Africa: Reborn in the new SA

We all know the Irish can spin a few yarns, but this one I was witnessing first-hand. Sat in the fusty backyard lean-to of a township dwelling we watched a sangoma, or spiritual healer, consult a pile of animal bones and then rub ointment into the Irishman’s knee.

It was either a trick of the light, or a curl of smoke was rising from his hair. In the dingy half-light it was impossible to tell but he told us his knee felt the best it had for weeks.

In certain destinations experiential tourism is an increasingly important element of the holiday. In South Africa you don’t have to look very far. We had deviated off our township tour outside Pretoria and ducked into a township dwelling to have our ‘bones’ read. Quackery or not, it beat queuing at an NHS surgery.

For many visitors to South Africa, the country’s capital city Pretoria and its infamous second city of Johannesburg are well down the tourist pecking order. Jo’burg is still synonymous with muggings – despite the U-turn in the city’s fortunes in recent years – and the capital Pretoria boasts none of the beaches, game parks or winelands South Africa is known for.

But with 11 years of democracy under its belt, South Africa’s tourism product is one of constant evolution. The black struggle for equality has rightfully taken its place in South Africa’s visitor checklist and is giving rise to some of the country’s most interesting and authentic new tourism product.

South African Tourism trade relations manager Marcus Mckenzie said the level of interest from tour operators in Jo’burg and the cultural product is high. A number of operators have visited on fams, including Thomas Cook Signature and Gold Medal.

“Jo’burg has long been overlooked,” said McKenzie. “We’ve had some very refreshing feedback with a number of operators asking how they can include it and what they can sell.”

Addressing the safety issue, McKenzie added: “I’m not suggesting people jump in a car at Jo’burg Airport and drive off into the unknown, but with the great cosmopolitan vibe at the Melrose Arch precinct and lots of new township product the region certainly lends itself to some interesting tours.”

Once unthinkable, activities such as brunching alfresco at a restaurant in Soweto, are now perfectly acceptable. Just a stone’s throw from where, in 1976, 13-year-old Hector Pieterson found himself the wrong side of a policeman’s bullet during a peaceful student march, tourists at Nambitha restaurant can sit in the sun and order the Englishman in Soweto breakfast – two sausages, two eggs, bacon and toast for a mere £2.

Soweto, now home to 25 millionaires, boasts the far superior statistic of having the only street in the world claiming the residences of two Nobel prize laureates. Not far from Nambitha are Bishop Desmond Tutu’s and Nelson Mandela’s former homes (he was arrested here in 1961). After a peek inside Mandela’s humble abode, a ‘cold beer and jazz’ vibe awaits at nearby Sakhumzi, a popular restaurant which now welcomes white visitors as well as black.

Also on the map is the popular township bar Wandi’s Place, a former shebeen (illegal drinking house), which began as a popular hangout for friends to watch football and now dishes up some of the best-value meals in South Africa.

All of this is a far cry from the legendary Soweto uprising that made the township, home to 3.5 million people, a familiar news fixture in the late 1970s. Pieterson’s death was the catalyst in the bloody Soweto uprising of 1976, a historical marker in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. The Hector Pieterson Museum now depicts the struggle of black South Africa just by the crossroads where he was killed.

On the outskirts of the capital Pretoria we were guided around the 1940s-built Atteridgeville Model Township by a local 18-year-old. Just 1,533 houses in Atteridgeville are ‘home’ to a population of 450,000, with so-called squatter camps – makeshift temporary shacks without running water – increasing by the week. It’s gritty, but visitors can open their eyes to the ‘other’ side of South Africa and, by taking a tour, inject hard cash back into the community. And the warm welcome from guides, bar owners and locals is infinitely rewarding.

Mile-markers to democracy are appearing all the time. Last May, to commemorate 10 years of democracy, a six-metre high bronze statue of Nelson Mandela, dressed in prison garb, was unveiled in Jo’burg’s former Sandton Square, now Mandela Square. It honours the country’s first democratically elected president and serves as a poignant reminder of the miracle that is today’s Rainbow Nation. Mandela Square is already a buzzing shopping and dining hub, with a central piazza housing cafés and restaurants nudged alongside upmarket shops. And it’s appropriately symbolic of the ‘anything is possible’ feelgood factor that is slowly but surely permeating the South African psyche.

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