Today's South Africa has been called a laboratory for mankind: despite a famous legacy of racial division, it is a place where people of different social and cultural backgrounds are pioneering new ways of living together.

Cape Town is at the forefront of that movement; while the city was home to the national legislature that passed the policies of apartheid and while Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held for decades in a notorious prison just offshore at Robben Island, Mandela made his first public speech from the balcony of Cape Town's City Hall after being released in 1990. In a setting of magnificent splendor at the foot of Table Mountain, Cape Town is a city of stunning beauty and contrast, a place where Lexia students can aptly explore issues of social change, diversity, African culture, and the environment, among others.