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Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
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CAPE FLATS, SOUTH AFRICA
We booked our township tour with Sam's Cultural Tours (email - ntimba@telkomsa.net, cell phone 082-970-0564) - the only black-owned tour company in Cape Town. On the day of our township tour, I woke up at 7:19am, took shower, and bought coffees and muffins across the street. Sam arrived right at 8:30am to take us on our township tour. We shared the tour with Amy and Amber from Chicago who were librarians in South Africa volunteering and training local librarians. They were very cool - thankfully. We started at the District Six museum. We then continued on to the Langa (which means sun in Xhosa) township - a black township. This township was composed of the old hostels (not like backpacker hostels). During the Apartheid era, hostels were built for single men who worked in the city to live in - one bed per man and several beds in a room. When we went outside, there were 4 other tour groups walking around with 5 to 8 tourists each. It was a bit surreal looking around outside and seeing more tourists than residents. On the one hand, it's good that people want to know about townships and actually go on the tours. On the other hand, Christ - it was like people were walking around in a zoo. These 3 older female Americans were trailing us with their guide and they kept snapping pictures of people without asking or offering anything. The one thing that Sam told us was that it is usually OK to take pictures of people but you should ask them first and they may want something in return.
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Langa township was named after Langalibale a traditional leader of the Hlubi group. He who was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1875 for resisting the local government in Natal. The current government places the population at 60,000. According to the people, the number is more like 1.4 million. Langa, as one of the oldest townships, made South African history in 1960, when residents resisted the apartheid government's pass laws. In March 1960, over 50,000 people decided to burn their passes and hand themselves over to the police. The police opened fire, killing several people and injuring many.
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The term Cape Flats refers to well, a flat, sandy stretch of land which is located on the outskirts of the city of Cape Town. It is often described as the "dumping ground of apartheid" - as blacks and coloureds were relocated here by the Group Areas Act. The Cape Flats consists of a vast number of townships where the majority of coloured and black people live. 
Now, there is one family per bed. We visited a home with a main room in the middle and 2 bedrooms with 3 beds each on either side of the middle room. Therefore, there were 12 families living in the building - with 3 families in each of the small rooms. When we went into one of the bedrooms and a man was in there resting on his bed. Sam said that we could take pictures but all of us looked at eachother and said that we didn't feel comfortable taking pics. Then Sam tried to reassure us saying that they enjoyed visitors and that we weren't intruding and that it's fine to take pictures. We still didn't. Anyway, Sam told us that gradually, the families living in the 'hostels' would be moved to newly-built 'terraced maisonettes' across the road. 
We then went to a shebeen (township bar) which was in a small tin shack with wood benches and dirt floor. We drank the homemade beer out of large communal buckets. It was really good and would be a great business venture to sell the beer to tourists. After the shebeen we drove through a colored township called Bo Kaap - the mixed folks are interesting looking - not like mulattoes we are used to seeing but looks like they are mixed with Black, white, and Indian. 
