Accommodating Aspirations

Since South Africa's democratization in 1994, the urban centers have become hubs for international finance and tourism while the peripheral townships remain burdened by poverty and crime. In Cape Town, the country's leisure capital, racial segregation has grown a township tourism market that promises an "authentic" South African experience for visitors and an economic opportunity for township residents. Black women, rejecting the notion of "slum tourism," have spearheaded an accommodation sector by turning their township homes into bed and breakfasts and guesthouses. These entrepreneurial hostesses welcome white Western tourists as well as more frequent, though less recognized, Black South African guests. By tailoring their gendered service labor for different clientele, they curate multiple narratives of township life and South Africa's future. Pinpointing women's homes as sites of ideological construction, Accommodating Aspirations considers how tourism shapes the way we understand "developing" countries. Annie Hikido critically examines how historical structures and everyday practices produce perceptions of neighborhoods and nations. Drawing from rich ethnographic fieldwork, Hikido demonstrates how township hostesses construct competing portrayals of place through race, class, gender, and nation. Poignant portraits of their homespun hospitality illuminate the promise and precarity of Black townships in the afterlife of apartheid.