Tourism Is Everyone 'S Business: the Participants and Places of Township Tourism in Cape Town, South Africa
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TOURISM IS EVERYONE‘S BUSINESS: THE PARTICIPANTS AND PLACES OF TOWNSHIP TOURISM IN CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA By RACHEL A. HARVEY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 1 © 2011 Rachel A. Harvey 2 To my family 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the last decade, I have visited Cape Town four separate times. I experienced my first township tour with a group of fellow college students in January 2001. We were on a whirlwind trip through Cape Town and, subsequently, the other tourist hot spots of South Africa: the wine lands, Johannesburg, and Kruger Park. En route to a local pottery project, our tour bus passed through seemingly endless shack settlements. Countless structures of rusted, corrugated tin leaned against one another and the sky at odd angles. Dirty, barefoot children smiled for our cameras. Women cooking and selling strange meats stared blankly at our massive, intrusive bus. Young men in work jumpsuits barely looked up from their cigarettes and beer bottles. The tour guide could not adequately explain this evocative, alien scenery with his microphone and we were too inexperienced to muster anything but a mixture of awe, sadness, and guilt. In the heart of this landscape, in a barbed-wire compound, sat several long parallel buildings housing a technical college. Off the bus and walking in between the two furthest buildings, I saw colorful murals covered the walls of these barrack-like structures. The numerous doors led to classrooms, offices, and studios. We sheepishly entered and filled a small studio where painted pottery was displayed around the edges of the room on tall, wooden shelves. A few African women, artists I presumed, stopped their work and looked us over nervously. One cheerful African man began to welcome us. This was my first meeting with Lesebo1. At the time, Lesebo‘s vision was stirring. He briefly told us about the many community members he employed and crafted into artists. He hoped the cooperative would serve not only as a training ground for artisans but as a source of viable empowerment for township residents in terms of life skills and wages. Easily overwhelmed by the day‘s events, our bus load of visitors 1 Please note that all interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement except where noted. In most cases, a pseudonym is employed. 4 bought most of the wares on his shelves. We were taking home much more than guinea fowl, elephants, fishes, and geometric designs in our bubble-wrapped packages. For many of us, this experience would linger more strongly in our trip diaries than wineries and safaris. When I entered graduate school, I had not necessarily intended to study South Africa or tourism. The project first came together through my interest in craft artists and coalesced after Dr. Richard Grinker put a copy of Chris Stiener‘s African Art in Transit (1994) in my hands. Thus, I returned to Cape Town in June 2002, a green but eager student of anthropology from the George Washington University trying to gather enough material for a master‘s thesis in six weeks. The scholarly goal of my research was to delve into the complex issues of the tourist art market given the cultural and economic struggles of the new South Africa. I think this time I was the one doing the overwhelming. I came for fieldwork clumsily armed with notebooks, questions, and a tape recorder. After a new introduction, I began spending my days at the project run by Lesebo in Gugulethu that I had visited the year before. I learned that Lesebo was Sotho, an aspiring ceramic artist, a family man, and an amazing entrepreneur. I gathered that he had struggled in school and in his other career endeavors, such as in auto mechanics. His slow, deliberate speech in our interviews somewhat screened his battles with dyslexia and stuttering. But any inarticulateness disappeared when his instrument of communication was clay or paint. These struggles were also hidden in his humble yet excited interactions with tourists and visitors. Getting involved in art had changed the course of Lesebo‘s life. Thanks to sponsors he had set up the project in 1997 and it quickly grew in recognition. He had been asked to represent his country in cultural shows in Johannesburg and overseas. He tried to impress me with phrases like: ―Oh, I have many friends in Alabama. It is a big city.‖ 5 To be sure, the majority of the young men and women working at the project had not sought a career in the arts. They had sought a skill and a paycheck. Many applicants failed to complete the apprenticeship process due to life conflicts or lack of interest or talent. The staff I met seemed to appreciate Lesebo‘s goals and the way he pushed them to work hard. He was both flexible and relentless. He was both a father figure and a businessman. As boss, he demanded that the project come first. The artists recreated only his designs and the name of the project, not the artist, appeared on finished works. Only the second in command, the art director Vuka, himself an accomplished potter and painter, seemed to articulate offense with the restrictions Lesebo placed on the expressive forms and the limits of personal glory. Eventually, my tape recorder became invisible among the paint splattered newspapers. The pottery project grew to be my most comfortable field site. I spent several weeks with Lesebo and the staff of the cooperative learning about their work and personal experiences over greasy lunches of fish cakes and even trying my own hand at their art forms. In the end, we all exchanged tearful goodbyes, dismissing the uncertainty of a future meeting. With little means of communication, I was out of touch with Lesebo and his crew for four years. I returned again to Cape Town in June 2006 for brief pre-dissertation research on the greater township tourism industry. After acquiring a cell phone, I began calling the many people on my list to set up appointments and tour dates. My voice was noticeably less shaky than during this ritual four years ago. Lesebo‘s pottery project was my second call. The unfamiliar voice of a young man answered. ―May I speak with Lesebo or ND [his wife]?‖ Pause. ―ND is not here. Lesebo has passed away.‖ 6 I was shocked. And no field methods manual prepares you for this moment. I introduced myself, asked a few questions, and left my number. I hurried the conversation to conclusion for both our sakes. It took awhile for it all to sink in, especially with so many unanswered questions. Serendipitously, I found many of Lesebo‘s original pupils working at a new pottery project owned by another entrepreneur and again under the artistic direction of Vuka in another township, Langa. I also visited the site of the original project. There were no customers or familiar faces or anyone doing actual work. A few young, tough-looking men smoked cigarettes outside the door. The shelves were almost bare. What crafts were present were terribly amateurish and very sad, given the project‘s former reputation. Eventually, I gathered more parts of the complicated story of the demise of both Lesebo‘s pottery project and the events leading to his murder from some trusted friends. The official story goes that Lesebo was shot in a robbery in a bar in Bloemfontein in 2004. The convoluted, unofficial story seems something out of a South African soapie (soap opera), except that its subject matter for once engages the lives of the lower classes. Lesebo had been called, late in life, to become a traditional healer. He left the project intermittently for training. His wife mismanaged the project and destroyed many relationships. One person thought Lesebo had a number of women on the side and that his wife was irate. At the same time, he may have begun staffing this other pottery project with a new partner behind his wife‘s back and taking money secretly for his children from a previous marriage. In his travels, he became more closely associated with his oldest son who ran drugs and who was also killed. The shooting appeared planned. By gang members? By his wife? Many different versions of this tale were told to me by persons in various levels of social distance to Lesebo, such as tour guides and artists that were 7 both his students and his competitors. Fortunately or unfortunately, I never met up with Lesebo‘s widow. At first, none of this made sense with the romantic idea of Lesebo the dedicated, fatherly, entrepreneur that had formed in my head over the years. Despite other cases of mismanagement and exploitation of workers, I saw or wanted to see so much hope in this cooperative in particular. My trip was overshadowed by this eye-opening uncertainty and trying to bring memory up to speed with these new bits of information. I slowly began to realize this was an important story to my research. It was a story about the total experience of what happens to an emerging middle class African man. He‘s not that accomplished, but he finds what he‘s good at, takes opportunities, and works hard. He is pulled among forces of survival, family, community, vocation, and tradition. When for the first time in his family‘s life, the day to day becomes comfortable and financially solvent, the next steps appear unclear.