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Snowy Mattera-Shabangu, Product Owner
 


Rishile Tours

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IN JUST one day Snowy Mattera will expose you to the heart of South Africa’s liberation struggle, to the new South Africa and to history’s greatest gold rush. She will also take you back centuries or, if you fancy, hundreds of thousands of years.

To achieve this, Snowy doesn’t have to leave her home province of Gauteng.  “There is so much of interest, so much of history right on our doorsteps,” beams the energetic 47-year-old. “I love the vibe of Johannesburg and Soweto. I love the history and I love sharing it all with people.”

Snowy is the owner of Rishile Tours. She’s the daughter of well known poet and intellectual Don Mattera but, as she explains, she is, more than most, the product of the so-called Rainbow Nation. “My mother’s family are Shangaan; my father’s mother was Tswana. There’s also a bit of Khoisan, Xhosa and Italian in me. I am many things, and so are Johannesburg and Soweto.”

Rishile Tours has three vehicles to transport clients in air conditioned comfort and it hires larger vehicles as the occasion requires; Snowy says the business does tours for between one and 3,000 people. While it specialises in Johannesburg and Soweto, Rishile often organises tours further afield: to Sun City and game reserves around Gauteng. A particular favourite of Snowy’s is the new-opened Freedom Park in Pretoria. The nearby Cradle of Humankind is a must-see for those with the time and the interest to explore mankind’s origins. In early Spring Rishile regularly takes groups all the way to Namaqualand to witness the miracle of the flowers that carpet this arid region as far as they eye can see.

Rishile tailors half- and full-day (eight hour) tours of Johannesburg and Soweto and surrounds to clients’ specifications. If they don’t know where to start exploring the fascinating City of Gold, they would be well advised to let the expert Snowy tailor a tour for them.  Often her tours start from the roof of the Carlton Centre, Johannesburg’s tallest office building, to give visitors a sense of the size and grandeur of the city built on gold. From there the tour might move to a market where sangomas (witchdoctors) and herbalists ply their trades. Constitutional Hill – where political prisoners have been held for more than a century and now the site of democratic South Africa’s highest court – is a frequent stopover.

During the tour Snowy will regale clients with stories of the area before the discovery of gold in 1886, of the Tswana-speaking BaPo people who inhabited these parts, of the many Tswana sub tribes, their names, totems and history.

From Johannesburg full-day tours typically move to Soweto, the dormitory township that is home to more than a million. Snowy often takes groups to the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown, the place where, more than half a century ago, thousands converged to spell out the kind of democratic future they wanted but which many of them did not live to see. In Kliptown tourists can explore the freedom-struggle monuments and the often chaotic vendors’ stalls and shops, soaking up the atmosphere of everyday Soweto.

The Hector Pieterson Museum, scene of the spark that ignited the 1976 students’ revolt, is another popular visit, as is the simply beautiful Regina Mundi Catholic Church, a beacon of hope and free speech in the darkest days of apartheid.

A Soweto tour almost always includes lunch in an ordinary Soweto home – often the house of Snowy’s mother – but the experience guests get is anything but ordinary. “People in the area get excited when they see Snowy coming,” the entrepreneur laughs. An everyday lunch, served in the back yard, turns into a mini community event as neighbours pop in to sing and dance for the benefit of the visitors and to have a chat. Everyone is always pleased to see and meet tourists, to find out about them and to tell them about their lives.

Dropping her guests off at their guesthouse, hotel or at the airport, Snowy heads home to Weltevreden Park, satisfied that she has won a few more friends for Johannesburg and Soweto. “I have a real passion for the travel industry but mostly I have a passion for my country and for people. I just love sharing the beauty of the beloved country.”

Snowy says TEP has helped her business in many ways. These include assistance with drawing up a business plan and with producing such important marketing materials as brochures, business cards and her website.

www.rishiletours.co.za
 
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