Follow up on PheZulu Cultural Village

My mom sent me an email in response to my last post, about the Zulu cultural village, in which she responded:

So about the tourism. We have Mystic Seaport, Williamsburg and Sturbridge village to name a few. People here love to share our culture and don't feel exploited. Same with the Native Americans--their reserves. So you don't really know if the site you went to was a labor of love--or just a money maker. But if people don't share history, the world would be ignorant.

Just my thoughts--I hate tourist traps, but not everyone has the opportunity to go to study different cultures or even want to read about them. 

As I feel like procrastinating on my biogeography homework regarding species richness in tropical rainforests, I am going to take this opportunity to rebuttal.

            Obviously, I agree with my mom that people should experience other people’s cultures so as to understand how they live and be less ignorant to the world around them. However, there is a difference between experiencing and learning about other people’s cultures and commodifying for tourism and to create a profit. The examples she presented about cultural villages in the United States, Williamsburg, etc., do demonstrate that cultural sites are not always associated with what Americans deem exotic. However, they are also historical sites which are attempting to depict the lives of past people. In contrast, sites such as PheZulu are creating shows out of the lives of many present day Zulu people and the important ceremonies which they participate in. Therefore, these traditions still hold a great deal of significance and meaning in many people’s lives.

However, as an outsider, straight off the tour bus, the audience is not able to comprehend the importance of the ceremony and only is able to view it as entertainment. Unless the audience has done its research and thoroughly studied Zulu culture, it will view the 20 minute show, which was supposed to represent a 3 day marriage ceremony, as just that, a show. The audience member does not understand why certain events are occurring or the importance of certain roles in the ceremony. He will view it as something to take a few photographs of to show his pals at home and then get back on the bus to carry on with his tour. He is unaware of the importance of these traditions and the cultural struggles faced by the societies.

In countries, such as South Africa, which are ridden with poverty, tourism becomes a valuable source of revenue. It helps to stimulate the economy, clean up the country, and draw public awareness to the county. It provides thousands of locals with jobs and much needed incomes. Therefore, cultural tourism sites do become important because it draws outsiders in and allows them to see how locals are living. The issue, however, is that the representation and depiction is skewed. Viewers are naïve, if not ignorant, to why cultures act the way they do and accept the culture as entertainment, not a legitimate lifestyle. As a tourist (yes, that is how am defining myself while I live here) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, I am immersed in Zulu culture. I have friends who hold ceremonies in which they slaughter cows in respect for their families, culture, etc. They are the people carrying on the Zulu traditions. The people at the tourist centers are taking a part of the culture, which they deem interesting, and mass-marketing it for tourists. Some may argue that the tourist, who attends the show, is learning about the culture because he is seeing part of it reenacted. I argue that it is taken out of context and has become for the soul purpose of entertainment.

However, people could be going to an actual Zulu village and exploiting the culture, which during the 1990s was quite common to do in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. With that type of tourism, a guide would take the tourists down to the village to watch people living their daily lives and to take a few photographs with them. There was no retribution or benefit for the local community.

Although this may seem quite cynical, I do feel that the cultural villages do serve a purpose of providing jobs and stimulating the local economy. In fact, they could instill in some people a desire to learn more about the culture and, thus, be educational. However, the way they are set up does not make education a high priority. To get to the stage, the viewer walk through a curio shop, then watches the show, takes a few pictures with the performers, and finally walks through a few huts before returning to the curio shop. There are no guides telling the viewer about Zulu culture, there are no placards explaining what things are; it is purely used to produce a profit.

In summary, the cultural villages are not the worse thing in the world. They are beneficial to the economy and could possibly instill a desire to learn about the culture from a select few tourists. In general, they just provide something to do and to see. They are something to tell friends about when the tourists return from their trips.