Tourist Gogos: It’s never too late to see the world

Rea Khoabane tours Jozi with Gogo On Tour, an NGO that helps the elderly make their travel dreams come true — for free

It was a dream that inspired Gogo Thokozile Matjokane to spend her last days seeing the world - a dream in which her late brother spoke to her.

"Sisi," he said, "your dream shouldn't die with us. Tour!"

The 67-year-old had once planned to travel with her sister and brother after they retired and accessed their pension funds.

"I thought: 'We can't die before we put our feet in the ocean'," she says.

Although she was happy her siblings had begun to build their dream houses after working for so many years, she reminded them that they also needed to travel and see places they'd never been to.

block_quotes_start It's the first time I ever experienced such discrimination and I'm leaving this place sad about how harmless women could have been treated this way block_quotes_end

And so she'd told them: "Save some of your money so that we can go to Durban and Robben Island."

But Gogo Thoko lost both her siblings before her wish of travelling with them was fulfilled. The dream bothered her. "I was already feeling lonely. I had no idea who I would travel with," she says.

She decided to tell her children about the dream . They encouraged her to go door-to-door " and ask other pensioners to see the world with me".

Now, as the founder of the NGO Gogo on Tour, Matjokane has more than 8,000 keen-to-travel brothers and sisters around South Africa.

Gogo on Tour is a free travel club for the elderly, which divides its members into groups according to their age. The "silver group" is 60- to 75-year-olds - these are the younger ones who have more energy to travel further.

The "gold group", 76- to 85-year-olds, travel within their province, often on day tours as they may not have the stamina for more extensive outings.

The platinum group is for those aged 85 and up. They do not physically travel, but rely on silver members to bring them souvenirs from the places they go. The oldest member of the group is 111.

What started as an initiative in Soshanguve, Pretoria, Gogo on Tour has more than 5,000 members in Gauteng and 3,000 in Limpopo and North West.

Gogo Thoko's daughter, Khensani, quit her job at a big corporate and closed her hair salon to help with the NGO full time.

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"To me, all these gogos are my mothers, and there's nothing that makes me happier than seeing them relax and get away from their troubles at home," she says.

I joined one of Gogo on Tour's silver-group trips. Sponsored by the Baobabes charity and City Sightseeing Johannesburg, it was a four-hour trip around Joburg.

The red-bus city tour started at Gold Reef City but I joined in at their next stop, SAB's World of Beer in Newtown. Of course, it wasn't their first time travelling but it was their first time experiencing beer brewing on such a scale.

After watching a video on how traditional beer is made, in an area designed to create a village-like atmosphere, complete with tree stumps serving as seats, we got to taste mqombothi from a traditional clay pot. The pot was passed around and, when it was my turn, I swirled it before drinking, just as my grandmother had taught me.

The gentleman seated next to me, Ntate James Makhwelo, 72, was impressed: "Yaah! You even know you have to shake the clay pot before drinking the traditional beer," he said.

We then hopped back onto the bus for our last stop: the women's prison at Constitution Hill.

Here, where white prisoners such as the husband-poisoning Daisy de Melker and SACP member Esther Barsel were once held, the inequalities of the old South Africa were plain to see. While the white female prisoners had bigger rooms, books to read and a garden in which to walk around, the gogos compared the black prisoners' "isolation" cell to a tiny safe.

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It was here, in "isolation", that people such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Albertina Sisulu were held after their arrest for political activities.

As they were told to go into the "isolation" cell, the women's body language and facial expressions showed how frightened they were. One gogo screamed: "What if it closes with us inside?"

"It's the first time I ever experienced such discrimination and I'm leaving this place sad about how harmless women could have been treated this way," said Thandi Skhosana.

But, she added: "Thanks to Gogo on Tour, I'm now going to tell my children that, as the youth of today, they're taking advantage of the sacrifices and suffering that these women went through during apartheid."

• Khoabane was a guest of Baobabes and City Sightseeing Johannesburg. For more info on the bus tour, see citysightseeing.co.za