Enjoy South Africa!

If you want to see and feel – and understand – Cape Town and this beautiful country then you have to meet all aspects of the town. Go and visit the attractions, but also book a tour to the townships, where at least 2 million of Capetonians are living… So did we.

When we visited South Africa and Cape Town for the first time in 2003 we refused to visit a township. We thought it must be like a game drive: You sit in a bus and drive through the townships, staring at all the poor people who try to survive… We didn’t want to feel like rubbernecks.

But then we learned that on these tours you meet people and talk to them. Some people started their own small business, for example as a hair-dresser, or they started a shop. And there are a lot of interesting projects, where people are cooking for school-children or running a nursery in their own house, for instance. With your visit, you help them maintaining their projects.

There’s not a lot of help from the government, so the people have to be innovative, and they try to make some money with the possibilities they have. So the township-tours (sometimes organized by township-inhabitants themselves) can help to improve the understanding of the situation in the townships, and finally to enhance economy there.

Because of these reasons we booked a tour with a small group during our second stay in 2005. Our tour guide took us to District Six – a place of great historial significance – and its museum, but to meet the people was much more interesting. After stopping at a primary school in Langa (the Chris Hani School – I’ll give some details later in a separate article), we arrived at Vicky’s B&B in Khayelitsha.

We met Vicky in her house – a relatively large and spacious shack-style house made from wood and tin. It has a separate room as kitchen which is by far not common in a township where the kitchen is often not more than a collection of tools in a corner of the living room. And often this room is the only one in the house… But Vicky also has her own bath and flowing water in her house which is also not self-evident as we saw on our tours.

Some visitors from another group were already listening to her in her living room. She told us that she started to convert her house into a B&B in 1998. Since then she’s become pretty famous and has gotten real influence in her community. Several newspapers and TV stations published her story. Also tourists can stay in her house, she invited us… With the growing of her B&B the neighbourhood also succeeded with some businesses. Opposite to Vicky’s B&B for example there is Beauty’s sewing centre which was started by Beauty through the donation of sewing machines by foreigners who had visited Vicky…! Beauty even could employ several needlewomen.

When we returned to Cape Town in 2006 we decided to spend a night at Vicky’s B&B. We wanted to get a closer feeling of a township and to learn more about the life there. We phoned Vicky for a booking and organized a private tour with an operator, because we didn’t want to go with our rental car. During that time we were staying in a guesthouse in Tamberskloef, and we only took a few necessary things with us. Then on our private tour we visited some other areas in the townships of Cape Town before we were dropped at Vicky’s B&B. We had no plans about the return transport, but “sometimes you need some trust in God”, how Claudia says… It was late afternoon, and Vicky was not around, but her three girls took us for a tour in the neighbourhood. There is a shebeen called “Waterfront” opposite Vicky’s house where we had a beer while some teenagers were playing pool billard. Some kids were hanging around at the back door (they weren’t allowed to enter), very curious about us, and were talking about soccer. Funny their attempts to pronounce Klose’s name… After Vicky had shown us our room we had dinner (chicken with salad) with two guys from Switzerland who had booked an “evening in a township”. We asked Vicky if she would exchange her house for a stone house (a so-called Mandela-house), but she negated; this house is part of her guests experience so she can’t change it… And what was the main change for her after the end of apartheid? That she could go with new self-confidence through the streets as a free woman, she answered with pride.

The shebeen was already closed after dark; Vicky said that it is not good for people drinking alcohol in the evening because they get aggressive. So the community decided that shebeens have to be closed in the evening… We wanted to know how Beauty was doing with her sewing centre, and it saddened us a lot when we heard about her HIV-infection… What a horrible story is this AIDS-thing in South Africa!

It was a quiet evening in Vicky’s living room. Her daughters were listening to Rihannas latest song played by their cell phones and Vicky was busy watching a soap on TV, so unfortunately there was not a lot of communication. Only a little boy – maybe at the age of 4 – always wanted to play with Claudia…

So we went to bed early. We didn’t feel unsafe at all, and we slept well. Vicky is a woman with a lot of influence in her community; so safety shouldn’t be a problem at her place. The next morning, after a basic breakfast with coffee and corn flakes, we asked Vicky if it would be possible to get some more impressions of how life is going in her community. Only 30 minutes later three young guys took us on a tour through the neighbourhood. This was a pretty deep view inside a township, and I’ll write about it in another article.

After this walk we still didn’t know how to get back to our guesthouse. When a group of tourists arrived Vicky spoke to the tour guide and phoned the operator, and then we could go back into town with them for free. That was an impressive example for Vickys influence… Writing this article I found her (new) website. Please have a look at “Vicky’s B&B”. The price has risen a little bit since our stay… But there are some more B&Bs in Cape Town’s townships. Why not giving them a chance, too? It’s a very special experience to get at least a little idea about life in a township, and we can highly recommend it…!

This post is also available in: German

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