Testimonials

A Saturday afternoon. A few Aussie gap year students who are visiting South Africa for a few months were stranded at the toll road in Mooi River when their car broke down. As they are registered on eblockwatch's Travelbuddy.co.za project which links tourists to locals wherever they happen to be while travelling through South Africa , we received their panic alert via sms to inform our travelbuddy that we had a tourist in distress.
A local hotel was contacted in Mooi River to give them local streetwise advice, the garage owner was requested to transport them to a hotel down the road and Baz Bus offered to fetch them from Mooi River and transport them to their hotel in Johannesburg , free of charge, the next day.

A group of Canadian volunteer teachers who came to teach in Alexandra township in Johannesburg in 2003 had a safe and much enriched experience thanks to their Travel Buddy, Bulldog Rathokolo, who organised 10 of his neighbourhood watch members to keep an eye out for them.

According to the Sunday Times: "Not only were they safe, but other members of Travel Buddy even offered Schmidt's staff free horse riding trips on their days off.

"And during their stay in the township, Rathokolo and his men organised street parties for the students and a farewell bash at an Alexandra home where they slaughtered a sheep for the visitors."

What's even more exciting is that eBlockwatch has been expanded into a tourism protection plan called SA Travel Buddy ( www.satravelbuddy.co.za ) with the full support of the police, AA Travel and eBlockwatch members in the travel and tourism industry. On arrival in the country, visitors get hold of a cellphone and SIM card, and sign up for the programme, which will link them to volunteer support groups in each province who can monitor their travel and who are at the ready to respond immediately if they run into trouble.

This was exactly the case recently in Cape Town, when a visitor had his passport stolen from his car on Signal Hill. His SA Travel Buddy leapt into action to get hold of the embassy when, miraculously, he was contacted by someone who had found the passport pouch in a bin. The coordinator says, 'I jumped in my car, collected the documents and, an hour and a half later, our dazed but grateful guest was on his cruise ship, ready to sail!'

Volunteer coordinators can liaise with tourists in their area, advising them of safety issues, such as avoiding a particular route where there have been hijackings lately, and also keeping them informed about special events or points of interest, like the Knysna Oyster Festival, for example. Snyman believes the project, linked to the police, eBlockwatch members and other response centres through a dedicated international call centre, will go a long way to convincing tourists that South Africa is a safe and friendly destination. As he says, "We want to make South Africa the safest place to travel in the world."