Township killings blight tourism

THIS weekend, Sowetans buried two young men, both victims of a senseless crime. Actor and DJ Mandla Hlatshwayo and his friend Oupa Duma were slain when four men who had been robbing women of their cellphones outside Meli’s Lounge in Pimville fired the fatal shots that ended their lives.

Both Hlatshwayo and Duma were buried amid an outpouring of grief, anger and hopelessness among friends and family.

Meli Morewane, the man who built Meli’s Lounge from scratch, was a perfect example of township entrepreneurship, and his joint is one of Soweto’s finest attractions, often drawing visitors from outside the township, outside the province and outside the country.

Coming as they do a few months after the killing of a manager at the popular Sakhumzi restaurant on the mega tourist attraction that is Vilakazi Street, the senseless killings have put a dark mark on this success story and threaten township tourism. These senseless murders kill the spirit of township entrepreneurship and leave us all scared and scarred. We must all be outraged.

Police must be commended for swiftly arresting the suspects, as they did in the Sakhumzi killing.

But it is up to us, as communities, to work with the police to make sure that we smoke out the evil elements among us. These few people are destroying small black businesses at a time when “township economy” is a buzzword.

Until we make sure no more killings happen in our townships, entrepreneurs like Morewane will count their losses as tourists shun places such as Soweto.

Ironically, the killings happened as we hosted the Tourism Indaba in Durban, where our government was punting local tourism and urging South Africans to tour their own country.

Tourism is one of the biggest foreign currency earners and contributes a large chuck to the country’s gross domestic product.

Over the years, many township businesses have mourned that tourists arrive in our country and spend their money in the suburbs, shunning the townships. An incident like the one in Pimville doesn’t help matters.

The law must be very harsh with these killers, and the people of Soweto must stand together to defend their businesses from these thugs. For township tourism to thrive, safety and security should be top of our minds. We can’t be prisoners in our own country and we can’t have no-go areas.

We must take the war to the criminals, working with the police and other law enforcement agencies.