The mistake everyone makes
Driving from Cape Town to Kruger. It's eighteen-plus hours of driving through country that isn't the point of your trip, and you lose two days either end to a motorway. Fly it: two and a half hours with one connection, and your ten-day trip keeps eight days of actually being somewhere.
The standard 10 to 14 day shape
Cape Town and the Western Cape: six to eight days. The city, Table Mountain, the Winelands, the Whale Coast, and maybe the Garden Route start. Then fly to the Kruger gateway: Nelspruit, Hoedspruit, or Skukuza.
Safari: three to four nights. Self-drive SANParks or a private lodge. One flight, two bases, no wasted days.
How to fly it
Book the Cape Town to Kruger leg the day you book your international flights. FlySafair and Airlink run the corridor; a single connection in Johannesburg is normal. Don't try to fly Cape Town to Kruger and safari on the same day. Land the night before at a gateway town, Nelspruit, Hazyview, or Hoedspruit, and enter the park fresh.
The realistic trim
If you have under ten days, drop something. Don't compress the Cape and the safari into a sprint. Either do Cape Town plus a malaria-free Eastern Cape safari (closer, shorter flight) in eight days, or do Cape Town well in a week and leave Kruger for next time. South Africa rewards depth over a checklist.
The open-jaw version
Into Cape Town, out of Johannesburg. It's usually the same price as a return, and it buys you the Cape at one end and the safari at the other with no backtracking. This is the structure most ten-to-fourteen-day Cape-plus-safari trips should use, and most people don't realise it exists.
Where safari sits in the trip
Don't put it last. A lot of people bolt safari onto the end, fly home tired from the bush. Put it in the middle. After Cape Town and the Winelands, the quiet of the lowveld lands differently, and a few days of early mornings and no screens resets you for the flight home. The Cape first, the bush second, a night in Johannesburg for the Apartheid Museum on the way out.