So see how you like it! 'Township tour' snaps in Camps Bay

What happens when three young, black and tjatjarag photographers flip the script and take snaps of the affluent inhabitants of Cape Town's Camps Bay?

Photographer Andiswa Mkosi, from Langa, said she thought that if tourists could descend on the townships with clicking cameras why couldn't she and her friends put the rich in sharp focus?

And this is precisely what she, Onele Liwani and Sabelo Mkhabela decided to do.

The result? An awkward and moody video that they said demonstrated how "intrusive" township tours are.

The SA Institute of Race Relations has called the experiment "a positive conversation starter".

In the two-minute, 38 second video the trio takes pictures of people while asking: "Do I annoy you?"

They encounter an old white man walking his dogs, which incessantly bark at them.

The man says: "It's okay, they're fine. They won't bite, okay? They're just ... because they don't recognise you.

"You're strangers and you're walking around here, that's why. That's it, nothing personal, okay?"

The trio nearly become involved in a scuffle with a restaurant guard after a patron accuses them of harassment and asks the guard to "please get these people away from here".

The guard orders them to delete the video footage or he will "seize" it.

The video has been watched over 30,000 times since it was uploaded to YouTube.

Makosi said the shoot was a once-off experiment .

She said of tourism photography: "People in the townships are conditioned - they don't see anything wrong with it.

"Some people who responded to the video said township tours brought employment for tour guides, but townships were created during apartheid, so it is like the same people are benefiting from it because the tourism sector is predominantly white."

There was a "great disconnect" between the township people, tour guides and the tourism sector, according to Mkosi.

She said township tours invaded people's personal space and reduced them to being subjects " in a zoo".

Institute of Race Relations spokesman Meinke Steytler said: "We encourage discourse of any kind, especially when it is directed at bringing South Africans closer to reconciliation."

But she added that people "must also remember that tourists take photos of everything and everyone, no matter where they are - be it Barcelona, Washington DC, Cambodia or Khayelitsha".

Tour operator Siviwe Mbinda, from Langa, who owns Siviwe Tours, dismissed the experiment.

He said yesterday: "We've seen the video but the example these girls used was wrong.

"It's not how it's done. Rule number one for our tourists is that you don't take pictures of people without asking their permission.

"What they did was shove cameras in people's faces at restaurants. No tourist would do that."

He said the township tours would continue until the residents - who have never been afraid to express their opinion - called for them to be stopped.

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