my oldest daughter and her husband (the college professors) are being sent by their college to capetown in march to try to set up some sort of an exchange student program. with a college there. It just got finalized yesterday and happens in march. They are only there for a week and most of that time will be spend working, but they will have some spare time. They are looking for a good cheap safe place to stay and are wondering what things are a do not miss seeing. neither have been in africa before.
suggestions from anyone??

Cheap Safe place is a contradiction in terms in Africa.
As for things to see, The Market, The Garden Tour, The Wine Country Tour. The Cheeta place. The Mountain.And so on.

thanks to all that helped - i forwarded all the info to them

The penguins, Seal Island (they might get lucky and see a great white launch from the sea like we did) and Robben Island too.

Sounds as if you are talking about an exchange program with the University of Cape Town. If that is so, then your daughter&husband will probably want a hotel in nearby Newlands, Rondebosch or even the next mini-suburb over, Wynberg. Google either and you'll find quite a decent place in Newlands, the Vineyard Hotel.

Right almost on the campus at UCT is the Rhodes Memorial that is worth a look. It is along the contour path that is a wonderful walk from there all the way to the spectacular Kirstenbosch Gardens a great and easy walk of about 2 hours of so that runs at the mid-level of Table Mountain. And then good to have lunch there on Saturday or Sunday if they don't want to go out of town.

My guess is their hosts at UCT or wherever can recommend a place to stay for them. In any case, they will need a car and can very easily rent at the visitor-friendly Cape Town airport. Will need to google various addresses before leaving as they will have to get on the N2 highway just out of the airport to drive into whereever they are staying in Cape Town. (doors locked!)

If they want to stay in downtown Cape Town itself, not an impossible drive from UCT, a good business hotel with decent rates (as opposed to those on Victoria Wharf, the high rent shopping area, is the Townhouse, but it's been years since I regularly lunched there and even stayed once.

On the day they do not do the contour path or if it's raining (and this is the season), they might venture out to the wine country and look at lunching (book in advance) at Boschendaal Estate which is lovely with a brilliant lunch, taking in some other wine estates, too. Not all are open on Sundays. See if there are any festivals to drop in on, a memorable one is the Witblitz Festival at Wooster where mampoer (peach distillate) is drunk right out of the copper downtube from the still!

Naturally, as academics, they will want to tour Robbin Island in Table Bay to see where the ANC and PAC prisoners were held.

Plenty of good places to eat in the Cape, including some in Rondebosch, but others will require the car.

Best of the Season, Tim