2 min summary Best time to visit Map & highlights Cape Town Garden Route Kruger Wildlife Mandela Townships Families Responsible tourism All our South Africa guides

South Africa Townships & Township tours

Like any form of community tourism, township tours should be led by the people who live there, be sustainable and non-intrusive. Responsible holiday companies understand what it means to put people first, how we don’t need to do everything on our travels just to get a photo op, but that sometimes we just want to understand history and support people who are seeking to create real change.

Home\Africa\South Africa

South Africa Townships & Township tours

Tourists wander around and randomly take pictures of you and it’s really disrespectful. Imagine if I walked down Camps Bay and started taking photos of everyone?

– Andiswa Mkhosi, photographer and Llanga township resident

The above quote is from a professional photographer living in Cape Town’s Langa Township. She decided to put her thoughts into actions, and went to the city’s affluent Camps Bay and started taking random shots. The reactions were not friendly, and a video that she shot of her tour soon went viral. Township tourism is, not surprisingly, controversial, and can go very wrong if managed in an irresponsible way.

Once notoriously violent no-go areas, South Africa townships – home to predominantly black, as well as Indian and coloured communities displaced during Apartheid – are becoming tourist destinations in their own right. It’s easy to see why. Xhosa, Zulu, Setswana and Sesotho (among others) culture, heritage, music and languages come together in township communities. Opportunities for visits are varied: volunteer, try a cooking class, or enjoy a day of one-to-one cultural exchange with township residents.

Done well, tours of South Africa’s townships take you into the heart of the communities and cultures that make South Africa, as a whole country, tick. While many areas of these townships are now safe to visit – on foot or by bike – the legacies of Apartheid still endure. Black South Africans experience the highest unemployment and poverty levels in the country. Choose a tour that has been created and supported by the residents of that township, be respectful, and you’ll be given the humbling chance to meet people deeply proud of their roots, and building lives in the shadow of entrenched prejudice.

See all our South Africa Holidays

Give us a call

What is a township?

The townships in South Africa were designed as fortresses of apartheid control, a malicious and deliberate use of urban planning to alienate communities.

– South Africa Tourist Board

Travel to the outskirts of almost every town or city in South Africa and you’ll discover at least one township. These vast, impoverished settlements are a mixture of formal, permanent housing and shanty towns that were created under Apartheid to segregate the non-white population and remove them from designated central, affluent, ‘white’ areas. Fly into Cape Town and you’ll travel through the vast Cape Flats to reach the city, a sprawl of townships behind Table Mountain which includes Khayelitsha, home to almost 400,000 people, purportedly the largest and fastest growing township in South Africa. While poverty is still rife in the townships, in the post-Apartheid era pockets of increasing affluence and industry are growing, as is recognition of their cultural legacy spanning jazz musicians to Nelson Mandela.

How big are townships?

Townships really vary in size, Soweto in Johannesburg being the biggest with a population of 1.2 million people – bigger than Birmingham. Durban’s Umlazi Township has a population of 800,000 making it larger than Leeds. Langa, just one of Cape Town’s many townships, has over 50,000 residents.

Ubuntu

"A township tour can be one of the most eye-opening and privileged experiences you can have in South Africa. However, you must pick who you go with very carefully, otherwise it's just voyeurism and no-one, least of all the township residents, benefit from your visit.” explains Amanda Marks, co-director of our partners Tribes Travel. “Go with a guide who still lives there, and visit projects, shops or restaurants run by local residents so a range of people get a chance at earning something from your presence in their community."

Townships are, first and foremost, home to communities doing their best to gain a livelihood, raise families, educate their children and enjoy what life has to offer in the same way that we all are. One way to facilitate this is through tourism, with local guides offering tours, and craftspeople, cafes and stalls gaining an opportunity to tap into a new market and then, ideally, using part of the income to invest back in the community. They are not there to make tourists feel better about themselves. They are also places where neighbourliness is fundamental, and where the Zulu concept of ‘ubuntu’ is omnipresent, a word that wraps the words compassion and humanity into one. This is something you won’t capture with a selfie stick. But you might with a smile.

VISITING SOUTH AFRICA’S TOWNSHIPS

Things to do in a South Africa township

Street art, museums and music aside, South Africa’s townships are best experienced via the many and varied residents. South Africa’s plethora of traditional cultures may have been reduced to just three ‘Indian’, ‘black’ or ‘coloured’ communities by Apartheid, but they still remain distinct and diverse. Take a tour designed by and run by local residents to meet the people making South Africa tick.

It can be shocking, on arrival into South Africa, to see how racially divided the country still is. Realistically, equal integration of blacks and whites is at least a generation away and the realities of township life can be hard to swallow, so be ready to be emotionally and culturally challenged when you visit a township. Navigate local residents’ sometimes moving stories with the help of a local guide and you’ll depart inspired, and with a healthy dose of respect.

Volunteering takes you another step deeper into township culture. You’ll be living and working alongside local residents, shopping in local markets and becoming part of township life in a way that’s far beyond the reach of a day tour.

Contact Us

Call us for a chat about our holidays. We are happy to discuss your holiday and help in any way we can. No bots, queues or awful hold music.

01273 823 700 01273 823 700

Call us until 6pm

Calling from outside the UK

rosy@responsibletravel.com

The river Klipspruit runs through the Soweto and, at New Year, the African Zionist Church performs ritual cleansings in it. Crowds gather and celebrate this spiritual and spirited event.

Soweto, Johannesburg

The name is an acronym for South Western Townships, which were created originally at the beginning of the 20th century, and expanded during the apartheid era. Thankfully the 21st century has seen many more modern developments than back in the relentless years of segregation. It is now almost considered the capital of all of South Africa’s townships, and is easily accessible by train with several stops scattered through Soweto.

Responsible Travel’s Tim Williamson has travelled to Soweto several times. “The main tourist road in Soweto – Vilakazi Street, home to Mandela House and Tutu House – is very busy. But for fewer tourists and a more authentic Soweto experience, my family love eating at the market outside huge Baragwanath Hospital, or watching the Pirates play the Chiefs – Soweto’s two major football teams – at Soccer City. All in the company of a local guide of course.” Go on a cycling tour, visit a Rasta bar, tuck into a ‘kota’, a carb-elicious meat and cheese sandwich, visit the Mandela Family Museum or Desmond Tutu’s home. And dance. There’s a lot of music everywhere in Soweto.

Umlazi is divided into 28 suburbs, which are named by letters of the alphabet and have 2,000 houses each. Originally Umlazi only had two exits so that movements in and out could be monitored by the police.

Umlazi, Durban

One of the largest townships in South Africa, get to know Umlazi with an official local guide, born and raised here, either as an individual or a group, which will take you around the community’s churches, museums, restaurants and markets. There are many stories to be heard, shopping to be done and beer to be imbibed. In particular, the ‘umqombothi’, a beer made from maize, malt and sorghum. Many of the original two bedroom houses have now been extended, there is an optimistic community and a vibrant social scene. Visit its Kwa Muhle Apartheid Museum, the ‘spaza’ or corner shops, shebeens or sample a steak on a ‘braai’.

Langa, Cape Town

Although Soweto is famous for Mandela and Tutu, Langa has an important political history. It was heavily policed in its early years, and in the 1930s its sorghum beer brewing practices were banned, unsurprisingly to much resentment. In 1960 it was the gathering point for tens of thousands of anti-apartheid protesters. Langa was named after Langalibalele, a Bantu chief who was imprisoned on Robben Island for rebelling against the government in 1873, and today it is a wonderful township to visit to really be immersed in culture, particularly for learning about local cuisine or following the Langa Heritage Walk. Langa has welcomed the famous Cape Town Hop on Hop Off red bus tours for more than a decade now, bringing mass tourism into real South Africa to experience its jazz, heritage, arts, culture and food. But do as Andiswa asks, and put your camera away.

Ibhayi, Port Elizabeth

The biggest township in Port Elizabeth, with over 230,000 resident, has sub-divisions that include New Brighton and Soweto on Sea. It also became known for its ‘red’ characteristics, referring to the colour of many of its buildings, which featured a lot of red-painted iron, taken from Anglo-Boer prison camp buildings. There is a memorial park to commemorate six anti-apartheid activists, and plenty of shebeens and street food.