A traveller sees her parents’ native country through a tourist’s eyes.
Growing up with South African parents, you inherit a healthy awareness of the dangers. I visited the country at least seven times before I left home, and once since.
Sure, Cape Town is technically one of the murder capitals of the world, but I also know that the areas responsible for those statistics aren’t ones I’d typically visit. I heard the stories first and second-hand of how my relatives had been threatened with screwdrivers, at gunpoint, and had their homes broken into. While scary, it was rare. Taking something in your stride is just what South Africans do.
“I could never go to Cape Town, I’d be too scared a lion would come around the corner,” one British acquaintance said to me, his impression of the country so far removed from the truth it was a struggle not to laugh.
For foreigners who know that the danger is crime and violence, not lions who teleported themselves from game reserves to city streets, the violence’s peak in the ’90s is still cemented in their minds, which doesn’t paint an accurate picture of 21st century South Africa.
Understandably then, when people back home would call South Africa dangerous, I’d roll my eyes. While I knew it wasn’t as safe as England, I didn’t put too much weight on their fears. I was travelling with South African parents. I knew the steps to take to stay safe, like locking your car doors and keeping your windows closed, habits I continue at home.
Then, I took my very British, not-so-well-travelled then-boyfriend, now-husband to a family wedding in Johannesburg, and it was a different story.
Before we flew, I explained the country to him. I taught him some South Africanisms and a little Afrikaans so he could get the jokes. I told him to keep his car window closed and his door locked. To reign in his curious instincts that would tempt him to wander off when we go out for dinner – just stick with everyone. I told him about the shanty towns and the electric fences and how when we enter the game parks, the lions will in fact be roaming free. But he didn’t quite comprehend how different it would be until he saw it for himself.
Within 30 minutes of leaving the airport, we drove through intersections with signs reading ‘Hijacking Hotspot.’ I didn’t look twice.
Of course it’s a hijacking hotspot, it’s an intersection in Johannesburg.
Just keep your doors locked and windows closed, don’t flash any valuables, and hope you don’t get targeted. If anything, it was funny to me and my family how stunned he was.
We drove through areas where for miles, the roads were lined with shantytowns. Thousands of corrugated metal homes stacked closely together, connected by wires, clotheslines hanging between them, satellite dishes and drum fires dotted throughout. It still upsets me to see so many people living like that, so close to a city that should provide them with opportunity. But it doesn’t shock me.
His jaw was on the floor. Growing up in the UK and only having ventured out to a handful of other countries, he’d never seen anywhere like it.
Around an hour later, we arrived at my cousins’ home.
Turns out, he thought I had exaggerated when I’d described the 2-metre brick wall surrounding their house and garden, topped with a barbed wire electric fence.
But of course not, it’s Johannesburg.
What did you expect?
Those first few hours in the country together showed me how wholly desensitized I was to South Africa. To South Africans – and apparently their foreign children – that’s life. My cousins only get out the car once the garage door is closed. It’s not scary, it’s practical.
Seeing his shock forced me to re-evaluate my own mindset. How I felt about the fact that every single one of my family members has had at least one experience they don’t like to talk about.
However, once the wedding was over, we headed north to stay in some game parks. His first-time eyes also gave me a new appreciation for the magic of South Africa.
His first-time eyes gave me a new appreciation for the magic of South Africa.
We visited two incredible lodges. As well as being home to free-roaming giraffe, zebra, and antelope, Ukutula is a lion conservation centre dedicated to studying and caring for lions. There you can play with the cubs younger than 6 months, as well as go walking with the adolescents. Bakubung on the other hand is in the Pilanesburg National Park. Game drives there have you easily spotting the Big 5 – elephants, rhinos, lions, buffalo, and leopards – as well as herds of giraffes and zebras.
I had been on game drives (safaris) several times before, but when my new-to-Africa partner saw the ‘stay in the vehicle, lions roaming free,’ signs, his eyes might as well have turned into stars.
Of course lions are roaming free, it’s the bush. What did you expect?
On that trip, we spotted lion prides as one usually does. We raced quad bikes alongside sprinting ostriches, buck, and zebra (in a park without lions). An elephant also charged our truck – a first for me – which had me genuinely worried as I’d seen what elephants can do to safari trucks when they really want to. But he wasn’t scared, he was starstruck. A wild, aggressive African elephant was less than 10 meters from him. How can you be anything but awed?
Later at our wedding, the Father-of-the-Bride speech would be full of jokes about how he tried to get rid of him, “I even took him to Joburg where it said ‘hijacking hotspot,’ and when he wanted to play with lions I said ‘yes, go ahead!’”
Because it is dangerous. Far more so than my native England. But that’s South Africa. It’s an incredible country with deep-rooted issues, scars from apartheid still affecting people’s mindsets. Travelling with a first-timer made me confront the awful in all its sadness while appreciating the spectacular in all its glory.
He was right to react how he did – to be appalled and amazed.
South Africa is special.
Down to this day, I’m grateful for the fresh perspective he gave me. To acknowledge and appreciate how crazy it all is.
Despite having visited so regularly, even as an adult I’d still rather not go to South Africa without my parents who know what they’re doing. Who always carry ‘mugger’s money’ in a separate pocket so they can throw it, run away, and keep their wallets if they’re targeted. Who, when we were getting boxed in on a bush road when I was a blissfully ignorant child in the backseat, knew what to do. Who’ve both lost friends to the violence and know the best ways to avoid it.
Of course, pre-pandemic, South Africa was receiving over 16 million tourists a year, the vast majority without incident. So I’m not trying to scare anyone. I have never had an experience in South Africa that made me feel unsafe.
And it is a beautiful thing to know nothing going in and let South Africa stun you.
But the foolproof way will always be travelling with locals, the experience-hardened veterans of the area who know more than a google search can ever tell you. That way, you’re free to relax and absorb the magic around you, safe in the knowledge that people who know what they’re doing have got your back, just like my partner could.
就爱要 says:
Where there is a will, there is a way.