Township tour

This morning, Charlotte York and I joined a group of geriatric Brits on a visit to the District 6 Museum, followed by a tour of Langa Township. It was a great way to learn about some of the effects of apartheid and brought some perspective to our Cape Town adventuring.

The District 6 Museum is an installation that was apparently supposed to last only two weeks, but has been around for over a decade. Our wonderful guide explained that the Group Areas Act forced the segregation of neighborhoods according to citizens' skin color. As a result, Cape Town's District 6 neighborhood was devastated when it was declared for whites only.

All non-whites were shipped off to Townships and the area was bulldozed, to ready the land for white people to purchase. Sadly, the area never fully recovered and continues to grow, now that apartheid has ended, but it serves as a sad reminder of the country's shameful past.

Our visit to the Langa Township was pretty unpleasant, mostly because we were a tour group of approximately 20 people. Langa Township is the Western Cape's first township and our tour included visiting peoples' homes, a pre-school and a traditional healer. Going into peoples' homes was very awkward and uncomfortable, but it was definitely eye-opening to see the squalor in which people live.

However, some of the other tourists managed to make the experience downright disrespectful. For example, one older man asked to take a picture of the family living in the home we were visiting, but he insisted, "Do not smile!"

I'm of two minds when it comes to these types of tours. On one hand, it definitely feels like you're swooping in on a community, disrupting daily life and viewing people as if they're animals in a zoo. On the other hand, I know that the tourism brings light to the challenges they face and these tours in particular helped to fund pre-schools in the community.

But at the end of the day, I'm glad I had the chance to visit Langa and get out into the community, no matter how contrived the experience.