Article: Bridget Hilton-Barber from FAIRLADY
Image: Images24/Rapport

The past two or three years have seen the rise of guided township tours, which include visits to restaurants, shebeens, craft markets, art centres and musical happenings – as well as apartheid symbols, like the Hector Peterson memorial in Soweto (he was the first victim of police gunfire on 16 June 1976) and Nelson Mandela’s first house in Vilikazi Street.

Wandi’s Place, a lively shebeen, has long been popular with travellers to Soweto, and the Siyuvile Information and Cultural Centre in Guguletu is becoming a regular tourist hub. But one of the most interesting new developments in township travel is the emergence of the guesthouse – and the chance to Spend a Night in a Township.

Visitors are now being invited to step down off the bus and meet the people. ‘Spend a night in free Soweto,’ says the brochure for Lolo’s B&B in Diepkloof, Soweto. ‘Experience township ubuntu,’ reads the ad in the Portfolio of Places 2002 bed and breakfast edition.

‘What we’re trying to do is give travellers the opportunity to gain an insight into township life,’ says Liz Westby-Nunn of Portfolio, ‘and to bring these places into mainstream tourism.

We were approached a few years ago by a group of determined mamas in Cape Town, who said they wanted to get involved in tourism. We’ve been working together ever since and, for the last two years, have featured a special section on townships.’ Portfolio has selected five hosts and their homes, and although ‘some of the accommodation is modest,’ says Liz, ‘the hosts are amazing people and their welcome is with arms wide open. These places have a strong sense of ubuntu, the tradition of African hospitality, and that’s what makes them so special.

‘We also subscribe to responsible tourism,’ says Liz, ‘and Portfolio promotes communities becoming actively involved in the tourism industry, because it provides a direct benefit to them.’

The prospect of a better life was certainly what inspired the dynamic Thope Lekau to start Kopanong B&B in Khayelitsha. The name means ‘where the world meets’ – and Thope’s small brick house has received plenty of visitors since it opened in 1999.There are two guest rooms here, with comfortable beds, bathrooms, towels and even a special Kopanong herbal bath. Among the guests who have stayed here is British MP Peter Hain.

Kopanong is near Khayelitsha’s very own Table Mountain – a large sand dune also known as Lookout Hill – which looks out across the sandy streets to the rugged cloud-covered Hottentots Holland Mountains beyond. The department of tourism has constructed wooden steps and a boardwalk to the top of the hill, and plans to develop a craft market at the foot – a further sign that township tourism is seen as a viable means of development for the community.

Also in Khayelitsha, Vicky’s B&B is testament to the tenacity of those who get involved in tourism. Despite having no bathroom and just a simple corrugated iron shack for a toilet, foreigners are flocking to Vicky’s. 'There were nine others when I was here,’ wrote Guardian travel journalist Paul Miles. ‘Eight of them were from a round-the-world cruise – not, you’d imagine, short of a bob or two. But they weren’t there to save money on accommodation; they wanted the “experience”.’

The said experience is pretty authentic township stuff. Vicky’s actually only has room for six – the extras are passed on to neighbours – and while there’s electricity and running cold water, you’ll have to bathe with a face cloth from a basin of water brought to your room, and if you want to hang your clothes in the wardrobe, you’ll find it’s already full of things.

Vicky herself has enough personality to make up for the lack of luxury, and her B&B even won an AA Accommodation Award. Her visitors also head across the road to the ironically named Waterfront, a corrugated iron and wood tavern that was once the site of the only water tap here for some 3 000 people. It just goes to show that simply playing pool and drinking beer with the locals is precisely what some travellers want.

While township travel is beginning to capture the imagination of foreign visitors, fear of crime remains a big deterrent (Portfolio and other tourism bodies recommend that people enter the township with recognised guides or tour operators) and white South Africans themselves are not embracing the trend with quite the same enthusiasm.

‘You are the first white South African to stay here,’ says Lolo Mabitsela, owner of Lolo’s B&B in Diepkloof, Soweto. Lolo has received journalists from the New York Times and visitors from all over the world – but no locals. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. What can I say? A night in Soweto has simply never had the same pull for me as, say, a night in Marakesh, but Lolo’s was friendly and fun and certainly put paid to all those stereotypes about being hijacked on the doorstep or having to dodge gunfire in the passage. Au contraire.

Lolo’s is in Diepkloof Extension (or Diepkloof Expensive, as it’s locally known), Soweto’s nicest suburb. This double-storey guesthouse could be straight out of Sandton. There are lace curtains, comfortable rooms (four; two en suite), a garden with roses, and even a Maltese poodle called Pinky.

‘One night with a middle-class black family can reveal much about life in South Africa after the end of apartheid,’ says Lolo’s brochure, and what it revealed to me is that, depending where you go, a night in Soweto is about as regular as it gets.

Lolo is a fine, upstanding member of the church and community and a delightful woman. As I tried to make my way through a spread of pap and meat stew, fried chicken, vegetables and salad, we talked about everything from unemployment and Aids to the best places to shop for household accessories. She also told me that I was the first person to stay with her and not finish their dinner.

Most of Lolo’s guests come here before or after a tour with Jimi’s Face to Face Tours, and that was a real highlight. You’ll see the ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ of Soweto, including suburbs, squatter camps and taxi ranks, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s bullet-proof house, the Hector Petersen memorial and the Regina Mundi church, which still has bullet holes in the ceiling from where police opened fire on a congregation in 1976.

Your guide to township travel
Soweto