Renate Horst wanted to visit Africa, but she was not only interested in running around the bush looking for ze-bras and hippos. "I told my travel agent I didnt just want to be a tourist. I wanted to go where ordinary people dontget to go, " says Horst, a resident of Munich. Today, this middle-aged woman is getting her wish. As her car pullsinto Cape Towns crime-plagued Langa township, guide Ntobeko Peni, 27, starts reciting a capsule history of the a-partheid struggle, starting with bloody 1960 protests against the countrys passed law for blacks. He takes his visitorby police stations where marchers rallied, through a squatter-camp beer hall, then finally pulls up to the street inKhayelitsha township where a mob stoned and stabbed to death American exchange student Amy Biehl in 1993. Fourpeople served time in prison for the murder, the result of a partys efforts to block scheduled elections by creating un-rest : they were later released. Peni adds casually : "One of them is now involved in tourism, and he is driving foryou. " Horst doesnt appear to be bothered, and after the tour is complete declares: "That was a good thing. " A growing number of her fellow visitors to South Africa seem to agree. World outrage over apartheid sparked in-ternational sanctions that squeezed South Africas economy until the system fell in 1994. But the memory of apartheidlives on —— thanks in part to thriving tourism businesses. In the last year interest in attractions that highlight thenearly 50 years of segregation has been growing rapidly. Last week Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and otherpolitical pris
ners suffered for decades in jail.
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