IY tour guide putting himself on the map
"I am just a vessel for change," says Wonga Lucas, of Imizamo Yethu, who started running guided tours through the township as a way to support his family.
The tours give visitors a chance to experience everyday life in the community, including home-cooked meals.
“We offer families a chance to cook for our guests whilst paying the family an amount for the work. We also have lunch with that family,” says Mr Lucas.
He moved to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape with his mother and six siblings as a baby.
“When it comes to schooling, my mother worked hard to enable us to go to schools that are really good," he says.
He attended Camps Bay High until Grade 10 then moved to Silikamva High School, a move he says shaped him for life.
“I led in a lot of leadership positions at school, being part of the school governing body and introduced a lot of new concepts within the school due to my previous place of school and its influence."
After high school, he studied film and digital media then worked as a chef for a year and a half. A documentary he made, in 2023, about life in IY, Mandilakhe - Let me Build, was featured at a film festival in Rome in June last year (“Hout Bay doccie to screen at film festival in Italy,” Sentinel, May 18).
His time working as a chef was cut short, he says, because of frequent seizures he suffered in the kitchen due to his epilepsy.
“At that time, I had a white German friend of mine who was staying with me in the township, wanting to learn more about the people he shared Hout Bay with. He approached me and asked if I could show his 12 international friends around in the township and cook for them, knowing I was a chef."
He agreed and had more fun than he thought, with the guests forcing him to charge them a fee.
“That is how the business started.”
He now serves as something of a bridge between international visitors and the people of Imizamo Yethu.
He has used snippets of his documentary to educate people about the community and the social ills it confronts.
The Wonga Tours Garden project was created to tackle some of these problems, he says.
"The HIV and TB health-care workers, when they deliver much-needed medication, we supply them with a bush each of vitamin-filled spinach for the patients low in vitamins.“
He hopes that Wonga Tours will offer opportunities to the youth of the area.
“We want to grow to a point where I am not the only qualified tour guide but having a team of guides doing tours."
To find out more or to book a tour, call 084 453 6076 or 061 119 8995.
