[Just yesterday Frank was saying how travel programs in the USA depict S.Africa as quite safe! Duh! But look at this quick-thinking tour guide. This is what I mean by “streetwise”. All those people… could have been shot… our criminals don’t give a damn.

But sadly… I wish we could shoot back. Really. Blow their rotten little brains out. Why live like this? Just kill them and live in safety? If I were the Minister of Law and Order, I would hang Armed Robbers – en masse – and put it on TV. Jan]

A foreign tourist who was part of a group robbed at gunpoint in Langa last week was under the impression that the robbery was a set-up to make the tour more exciting.

The group’s tour guide, robbed with the rest of the group at a Langa school, told the Cape Argus that his greatest concern was making sure his seven-member British and German tour group did not panic.

He had taken foreign tourists to the Chris Hani Independent School countless times before and had never expected trouble. Two other tour buses were parked outside the school when the robbery occurred.

We were all standing in the schoolyard next to the parked minibus when a group of young people approached us. They looked like normal people walking past, but all five of them came in between us and one popped a gun into my face.

“Although I thought that I was probably going to die, I told the guys (tourists) not to worry – this happens daily.”

“They all looked at me; I was still talking normally. They (the robbers) wanted cash, cameras and cellphones.”

“The group gave them everything they wanted. I remained calm and told the tourists that they would probably get their belongings back later… One tourist said he thought that we do this in the township as part of a set-up to make it more exciting for them. He did not even think about it as a robbery.

“At that point some school pupils and teachers came out and realised that we had been robbed.”

“But the other tourists were oblivious to the fact that we had been robbed. It was handled so discreetly.”

He took the tourists to a police station, while Cape Town Routes Unlimited helped the tourists cancel their credit cards.

“It was a hell of a day. This made me realise that you must make sure to greet your family when you leave the house in the morning as we are never sure if we will be back later.”

Later that night, a group of 40 Dutch tourists were robbed outside the Lelapa restaurant in Langa.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20061205103113604C796057

Replied:
Thanks Carla,
WOW, a fast thinker and just the kind of fellow I would want to travel with. I have praised highly the talented and well informed professional hunters in southern Africa and my own personal tour guide by the name of Jan L. was just the best. I think that living day to day with the challenges you folks have raises every level of awareness and it becomes a matter of survival. I salute this tour guide for thinking first of his clients prior to having his own personal nervous breakdown.

Thanks again! I will post to the Readers News Page.
JoAn