Photograph: Lebo outside his backpackers

We passed through Soweto on a special visit to Lebo, an enterprising fellow who had started a novel method of township tourism: by bicycle.

He had also turned his family home into a backpackers’ lodge with a cycling theme. It was a stone’s throw from the cultural tourism area that includes the Hector Peterson Memorial, Vilakazi Street, in which the Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had once lived.

Lebo’s backpackers was easy to identify. A mural of a line of cyclists followed by his orange tuk-tuk (scooter van) decorated the walls of the establishment.

On any ordinary day cyclists follow him in the tuk-tuk through the streets of the township on two-hour tours around Orlando West or eight hour trips that take them as far as Kliptown, which is famous for being where the document known as the Freedom Charter was drawn up. It explained the kind of country people in the anti-apartheid struggle wanted South Africa to be one day.

The tourists experience local eats such as cow head, fat cakes and bunny chow. They taste traditional beer at shebeens. They listen to jazz and kwaito sounds and visit houses in informal settlements, as well as historic sites such as the Mandela and Tutu homes. Sometimes they cool off in swimming pools at private homes.

When I linked up with a tour I saw a tall, blond Belgian tourist named Jonas holding his hand out to a passing child in the street. The child did the same and then they waved at one another.

Back at Lebo’s backpackers, Jonas told me how moved he had been.

“It feels really powerful doing Soweto by bicycle. Everyone in the world knows something about the history of this place. Seeing Soweto from the seat of a bicycle is touching. You connect with the place and its people.”

Jonas was following in the footsteps of his grandmother who, on a reluctant visit to South Africa during apartheid thirty years ago, had insisted on including the famous township on her itinerary.

“She said she couldn’t leave the car in which she was travelling. She felt a real distance from the people outside.”

Jonas’s experience was exactly what Lebo had been trying to achieve.

He started the tours with the idea that tourists should get out of their coaches and mingle more with Soweto people.

“People here in Soweto like tourists to ride around on bicycles. They’re not just taking pictures of them. There’s more connection.”

“Often tourists send me the pictures they take. If I recognise people in the pictures I give them copies.”

Lebo believes that locals value having tourists visit the township in this way.

“People thank me for bringing them and they shake my hand.”

They’re even protective of tourists, he said, recalling that a young man once snatched a necklace off a cycling tourist.

“The community jumped on him, got hold of him and took him to the police.”

COMMENT: If tourists had to look around your neighbourhood, would you prefer them to travel around by bicycle, or by cars and buses?