Township Tourism booming in South Africa

Instead, the tourist authority is distributing 100,000 leaflets with street-wise tips and contact phone numbers to boost safety this summer, which runs December through March in this Southern Hemisphere country.

Many tour operators also now stick to one easily policed route rather than taking visitors through densely populated shack areas, and have stopped evening visits to shebeens, or taverns, according to Khanyiso Kenqa of Cape Capers.

Kenqa, who lives in Langa, insists that visitors are safe because the community wants the tours, and thieves who prey on visitors risk the wrath of "street committees."

"Townships earn a lot from tourism. We won't let them get away with such things," he declared.

But the low-risk approach carries the risk that many of the tours now have a sterile, packaged feel.

Rahel Hager, a visitor from Switzerland, said she found a guided stroll around the "informal settlement" of Imizamo Yethu in the tourist village of Hout Bay, more fun and more informative than the air-conditioned minibus tour of bigger townships.

But all such visits are likely to provide an insight into South Africa's race relations that the foreigner would otherwise miss.

Many tours begin in the District Six Museum - testimony of the brutal clearance of nonwhites from their vibrant, downtown multiracial community and their removal, according to color, to the Cape Flats townships.

Apartheid authorities used the "pencil test" to determine the color. If it stuck in a person's hair, he or she was classed as black. If it slipped through, they were mixed race and had more privileges, Kenqa tells a stunned German couple.

The minibus passes through Gugulethu, where the streets still have the prefix NY to a number. "Native Yard," explains Kenqa. He points out the monument dedicated to Amy Biehl, an American student who was murdered while working with disadvantaged communities in 1993 by a black mob in an outburst of racial tension. Her four black killers were pardoned by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to heal the wounds of apartheid and, more poignantly, were forgiven and embraced by the Biehl family who themselves became an international symbol of reconciliation.

Kenqa goes on to discuss Tik, a highly addictive synthetic drug that has infiltrated the mixed-race community, in particular. Gangs such as "The Americans" and "Ghetto Kids" fight for control of the drug.

Next to a disused power station in Athlone, makeshift tents are half buried in bushy scrubland. "A circumcision village," points out the guide as he explains the ritual - including six days in the wild without food or water - marking the passage from boyhood to manhood in his Xhosa culture.

In Langa, visitors are invariably invited to see a vibrant local school and one of the hostels that housed men who worked in Cape Town and were separated from their families in rural areas by apartheid's policies.

A dorm where three men once lived is currently home to an extended family of 10 - an indication of contemporary housing shortages.

But Pumeza Cakasajo said she didn't mind the invasion of strangers into the tiny room. "It's a good experience for people to come here and we know the community benefits at the end of the day," said the 26-year-old as others in her family continued watching the small crackly television as if oblivious to the intrusion.

Nearby, modest new houses stand testimony to the government's determination to replace the hostels - and ultimately the shacks - with decent homes.

Around the corner is the familiar sight of a woman sitting in a doorway having her hair braided. Farther down the road comes the smell of barbecued meat and the sight of market traders removing fur from sheep's' heads to prepare the popular boiled dish fondly known as a "Smiley."

Ndaba, the herbalist in Langa, claims he inherited his skills and knowledge from his grandparents, from the other side of their grave.

He displays a modern business savvy, with a small sign in his store displaying charges for tour groups to visit. But he prefers to emphasize the folkloric.

With many South Africans still visiting traditional healers, Ndaba's customers include locals who want to ward away evil spirits and men suffering from impotency, he says.

He indicates the horn of a springbok deer with its tip cut off. When filled with potion, it is the equivalent of the suppository, he gesticulates.

"It's very effective. The medicine goes straight to the kidney. It's our injection."

Among the small group of foreigners, there are no takers.

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