Changing Forms of Tourism
Local “Resident Tourists” Exploring Johannesburg, South Africa
Whites are coming out of the suburbs to explore the complex culture of this metropolitan city.
by Daniel Hammett and Gijsbert Hoogendoorn
“Dark Tourism” in Johannesburg
In episode 6 (Africa) of the popular Netflix series ‘Dark Tourist’ the creator and host, New Zealander David Farrier, visits Johannesburg. In the opening dialogue to this sequence, he notes how tourists avoid the city due to its reputation for crime and violence.
Instead, tourists simply pass through “Joburg” on their way to safari parks.
However, for the dark tourist the reputation is catnip rather than a deterrent.
Farrier visits the Alexandra Township — an area of Johannesburg with a notorious popular reputation as a violent and lawless ‘ghetto’ — according to the narration by Farrier.
During his visit, and despite (or even because of) the perceived danger of Alexandra, Farrier takes a bicycle tour through the township with local tour operator and resident, Jeff.
At the start of the tour Farrier makes the rather innocent remark (‘faux pas, ’as he calls it) in stating that he has never been on a ‘slum tour’. While Farrier later apologizes, Jeff acknowledges that this term is “almost offensive” (see Hoogendoorn and Giddy, 2017; Hoogendoorn et al, 2020).
After the tour, Farrier admits that while Alexandra is a very poor part of Johannesburg, his experience was very different from what he initially thought it would be. He acknowledged the community’s heritage (Nelson Mandela stayed in Alexandra when he first arrived from the Eastern Cape province in 1941), the sense of community pride, the welcoming nature of residents, and the general relaxed atmosphere.
At the end of this part of the episode, Farrier admits that his perception of Alexandra and Johannesburg has changed for the better, acknowledging the differences between reality and the media representation of South African townships as being dangerous (Hammett, 2014).
Farrier’s experience is by no means novel. In recent years a growing number of local white suburbanites have started to explore their home city of Johannesburg — not only the townships but the central business district — as a tourist destination.
The Rise of the “Resident Tourist”
Safety and security concerns, along with a ‘territorial stigma’ towards the Johannesburg inner city as “not their place”, caused a generation of white suburbanites to isolate themselves from this urban space since the early 1990s.
What has emerged since the 2010s, however, is a rise in the number of local residents visiting, as tourists, inner city areas that were previously perceived as dangerous ‘no-go’ zones, such as Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville (www.dlalanje.org).
The phenomenon of “resident tourists” challenges academic understandings and definitions of who is a “tourist”. What, for example, is the difference between a “tourist” and a “resident” when they display the same behaviour?
Recent years have also witnessed the emergence of various, mostly online, social media-driven initiatives (particularly Instagram) to encourage Joburg suburbanites to become inner city “resident tourists” (Hoogendoorn and Gregory, 2016).
New Directions for Tourism Research
Historically, tourists were defined by how far they traveled and whether or not they had crossed international borders (for international tourism). However, based on our survey of 200 resident tourists to Johannesburg’s inner city, we believe it is best to define tourists by their psychological or social motivation and experience (Hoogendoorn and Hammett, 2020).
Tourism and tourists in places like Johannesburg are changing. This has been inspired by the curiosity of well-to-do white suburbanites, desiring to experience and know more of their city.
But is has also been driven by a desire for social media self-promotion and self-branding by millennial and gen Z tourists wanting to show their peers how adventuresome and cosmopolitan they are.
In our research, we point out that by rethinking newly emerging practices of collective consumption (often enabled by social media), we can get a better understanding of the various kinds of tourists and the places they seek out within our own communities.
The experience in Johannesburg shows how these “resident tourists” are challenging the enclaving of daily life that has separated blacks and whites and different social classes for decades. In doing so, they are also creating new forms of tourism and tourist consumption that can easily be overlooked by traditional ways of researching tourism but which must be studied as they may have important implications for tourism development in the 21st century.
This article is based on:
Hoogendoorn, G. and Hammett, D. 2020: Resident tourists and the local ‘other’, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2020.1713882
— See that article for a full list of references for this research.
Other References Cited
Hammett, D. (2014) Tourism images and British media representations of South Africa, Tourism Geographies, 16(2), 221–236.
Hoogendoorn, G. and Giddy, J.K. (2017) “Does this look like a slum?” Walking tours in inner-city Johannesburg, Urban Forum, 28(3), 315–328.
Hoogendoorn, G. and Gregory, J.J. (2016) Instagrammers, urban renewal and the Johannesburg inner-city, Urban Forum, 27(4), 399–414.
Hoogendoorn, G. and Letsatsi, N. and Malleka, T. and Booyens, I. (2020) Tourist and Resident Perspectives on ‘Slum Tourism’: the case of Vilakazi Precinct, Soweto, GeoJournal, 85, 1133–1149.
About the Authors
Daniel Hammett is a political and development geographer in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses primarily on citizenship, civil society, and geopolitics of the global south.
Gijsbert Hoogendoorn is a tourism geographer in the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research focuses on second home tourism, climate change and tourism, and urban tourism.
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