Local resident and tourist safety in Cape Town Townships, South Africa
type: CreativeWork
description: People travel to South African townships due to their association with a unique political history, culture and food, despite the areas experiencing high crime rates, with South Africa, as a result, having unofficially been labelled the ‘crime capital of the world’. Crimes that are perpetrated against South African tourists and local residents frequently make the news headlines in both the national and the international media outlets. To date, the media has, arguably, been pushing agenda-driven news coverage that has had negative implications for the travel decisions made by tourists. High crime rates tend to detract from tourism receipts, with many tourists choosing to visit alternative destinations that appear to be much safer than South Africa. Accordingly, investigating visitor safety and security is an important factor in relation to township tourism product development. The addressing of the issue of safety and security is required with all earnestness, as, otherwise, it has the potential to derail the accruing social and economic prosperity that might else be gleaned from tourism. The current study, therefore, investigated the local residents’ and tourists’ safety perceptions in the prominent tourist townships of Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Nyanga areas, which are situated in Cape Town, South Africa. A mixed methods research approach was used in the study, due to its ability to enable the researcher to collect in-depth and robust data, so as to facilitate the addressing of the related research objectives. The researcher, hence, conducted six interviews with police officials in the townships, and also administered two sets of survey questionnaires (with one set of questionnaires directed at tourists and another at the local communities). Whereas 171 respondents completed the tourist-related questionnaires, 333 completed the local resident-related questionnaires that were usable in the data analysis. The quantitative data analysis used Stata Data Analysis and Sta…
abstract: People travel to South African townships due to their association with a unique political history, culture and food, despite the areas experiencing high crime rates, with South Africa, as a result, having unofficially been labelled the ‘crime capital of the world’. Crimes that are perpetrated against South African tourists and local residents frequently make the news headlines in both the national and the international media outlets. To date, the media has, arguably, been pushing agenda-driven news coverage that has had negative implications for the travel decisions made by tourists. High crime rates tend to detract from tourism receipts, with many tourists choosing to visit alternative destinations that appear to be much safer than South Africa. Accordingly, investigating visitor safety and security is an important factor in relation to township tourism product development. The addressing of the issue of safety and security is required with all earnestness, as, otherwise, it has the potential to derail the accruing social and economic prosperity that might else be gleaned from tourism. The current study, therefore, investigated the local residents’ and tourists’ safety perceptions in the prominent tourist townships of Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Nyanga areas, which are situated in Cape Town, South Africa. A mixed methods research approach was used in the study, due to its ability to enable the researcher to collect in-depth and robust data, so as to facilitate the addressing of the related research objectives. The researcher, hence, conducted six interviews with police officials in the townships, and also administered two sets of survey questionnaires (with one set of questionnaires directed at tourists and another at the local communities). Whereas 171 respondents completed the tourist-related questionnaires, 333 completed the local resident-related questionnaires that were usable in the data analysis. The quantitative data analysis used Stata Data Analysis and Sta…
author: Mbane, Thandokazi Lulu
keywords: township tourism, safety in tourism, crime and tourism, media and tourism
license: https://devspace.unizulu.ac.za/bitstreams/323547f5-b43d-4c8c-9cf8-aff8c96751a2/download
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:17:11Z
provider: University of Zululand
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Zululand