Walk this way: Footloose, fancy-free

25 March 2015 - 02:11 By Kim Maxwell

Capetonians know City Sightseeing's red double-decker buses well: slick hop-on hop-off journeys on which passengers are regaled with information about the city's scenic highlights in 16 languages. But the LaGuGu adventure is looser. When it launched in September, it was marketed as one of Cape Town's first hop-on hop-off township tours, with a section covered by bicycle or on foot.When I did the LaGuGu tour of Langa and Gugulethu with an Irish visitor we were the only passengers on a red mini-bus to Langa.Our guide, Buntu Meyi, introduced Langa as Cape Town's oldest and first-planned black township, created in 1923. We passed streets with heavy foot traffic and a woman grilling chicken on the shisa nyama pavement braai.The first surprise was that we'd be touring Langa on foot."The bicycles are pap. I'd have to pump them" said Buntu. "And you'll see more when walking."Houses in a smart street had plaques on their walls naming famous people ("Chris Hani, politician, lived here") including a Proteas cricketer ("Thami Tsolekile lives here").We turned into Libalele Drive. "It was named after township chief Nkosi Langalibalele, once a Robben Island prisoner," said Buntu."These are vukuzenzele businesses," he continued, motioning towards metal containers painted with unisex hair salon portraits, or tailoring signage with sewing machines inside. Women in a concrete building fried vetkoek. On a pavement boiled sheep heads, "smileys", were for sale."About 45% of township people are unemployed so they start these entrepreneurial businesses," said Buntu. "I used to sell pork heads at the station. I was unemployed for three years."For part two of the tour we jumped back on the bus to see monuments to anti-apartheid heroes in Gugulethu. We'd collected a new guide and another tourist, Thorbjørn Lundsgaard, a young Danish lawyer.All three of us got off at Mzoli's butchery for a township lunch. Mzoli's was quiet, with none of the queues typical of weekends. Our braaied chops, wors and tangy chakalaka arrived quickly.Some things didn't add up. In Langa's Dompas Office museum displaying the apartheid passbooks demanded of black South Africans, a guide related that a Groote Schuur Hospital gardener assisted Christiaan Barnard with the world's first heart transplant. Internet research verified that Langa's Hamilton Naki was a skilled laboratory assistant but had no part in heart surgery.Some things moved us.Buntu was saving for a R3000 container, so he could invite a girlfriend over. We saw the cramped hostel room that he shared with his parents and multiple siblings.Other things annoyed.A man demanding money for a phone snap, or R20 change never materialising, in a shack pub. Being left waiting at Mzoli's for an hour wasn't great.The next day the Irish visitor returned to Kirstenbosch and Clifton beach, not sure what to take from it all.LaGuGu Tour City Sightseeing: R290. www.citysightseeing.co.za..

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