Township Tour and Robben Island

(Duration: 08h30 – 12h30 am / 13h30 – 17h30 pm)

During the fifties, the government replaced African employees in the Western Cape with coloured and white workers, and passed laws that were enforced by police trying to catch the illegal migrant workers. However the fast growing shanty town on the edge of Cape Town were evidence that influx control was not really working.

• Langa is the oldest recorded township, and was established in 1923. Similar to the nearby communities of Gugulethu and Philippi, Langa is one of the many areas that were established prior to the apartheid era designated for Black Africans.  During your tour, you'll experience the “real” Langa and meet many people who are making a difference in the community.  Most of the residents belonging to the Xhosa tribe.

• Crossroads....In the 1970s a shanty town developed in Crossroads, near the Airport. It begun when workers were told to leave the white farms and move to the Crossroads, finding only bush, they build shacks and established a community that afforded families more scope for creating individual, respectable home than the hostels in Langa and Gugulethu.  

• Khayelitsha meaning “new home” was intended by the government to provide housing to all “legal black African residents” of the Cape Peninsula, whether they were in squatter camps or in existing townships. The plan was to create 4 towns with 30 000 residents in brick houses, yet by 1995 the population was 450 00 0 and unemployment stood at 80%. Only 14% living in core housing, with 54% live in serviced shacks and 32% un-serviced areas. A handful of residents have electricity and most families have to fetch water from a public tap. Khayelitsha grew rapidly during 1999 as migrants from the Eastern Cape, previously deterred by influx control arrived to look for work.

Monuments and Sites along the way

• District Six Museum
• Gugulethu Seven Memorial
• Amy Biehl Memorial
• Craft Market
• Look-out hill