SOWETO, South Africa -- Monica Collins briefed her family, made a list of emergency phone numbers and, after consulting her fellow adventurers, selected a vehicle they figured would be safest for the journey, a rugged SUV.
Yet despite the precautions, Collins said that when she told her work colleagues about her weekend plans, they half-jokingly replied: So we may not see you back on Monday?
White South African tourists Bruce Robinson, center, his wife Hilary Robinson, second from right, and family friend Haylie Hardin eat at Sakhumzi Restaurant in Soweto, a township that has seen a boom in white South African tourists.
(Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)
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The destination chosen by Collins and seven of her friends, all white South Africans, was not some lion-infested game park or a dangerous mountain pass. It was Soweto, one of South Africa's largest and best-known black townships, and, for years, one of the country's most popular tourist spots -- at least for foreign tourists.
Not many white South Africans used to venture into Soweto, which is on the outskirts of Johannesburg, because of fear and unfamiliarity created by generations of legal separation under apartheid. But Collins, a 37-year-old property appraiser, is among a small yet growing number of whites determined to explore this part of their country.
"We can't continue living side by side and not knowing each other at all," said Collins, whose home in a plush northern suburb of Johannesburg is no more than a half-hour drive from Soweto.
About 200,000 white South Africans will visit Soweto this year, according to the Soweto Tourism Association, up from 30,000 five years ago. About 400,000 foreigners visit annually, the association says. The owners of bed-and-breakfasts in Soweto report that white South Africans make up at least one-third of their business -- up from virtually nothing two years ago. And tour bus companies are beginning to market township tours to white South Africans.
The increase is apparent in the guest book kept by Lolo Mabitsela, who runs Lolo's Guest House in one of Soweto's most prosperous neighborhoods, where BMWs and Mercedeses are common and the scrap-metal shacks found in some other parts of the township are not.
When Mabitsela, a retired school administrator, opened her six-bedroom home to tourists in 2001, the guest book was filled with European and U.S. addresses: Dublin, Paris, San Francisco. But last year, a growing number of addresses from Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria began appearing. Mabitsela's new guest book, a gift from a couple from Sandton, a prosperous suburb on the northern outskirts of Johannesburg, contains nearly as many South African as international addresses.
Mabitsela relishes the change, not only because it's good for business, she said, but also because it allows her to introduce white South Africans to black South African culture. About 75 percent of South Africans are black, 13 percent are white, and the rest are either mixed race or another minority, such as Indian.
For generations, black workers, including nannies, gardeners and housekeepers commuted by bus or van nearly every day from Soweto and other townships to the white suburbs.
"We worked for them. Our parents worked for them. And they didn't know anything about our culture," said Mabitsela. "Sometimes they didn't even know our surnames."
Apartheid ended in 1994 when all-race elections were held and Nelson Mandela became president. But South Africa remains divided along racial lines. Blacks and whites largely live in different areas, work different jobs and watch different television shows. Despite the political power blacks have attained and a growing black middle class, racial slurs can still occasionally be heard in casual conversation among whites.
But South Africans of all skin colors say the traditional divisions are weakening. The biggest barrier keeping whites from visiting townships now is fear of crime, according to tourists and representatives of the hospitality industry.
The Johannesburg area has some of the highest rates of street crime in the world, though many Sowetans say the fear of crime in the township is overblown and that rates have declined as criminals target the more prosperous suburbs where white South Africans live. Yet images of rioting and battles with police in the final years of apartheid are hard to erase from the minds of South Africans.
