Owners of bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) in Soweto are struggling to make a living because most tourists prefer to stay in their Sandton hotels.
Many of the B&Bs and guest houses are clustered around Vilakazi Street in Orlando West, where every day a slew of buses delivers tourists to the door of Nelson Mandela’s former home.
Last weekend, owner Nombeko Rwaxa welcomed me into her small living room in Zizwe ”The Nation” guest house, just eight doors down from the Mandela Family Museum. It’s a tiny cement house, with a red roof and red bars in front of the windows.
Inside, there is just enough space for a couch, a table and four chairs, as well as a small cabinet filled with glasses. When sitting down on the couch, you can’t get up without touching the dining table. There are tourism awards framed on the salmon-pink wall.
Zizwe guest house was in May this year voted South Africa’s best township accommodation by the Automobile Association’s (AA) travel guide.
”This is very nice, but I haven’t had a single enquiry, let alone a guest, who found me through the AA,” says Rwaxa.
”On the first of September, I had my last guest that stayed here. We do get people to sleep, but not as many as we hoped. There are 600 people a day who pass Mandela’s house and I maybe have one person staying per month. At the moment, I can’t make a living with the guest house.
”Maybe it is the marketing. But we have the Soweto Tourism Association and the Soweto Accommodation Association … the AA visits me and I win awards, but still it doesn’t seem enough.”
Woody Bulannga, an acting supervisor at the Soweto Information Centre for the Johannesburg Tourism Company, says he does not have any occupancy rates for B&Bs in Soweto, but he has identified a number of problems, such as a lack of signage and marketing.
”If you go to the Mandela museum, you only find signs 200m away,” Bulannga says.
‘Everyone must feel free here’
Rwaxa says it can’t be crime that keeps the tourists away.
”I would never say we don’t have crime. But it’s controlled. Once, I took a guest to the Hector Pieterson Memorial. There was a young kid, a boy, walking around. People were chasing the child away and telling him, ‘Do not come near the tourists, we’ll kill you.’ That’s the spirit of the people. The community is working on crime; everyone who comes here must feel free.”
She adds: ”We want everyone to say it’s like staying at home. Because, what does a tourist know when they enter and leave Soweto in a tour bus? Nothing. They don’t get the real story and experience. For that, they must talk to us.”
I certainly feel at home. On both sides of the living room are bedrooms, mine being the bigger one on the left. There is a double bed, art work depicting African women and an en-suite bathroom with a huge bath that would easily fit two.
On the living-room wall, there is a gold-framed picture showing Annah Mgulwa (Rwaxa’s mother), Nelson Mandela and Rwaxa herself.
”My father was one of the people who drove around Mandela to his secret ANC [African National Congress] meetings. When Mandela came out of jail in 1990, he wanted to see my father. But he died; it was only me and my mother still alive. We took the picture in 2000. He was asking us about our family and what we were doing.”
After Rwaxa’s grandparents (who owned the house) died, she had the opportunity to start the guest house.
”My mom and I could see tourists coming in and out of Soweto. And then, in 2002, I saw Winnie [Madikizela-Mandela]. I told her about this house and all the tourists coming in. Winnie said, ‘It’s fine, but don’t take your grandmother’s furniture. Keep the history of the house. Don’t change anything.”’
Dashed hopes
Dolly Hlophe, owner of Dakalo B&B in Inhlwathi Street, just a hundred footsteps away from Mandela’s house in Vilakazi Street, is watching television by herself when Rwaxa and I arrive.
Her B&B has a much different look than Zizwe’s. A dozen pillows with roses and huge green plants give the living room a warm feeling.
Hlophe also started her B&B in 2002, but since then she has not had many visitors.
”It depends; I maybe get one, up to maybe five, people staying over per month. Most of the time it is word of mouth or through the help of friends that I get visitors to stay.”
Just down the road from Dakalo B&B is VhaVenda Hills, managed by Kate Luthaga. She expected visitors from Germany, but they didn’t show up. Rwaxa says this happens often; she doesn’t understand why people cancel at the last minute.
Luthaga may not have many visitors staying over, but she does expect the business to grow.
”I am going to make a TV lounge upstairs and start something like a restaurant downstairs. There are more tourists coming … well … I expect that to happen.”
These three B&Bs were hoping for a slice of the tourism trade, but after opening their doors they are now disappointed with their low occupancy rates.
Lolo’s guest house in Diepkloof, another suburb in Soweto where B&Bs tend to cluster, experiences the same problem. Owner Lolo Mabitsela says she has five beds but maybe only four or five people staying per month.
”I started this business in 2001; since then this place didn’t grow much. I don’t know why the tourists are staying away from the B&Bs in Soweto.”
Perception and education
”The first problem is perception. Tour operators themselves are mostly from outside of Soweto and white. They come from the northern suburbs,” says Thumi Phasha, research officer at the Gauteng Tourism Authority. ”They themselves have never stayed overnight, so why would they tell the tourists to stay? We must encourage the tour operators, because they are like the ambassadors of Soweto. But this perception is not changed overnight.”
Besides that, the Gauteng Tourism Authority is trying to establish how many tourists are staying over in Soweto.
”That is something I am right in the middle of, right now,” says Phasha. ”But we must create awareness; we need South Africans to feel comfortable in Soweto. We must educate them that you must not be afraid of going to the township.”
According to a Gauteng Tourism Authority survey, just more than 18 300 tourists visit Soweto each year, of which 60% are from overseas, mostly from the United States and The Netherlands. Just more than 20% of visitors to Soweto are from other African countries. The survey also found that the average tourist spends R316 in Soweto — most of it used for food, beverages and transport.
”The average tourist spends two to three days in Gauteng. Now they are spending all their bed nights in hotels in Sandton. It would be a better condition when they stay one night in Soweto and maybe one or two nights in Sandton,” says Phasha.
Eye on the future
There are already plans to build malls, a waterfront with chalets and a hotel in Soweto, but other future developments all depend on marketing and development, says information officer Phumle Dabule, also from the Gauteng Tourism Authority.
”We mainly approach tour operators and travel agents. If they need to accommodate 100 people, they want us to accommodate them in one area or one hotel. The B&Bs in Soweto are too small for this. When we need to accommodate maybe one or two persons, we try to persuade them to also go to other areas. The problem is that they [the tour operators] still think it is not safe.”
Dabule says the Gauteng Tourism Authority helps the B&Bs in Soweto with marketing.
”When we go to tourism exhibitions like Indaba, we take some of the managers from different B&Bs with us, so they can tell their own story.”
SA Tourism and the Tourism Enterprise Programme help Soweto’s B&Bs by organising workshops about management and hospitality.
Also, as part of a corporate responsibility project, South Africa’s Southern Sun hotel group has decided to adopt five B&Bs in Soweto. The programme started a year ago by adopting Zizwe guest house, Dakalo B&B, VhaVenda Hills B&B, Thuto’s B&B and Nthateng B&B, all situated in Orlando West around the Vilakazi precinct.
Southern Sun will provide these five B&Bs with hospitality training, improve their business-management skills and assist them with marketing. The B&Bs have already received tables, chairs, mirrors and couches. If the project bears fruit, Southern Sun will expand it to more B&Bs in Soweto.
‘Tourists must experience places like this’
Looking like a tourist without her tour bus, I walk down Vilakazi Street from Zizwe’s guest house with Rwaxa and Hlophe. Cars honk and dogs lounge on the sidewalks. Children approach me and ask: ‘Can I sing a song for you?’
Long after the last tourist buses leave Soweto, residents start gathering at Nambitha, a popular restaurant. After eating a burger or mogodu (tripe) with pap or dumpling, youngsters head to the local bars or shebeens.
Mgulwa, Rwaxa’s mother, invites me to her house in Rampa Street (close to Vilakazi Street) where I am surprised to find a shebeen in her garage, run by her son, Thabo Mgulwa.
Thabo started the nameless shebeen to maintain his soccer team and pay for their jerseys and transport.
”I am making a good living from this. A quart of beer goes for R6,50 and I have almost 200 people who are depending on me. I don’t get many tourists in, but of course they are welcome. Here they can share a cold beer with the locals and talk with us.”
”It is very nice to communicate with someone you don’t know. Especially when they are not from here,” says Phumlani Dladla, who during the day sells beer on the train from Faraday to Naledi and spends his nights in this shebeen.
Robert Zondo, a national tour guide, is also having a beer in Rampa Street. He would like to see tourists coming here.
”We talk about politics, social life and soccer. We just talk and all have different ideas. Tourists must experience places like this; I tell them that, but they don’t seem to listen.”
Walking back to my guest house, my cellphone rings. With my digital camera hanging from my shoulder, chatting into my cellphone and clutching my handbag loosely, I feel perfectly safe.
Whistle-stop tours
The next day, I decide to look at the tourist madhouse at the corner outside Mandela’s home.
There I meet Lorence Chauke, who has been selling key rings on the street for more than seven years.
”Sometimes I don’t even sell one thing a day; other times it is over 100 a day. I would like tourists to stay here; they can have a good look at my goods and maybe buy something more expensive.”
At 10am exactly, a white double-decker bus loaded with Americans and Canadians stop at Mandela’s house. Their tour operator lets all the khaki-dressed tourists out of the bus and shouts: ”Ten minutes, people, and we are on our way again!”
From her I understand this tour bus will take the tourists through Soweto, Johannesburg’s inner city and Pretoria — in one day.
Helen Godson and Mary Mebs are from Canada and say: ”We are on a vacation and don’t know much about Johannesburg or Soweto. You don’t have the feeling of what is really going on until you get here. I never heard of places to stay in Soweto, but it does look nice here. Maybe next time.”
Another tourist, Dell Lana, from Sacramento, California, looks around hastily and takes a picture of Mandela’s house when I walk up to him.
”This is all very interesting, especially the background of it. The people here are really moving forward. I am going to stay in another township, one in the Cape Flats. It was arranged like that by my tour operator. I didn’t know I could also stay in Soweto.”
Meanwhile, Rwaxa is determined to keep Zizwe’s guest house running, because, she says: ”This business is my future. Soweto has the future. If tourism grows, it will be better for all of us in South Africa.”
On the net
www.soweto.co.za
www.joburg.org.za/soweto
www.sowetobedandbreakfast.co.za