Our stories are the equalisers
Have you tried to find snoek in a restaurant in the Central City? What about umngqusho or chakalaka? Why is it that if you want `culture' you visit a township? Why is a City Tour a tour of only the original Cape Town city, and not the broader city, as if nothing out of the City Bowl is Cape Town? Why is the East City the neighbourhood surrounding the City Hall and the Granary, and not as far as Khayelitsha and Muizenberg?
Can we change the city by changing the language we use to describe it? Can we tell its story well if we as citizens are excluded from the narrative?
Cape Town is a great place to be, don't get me wrong. One of the reason's it is great is that it's a city that demands a lot of questions, which makes it challenging and stimulating. And isn't that fantastically, disgustingly, middle class? That the extremes of the city make it stimulating? How different would the perspective be of someone who lives on the poor extreme, where the quest is for survival.
I'm constantly uneasy in this place I call home. We have not done enough to unengineer what apartheid created. We haven't done enough to discover each other across real and imagined boundaries. It's so difficult to get lost in that incredible glass of our region's wine, when almost next to me someone else can't offer their child a proper meal.
Don't say `that's just the reality of the world, live with it', no don't tell me that. This is not simply the reality of the world. This is our creation. And we have to change it. Can we change it by having a glass of wine? Can we change it be eschewing all things wonderful?
This is responsible tourism - the attempt to answer the questions of how we make this place better. And this is where tourism in Cape Town is such an interesting conundrum. I got into the travel business a) to create a job for myself, and b) because I recognised the power of a new approach to tourism to create change by centering our offerings around our stories. Historically, the economically empowered have dictated the narrative; how can tourism create a groundswell where even the least economically empowered can position a story in the mainstream?
A great city for me is one where the stories of the city are everywhere. Where local food is easier to find than food from elsewhere. Where mobility is not an issue. Where safety is not an issue. Where failure to make something of your life is due to squandered opportunity instead of lack of opportunity.
A great city is a city where every facet of the city's life is built around what is needed to continue to keep that city great.
Cape Town is a great city in many ways. I won't waste space here detailing them. Rather let me look at some of the failings. One of Cape Town's greatest failings as a city is that it is a city of parallel universes, and as a result, its tourism happens in parallel rather than in conjunction. In Manenberg, a tough ghetto just about in the middle of the metropole, there is a mural, painted by school kids, that says `tourism is everybody's business'. And in the `story' model of tourism this is dead right. But in its current form, tourism takes place mainly in a layer of its own, detached from the city, almost in spite of the city; with scant regard for the needs of the city.
We know that the trend in tourism is for humanising experiences; is for the beach and game reserve experience, as well as the experience that connects the traveller to people and stories. In a city like Cape Town, this is tourism's great opportunity. In the knowledge economy, our stories are the equalisers.
Can we change the city by changing the language we use to describe it? Can we tell its story well if we as citizens are excluded from the narrative?
Cape Town is a great place to be, don't get me wrong. One of the reason's it is great is that it's a city that demands a lot of questions, which makes it challenging and stimulating. And isn't that fantastically, disgustingly, middle class? That the extremes of the city make it stimulating? How different would the perspective be of someone who lives on the poor extreme, where the quest is for survival.
I'm constantly uneasy in this place I call home. We have not done enough to unengineer what apartheid created. We haven't done enough to discover each other across real and imagined boundaries. It's so difficult to get lost in that incredible glass of our region's wine, when almost next to me someone else can't offer their child a proper meal.
Don't say `that's just the reality of the world, live with it', no don't tell me that. This is not simply the reality of the world. This is our creation. And we have to change it. Can we change it by having a glass of wine? Can we change it be eschewing all things wonderful?
This is responsible tourism - the attempt to answer the questions of how we make this place better. And this is where tourism in Cape Town is such an interesting conundrum. I got into the travel business a) to create a job for myself, and b) because I recognised the power of a new approach to tourism to create change by centering our offerings around our stories. Historically, the economically empowered have dictated the narrative; how can tourism create a groundswell where even the least economically empowered can position a story in the mainstream?
A great city for me is one where the stories of the city are everywhere. Where local food is easier to find than food from elsewhere. Where mobility is not an issue. Where safety is not an issue. Where failure to make something of your life is due to squandered opportunity instead of lack of opportunity.
A great city is a city where every facet of the city's life is built around what is needed to continue to keep that city great.
Cape Town is a great city in many ways. I won't waste space here detailing them. Rather let me look at some of the failings. One of Cape Town's greatest failings as a city is that it is a city of parallel universes, and as a result, its tourism happens in parallel rather than in conjunction. In Manenberg, a tough ghetto just about in the middle of the metropole, there is a mural, painted by school kids, that says `tourism is everybody's business'. And in the `story' model of tourism this is dead right. But in its current form, tourism takes place mainly in a layer of its own, detached from the city, almost in spite of the city; with scant regard for the needs of the city.
We know that the trend in tourism is for humanising experiences; is for the beach and game reserve experience, as well as the experience that connects the traveller to people and stories. In a city like Cape Town, this is tourism's great opportunity. In the knowledge economy, our stories are the equalisers.
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