Townships as Attraction

Book excerpt: "Since the end of the Apartheid, international tourism in South Africa has increasingly gained importance for the national economy. The centre of this PKS issue's attention is a particular form of tourism: township tourism, i.e. guided tours to the residential areas of the black population. About 300,000 tourists per year visit the townships of Cape Town. The tours are also called cultural, social, or reality tours. The different aspects of township tourism in Cape Town were the subject of a geographic field study, which was undertaken during a student research project of Potsdam University in 2007. The text presents the empirical results of the field study, and demonstrates how townships are constructed as spaces of tourism."--Publisher's description.