I spent a few weeks there about 10 years ago. It was one of my all-time favorite trips for a number of reasons, but as much as I loved it, I would absolutely NOT bring anyone with me if I ever visit again. It's an extremely dangerous place, and Harbaugh is putting his players and staff at risk. If I were the AD or President at UM I would put the kibosh on it.
I hear it's even worse now than it was ten years ago. At the time I went, Johannesburg and Cape Town were #1 and #2 murder capitals of the world. I stayed at the Johannesburg home of an NPR correspondent named Jason Beaubien who had been sent there with his family to live. This was an american reporter and he lived in a compound, basically: Twelve foot high walls, a man trap to get in through the heavy front gate, a security guard, automatic iron bars at the front door of the house and master bedroom that were activated by a panic button. The first day I was there, I opened up the newspaper and there was a story about an Afrikaans farmer, (dutch), who was being arraigned for taking one of his black workers out to the plain and throwing him to the lions, because after he'd fired him the guy came back to retrieve his pots, which were his only possession. He'd been picked clean by lions and then jackals, his niece was able to identify his skeletal remains because of his teeth. The picture of the Afrikaans on the front page was of him walking into the courtroom holding up both middle fingers with a smile on his face. On the same page there was an article about how there was no link between HIV and AIDS. There was a quote in the article from then Prime Minister Mbeki confirming his same belief.
It is absolutely one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, desperate places I've ever been. Even the animals are desperate. Every year a large number of Mozambican laborers try to sneak into the country, and trek across the Kruger Preserve so they can work for $7 a day in the Soweto mines. Many of them end up in the stomachs of lions. I've seen slums in Kenya and Mumbai, none of them compare to the ones I saw just outside of Cape Town. There are no "poor but happy" people there. They are poor, angry and violent, and they have a deep seeded bitterness and a desperation that means they'd kill you for a small amount of money.
All that being said, I'd go back there in heartbeat, swim with the penguins at the tip of Cape Town, feed the monkeys, stay at the safari camps in the Kruger, eat delicious game I could never eat anywhere else, visit the wine estates and listen to a capella groups sing the most divinely soulful music I've ever heard. I'd do all that with the knowledge that I was taking a risk being there, though, and there is no way I'd brings kids, wives or someone with whom a parent entrusted me to keep safe.