Reminiscing on a slum tour in South Africa

A little over a decade ago I took a trip to South Africa to visit a coworker who worked for the same global charity as me but in their Cape Town office. During my time there we enjoyed many of the typical tourist highlights (fine restaurants, Table Mountain, the waterfront, a wine tasting weekend in Franschhoek), but she also encouraged me to take an organized tour of some of the city’s biggest townships. Prior to my visit she had also sent me a copy of the book Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a Township, the story of a white South African journalism student who moved into a black township just outside of Cape Town to better understand the community.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of “townships” in South Africa, they are literally a living, breathing continuation of the country’s Apartheid legacy. Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, describes townships as a “very successful model of spatial engineering” to utilize both natural and manmade barriers to keep different racial communities as separated as possible. He describes how “Cape Town was conceived with a white-only centre, surrounded by contained settlements for the black and coloured labour forces to the east, each hemmed in by highways and rail lines, rivers and valleys, and separated from the affluent white suburbs by protective buffer zones of scrubland.”

Khayelitsha

Apartheid and this forced separation to townships began in 1948, and its legacy is still strong today despite the “end” of Apartheid in 1994. Millions of people across South Africa live in townships. The biggest township, Soweto in Johannesburg, has a population of over 1.2 million, while the aforementioned Khayelitsha in Cape Town is home to nearly 400,000 people. Residents often live in vulnerable metal shacks with no electricity and shared water and toilet facilities. In Endlovisi, a part of Khayelitsha, approximately 20,000 people share just 380 communal toilets.

I had enjoyed the book, which I found eye-opening and inspirational, so I eagerly joined one of the many advertised township tours in hopes of…well, I’m not sure? Experiencing moral outrage at witnessing actual racial segregation in the year 2010? Feeling boundless hope and inspiration by people who maintain their culture and sense of community despite crushing institutional racism? Whatever emotions I might have been expecting were quickly replaced by those of shame and embarrassment as my little tour bus with about half a dozen other people drove down the narrow streets and alleys of the townships. I felt like an intruder, or even worse like a visitor at some sort of shantytown amusement park, gawking at people’s lives as if it were some form of entertainment. I did end up feeling that sense of moral outrage that I had expected, but it was aimed at my fellow “tourists” who were obliviously taking pictures out the bus windows.

We made three stops along the way. The first one was to “chat with some local residents,” but it was just a couple of men along the side of a road who made some obligatory small talk and then tried to sell us handmade souvenirs made in honor of the upcoming FIFA World Cup finals that were being held in South Africa that year. I felt pressured to buy something, so I dutifully handed over some change for a couple of beaded bracelets. The whole stop was over in a matter of minutes, and I re-boarded the bus feeling unfulfilled and perhaps even a little bit like I’d been taken advantage of.

The next stop was a local preschool, which had the potential to feel more enriching, but those hopes soon turned into concern upon entering and seeing that several of the children seemed malnourished and a few even had open sores on their faces. We spent a little bit of time playing with the kids and admiring their artwork, but we were not given much in the way of stories or background. The only way I can describe how I felt leaving that stop was awkward. If it was meant to be an uplifting experience, they had missed the mark. I walked away from that visit wondering what they were even trying to communicate, and feeling concerned about the children’s welfare but with no clue how I could help.

The final stop was the one I enjoyed the most: a visit to a women’s co-operative where local women created traditional crafts. We walked around and watched them weaving, painting, and making jewelry, admiring their obvious skill. One of the leaders gave us a short tour that finally gave me some of that uplifting feeling I’d been hoping for, as we learned that many of these women were starting new lives for themselves after leaving abusive relationships or recovering from other traumatic life-altering situations. In addition to the opportunity for them to hone their craft and earn income, the women were provided life skills classes such as managing finances. Oddly, though, we were not given a chance to purchase any of the crafts, and only a couple of them women seemed pleased to interact with us; many of the others eyed us with suspicion, and I couldn’t help but empathize with their frustration if they were unwilling participants in this “performance” for a bunch of tourists. In the end I recognized that this particular organization was doing a lot of good work for local women, but I wondered if perhaps there wasn’t a better way to go about sharing their story and accomplishments with the public.

Back at my friend’s flat and reflecting on the day, I realized that I felt very conflicted about my experience. There’s no denying that it was eye-opening and overwhelming. No matter how worldly or knowledgeable you believe yourself to be, there is nothing that can prepare you for seeing such staggering segregation and inequity in person. It’s something that I’ll never forget and in that way I’ll always be grateful for this experience that helped shape my views on structural racism and develop my interest in human rights and social justice.

Mostly, though, I just felt…dirty. I felt like I had taken part in something voyeuristic. Something that had invaded people’s privacy and dignity. The “tour” had lacked meaningful interaction and instead felt exploitative. I don’t have any photos of that day; it didn’t feel right. I don’t often even tell people about it because I still have unsettled feelings about the experience, even 13 years later.

I’m not the only one to feel troubled about the existence of such tours. There’s a whole debate within the tourism industry about the emergence of “slum tours” or “poorism.” The concept began in the mid-1980s as companies began tours in Rio and Johannesburg that took people into extremely impoverished neighborhoods. There is legitimate debate around whether these types of tours are educational for tourists and economically beneficial for marginalized communities, or if they’re just exploiting disadvantaged people for the entertainment of wealthy tourists.

Advocates argue that many travelers are seeking a more “authentic” experience rather than just the same old glamorous beaches, shops, and attractions. Indeed, some would go so far as to say that tourists have an obligation to see the other side of their destination. James Asudi, general manager of Victoria Safaris in Nairobi, said in an interview that slum tours are a way to fight poverty. He suggests that the purpose of a slum tour is to “create awareness of the existence of the slums and the less privileged poor families who live in the slums, with an intention of slum upgrading and consequently total eradication through tourism,” adding that most tourists ignore the location population. A slum tour gives them an opportunity to see the juxtaposition of people “who live in Kenya without proper housing and sanitation, while tourism revenue leads as the highest as the highest revenue earner for the government.”

In addition to raising awareness, most operators claim to give back to the communities that they are touring through. Although many say that a portion of the tour fees go directly to benefitting the community, there is no official monitoring or governance to find out if that is truly happening. Tour participants also have the opportunity to directly help the community during tours by purchasing crafts, food, and beverages, but that only benefits a very small portion of the people living in such an area.

So, do the possible benefits of awareness and local revenue counterbalance the opportunity for exploitation of the local population? I felt scarred by my own township tour in Cape Town; I can hardly imagine how the residents felt as our tour bus crept through their streets with tourists taking photographs of their houses, their families, their lives as if it were some sort of amusement park. Kennedy Odebe, a former resident of the Kibera community in Nairobi, describes a first hand account of what it is like to be an unwilling target of a slum tour: “I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes, looking at the utensils with longing because I hadn’t eaten in two days. Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.”

In his op-ed he goes on to acknowledge that many foreigners visit a slum out of a desire to better understand poverty. He writes, “The expectation, among the visitors and the tour organizers, is that the experience may lead the tourists to action once they get home. But it’s just as likely that a tour will come to nothing. After all, looking at conditions like those in Kibera is overwhelming, and I imagine many visitors think that merely bearing witness to such poverty is enough…Slum tourism is a one-way street: They get photos; we lose a piece of our dignity.”

Odebe’s statement that it is unlikely that tourists will take any action once they get home reminded me of a very compelling part of the “Descendant” documentary about descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, the last slave ship that carried enslaved Africans to the United States. The community of descendants are looking to reclaim their story and they see the possible tourist benefits of sharing their history with tourists. Anderson Flen, a local community activist, is shown standing outside The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama (also known as the “Lynching Museum”). He’s watching a group of white tourists take selfies in front of the museum as he reflects, “Sometimes you ask yourself…people come and they see, then what do they do? The real test, a lot of times, is not in coming. It’s what you do when you leave. Unfortunately, too many people say ‘I’ve been there.’ The real question is, what did you do after you left? It becomes another form of entertainment. Most of the people who come here I’m sure have been blessed beyond imaginations. But this is just a blip in their lives unfortunately. Just a few seconds. They’re not going to do anything with it.”

It would be easy to say that tourism has no place in marginalized communities. On the surface it would seem that the potential for exploitation outweighs the negligible benefits. However, I think the two can co-exist, benefiting both the local communities and travelers who seek a more meaningful experience, when it is done well. The next post highlights a company that I think is managing that balance perfectly.