Poverty Tours In Black Townships Cause Mixed Reactions In S. Africa

Cape Town is hot. And I’m not talking about the weather, which is coastal temperate. Michael Jackson might be buying a house here. Madonna, too! Rumor has it that Cher just bought a place. Rich Germans are snatching up property like it’s discounted schnitzel.

And people aren’t just moving here, they are visiting in droves. South Africa is one of the world’s fastest-growing tourist destinations. Why all the fuss? It’s a beautiful city, the exchange rate is good, and apartheid has come to an end … or has it?

At the Cape Town Tourist Bureau, I found agencies offering tours of the nearby black townships. These impoverished districts for once-oppressed blacks have become one of South Africa’s hottest new tourist attractions. The townships are home to about a million people.

When I got back to my youth hostel, I spoke with the receptionist about this.

As a “well-to-do” white, she had lived in Cape Town her entire life and never ventured into a township. She agreed that “poverty tourism” sounded twisted but told me about Cinga, a man from the townships who offered guided tours of his own neighborhood. She said some travelers had gone with him and highly recommended the unorthodox tour.

I rang Cinga and he picked me up an hour later in his reasonably new Toyota Camry. He was a young-looking 40-year-old with a bright tie, knitted sweater vest and warm smile. Cinga had gone to college after graduating from a high school that only had enough places for one of every 50 kids.

We drove to the neighborhood where he grew up in Langa township. In the middle of the day everyone seemed to be walking around on the street. I asked if it was some kind of parade.

“No, just unemployment,” Cinga explained. “Nearly 60 percent don’t have jobs.”

Most of the buildings were one- and two-room concrete structures, many looking like they’d been recently looted. We entered one, and I shook hands with all the adults sitting around the entrance. They had seen white tourists before but hadn’t been jaded by the experience … yet. Cinga asked permission, then showed me one of the rooms. It was about the size of a health club sauna. There were three single beds crammed into it.

“Three people can live in this little room?” I asked.

“No,” Cinga told me, “three entire families.”

On the way out, I saw a tourist mini-bus stopped on the road. White heads were peering out of the windows, half-hidden behind their telephoto lenses. They were snapping photos of some children playing a pick-up game of cricket in the street. After the cameras stopped clicking, the van drove off.

I believe many of the tourists come to the townships to help ease their apprehensions about visiting a country still divided by color. By acknowledging the poverty with their presence, they want to distinguish themselves from the white South Africans who simply ignore it. The problem is, with mass tourism, such visits end up more like a big safari outing.

“Some of these tours spend the whole morning wine tasting at the nearby vineyards and then come and look at the poor people when they’re drunk,” Cinga said.

“Feel like playing cricket?” he asked me, changing the subject and motioning toward the kids in the street. I nodded yes, although I hadn’t the slightest idea how to play. Cinga spoke with the kids and the next thing I knew I was holding a board and standing in front of a wooden crate. The kids were laughing because I was using a baseball-style stance - probably as funny looking to a cricket player as it was to my entire second grade T-ball team.

The 8-year-old “bowler” took a running start and then, with a straight-armed round-house release that looked like it made his shoulder pop right out of the socket, he flung a ball toward me at roughly the speed of sound. I took a swing and missed as the ball hit a small stone in the road and ricocheted into my shin. Would I get to walk to first, wherever that was?

No, I was out, and the kids were high-fiving the “bowler.” Cinga explained in a consoling, fatherly way that I had an “LBW” (A Leg Before Wicket). I had no idea what a “wicket” was, but there was general agreement that I’d put my leg before one, and God only knows what other cricket rules I may have violated. It was time to move on.

In a neighboring township, we stopped in an area with squatter shacks as far as I could see. Rusty beer cans, sheet metal and cardboard were held together with staples, chewing gum and some dirt mixed with spit.

The strangest thing about the community, at least the part we visited, was the beautiful asphalt and concrete roads - much nicer than most residential streets in the U.S. Cinga said the roads and electricity had been partially paid for with foreign aid. The aid agency didn’t know how to distribute the aid money, so they built a road and installed electricity. Never mind the cruel irony that the residents couldn’t afford cars or a single electrical appliance.

Later in the day, we dropped by a local bar for a cool one. There, I met Jose, a repairman. How did he feel about the poverty tourism?

First, he clarified - even though I hadn’t asked - that he was “colored,” or racially mixed. And although he worked in the township, he came from a slightly more affluent “colored” neighborhood that didn’t attract tourists because it wasn’t poor enough.

“I don’t mind if the people get off the bus and learn about our way of life,” he told me. “If they want to spend some of their tourist dollars here, even better. But to drive by and take pictures makes us feel like animals.”

On the way back, we stopped at Cinga’s house, which turned out to be in the “wealthy” part of Langa. The houses looked fundamentally the same as the other concrete structures, but these had nicer curtains and Mercedes and BMWs parked in the driveways. Despite the poverty around them, many black professionals who grew up in the townships have no desire to move to the suburbs, which are generally white. There’s a sense of community here, and, as Cinga said, there’s no place like home.

I didn’t make any profound sociological discoveries on the tour. I just saw a different side of Cape Town and a different way of life. The “poverty tourism” shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. Bus tours of Harlem have been popular with visitors to New York City for years.