The Cape Flats is a low lying strip of land that forms a bridge between False Bay on one side and Table Bay on the other. It is a sandy windswept barren plain, subject to flooding in winter.
It is here that ‘non white’ South Africans were allowed to live during the years of apartheid in areas that came to be known as townships. Townships are still home to a large proportion of South Africans. In fact the number of people in townships is increasing as more rural people move in to the cities in search of work and more people from all over Africa arrive in search of a better life.
The townships are made up of sprawling formal settlements of small houses and blocks of flats, and informal satellite squatter camps of tin shanties and slum dwellings.
The cultural mix of peoples, their traditions and way of life in the township has fascinated tourists from around the world, resulting in a large tourism industry of township tours springing up. During the tour you can see first hand the life lived in the townships, experience a shebeen (a township bar) and get an idea of people’s day to day lives.
Although it is possible to go to the townships yourself, it is not recommended from a safety perspective. The tour operators work with the local communities to create a safe environment for visitors. Straying into unknown territory as a tourist would not necessarily be safe.
Some of the better known townships are:
Gugulethu
Situated close to Cape Town International Airport, Gugulethu started its life as home to migrant workers from the Transkei when their numbers became too large to be housed within the older township of Langa. It is one of the first townships to embrace tourism and has many bed & breakfasts (township style), many restaurants and many shebeens, the best known of which is arguably MZoli's.
Khayelitsha
Meaning New Home, Khayelitsha is the most recent of the townships. A notorious high crime area, it is home to more than 50% of all the unemployed people of Cape Town.
Langa
Langa is one of the oldest townships in Cape Town. Created in 1901 in the wake of the Bubonic Plague, it initially housed over 500 Africans identified as ‘Health Hazards.’ It made history in 1960 when over 10 000 residents burnt their ‘pass books’ in defiance of the pass laws and again in 1976 when student demonstrated against the use of Afrikaans as the compulsory teaching language for schools.
