Around South Africa, driest winds blow? (8)
I believe the answer is:
disaster
'blow?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'around south africa driest winds' is the wordplay.
'around' indicates putting letters inside.
'south africa' becomes 'sa' (abbreviation).
'winds' indicates anagramming the letters.
'driest' anagrammed gives 'dister'.
'sa' placed within 'dister' is 'DISASTER'.
(Other definitions for disaster that I've seen before include "Tragedy of asterids" , "Heavy blow" , "Catastrophic occurrence" , "Terrible calamity" , "Great tradegy or cataclysm" .)