanks to her grieving husband, on colonial duty here, Port Elizabeth exists in memory of her.

But that hardly seems appropriate, particularly since the town overlooks the sweeping Nelson Mandela Bay. Name changing committees are at work across South Africa and it seems likely Port Elizabeth will become Ibhayi.

Peter Stark, our charismatic guide and Port Elizabeth resident, tells of plans developed in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela Development Agency whose motto is: "The Spirit of Growth."

We can see the potential here for a really beautiful place to which tourists would flock. There are lovely beaches, a pleasant Market Square with imposing colonial architecture - although the library, guarded by Queen Victoria, is closed for refurbishment - and, in the restored Feather Market Hall (ostrich feathers being one of the export businesses of the early Victorian settlers), a magnificent refurbished organ.

But the place presents challenges. The harbour is cut off from the Donkin Reserve by some concrete walkways and a seaside flyover ("It's T. Dan Smith," remarks historian Bill Lancaster wryly). How to link them and, at the same time, link all the disparate peoples of this town?
Peter tells us about a proposed walk from bottom to top with artworks reflecting the story of South Africa. Call it the Freedom Walk, echoing Nelson Mandela's long walk to freedom, or the Century Walk: In 2018 Mandela will be 100 years old (and why shouldn't he make it?) and it will be 200 years since Lady Donkin's husband and the other settlers from England arrived.

On the lower reaches of the Donkin Reserve there will be an elaborate planting (more species of plant grow in South Africa, we are told, than in the whole of the northern hemisphere). There will be an amphitheatre for music, song and dance and every August there will be a festival dedicated to all the women who made the city.

Peggy ka Calata, the director of the Swallows Partnership in Eastern Cape whose brother was murdered in a notorious apartheid atrocity, suggested that the story of Lady Elizabeth could be regarded not as a colonial anachronism but as a symbol of love to which all could identify.

Also on Donkin Reserve and in time for the World Cup next year, a huge South African flag will fly, hopefully attracting the TV producers who will come to cover the tournament.

To anyone who witnessed major regeneration projects in Gateshead come to fruition, much of this has a familiar ring.

Port Elizabeth has a lot going for it. A new stadium has been built to accommodate World Cup matches (although, coincidentally, Port Elizabeth's own football team just got relegated) and further construction projects are helping it to buck the recession.

But there are complexities here that are way beyond those that confront England town planners. Later we take a trip to a museum unlike any you will find in the North East.

Red Location is a huge and architecture award-winning edifice in the township of New Brighton, a short car ride from Port Elizabeth. Built with funding from Sweden, where ANC leaders lived in exile, it tells the powerful story of the struggle against apartheid. To enter is to step back into a world of institutionalised racism and the horrors it wreaked on the black people who lived here.
Why Red Location? Because the corrugated steel of the township huts rusted red. Where did the steel come from? From the concentration camps built by the British to imprison their captives during the Boer War? It's not easy to walk anywhere in the Eastern Cape and feel proud - though maybe, one day, this will change.

Red Location brings a lump to my throat but also induces a queasy feeling for the township where many of the horrors took place still stands, at least in part, right outside. You are forced to negotiate the dirt tracks to get here, passing the people who still live in conditions of squalor.
Happy little children dance and play tig but they don't go inside Red Location. No need, really. You wonder what the people here felt when a huge and expensive museum was constructed right next door to their humble dwellings - where many of the heroes of the struggle were born.

Our guide around the museum, Vuiyisile Pandle, a gaunt man from whom all natural joy appears to have ebbed, reveals that he is fifth generation Red Location. In the museum's reconstruction of a township home, a stone's throw from the real thing, he explains how, in the one room, the parents would get the bed and all the children would sleep on the floor. Sometimes large families had to share.

Outside again it's hard not to gawp at the township homes which have become a kind of living exhibit, a perversion of the Beamish experience. One day soon, one hopes, these people will be re-housed in something more comfortable and sanitary - as is happening (though obviously not quickly enough) in township areas across Eastern Cape.

Here beauty and potential beauty co-exist with ugly reminders of what man can do to man. And not one word of resentment or abuse have we heard along the way. In fact, the smiles have been many and seemingly genuine. For the vast majority, the expectation of a better future is the very least that they deserve.