Britain's newspaper, The Guardian, provides a regular "Letter from Africa" from their Africa correspondent, David Smith. The most recent one concerned a township tour Smith took to Soweto, and provides his conflicted but ultimately encouraging opinion. Once gets a sense of where he's going with the piece from the title ("Awkward insights on the Soweto tourist trail") and subtitle ("Better this uncomfortable intrusion into people's lives than blind ignorance of the many faces of modern Soweto").I found it a well-written and honest account, and useful for people who might be wrestling with going on a township tour themselves. In the end, not particularly insightful or sophisticated as a critique or as travel writing, but not aspiring to be either. I'm pleased to see it raising the awareness of the topic and related issues among mainstream UK readers as well as the Guardian's global online audience.
My take on township tours is more critical, but primarily due to the frequent lack of context and the indirect negative effects for communities and tour guides that stem from this category of tours as it exists today. These are industry-side problems, and in spite of my critiques I have to agree with Smith that it is better for tourists to go and see than not to. The industry needs to work harder on providing contextualised community-based cultural tours into Soweto and other communities, which have been formally assessed and accredited as Responsible tours. Then, a better informed traveller can make the choice of which kind of tour to go on.
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