This is life in South Africa’s black townships, according to a white guy

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Much of South Africa remains divided along racial lines, a stubborn legacy of apartheid government policies that forced black people to live in the worst areas while whites were handed the prime real estate.

So a white person living in South Africa's black townships is still an event fit for headlines. While some middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods are today more diverse, the townships have remained almost entirely black.

Howard James Fyvie, however, is a white guy who moved to one of these informal settlements several months ago. And he has just released a video that offers "whities" a tour of what he says are the township's most promiment locales: spaza shops (small convenience stores), barber shops and shebeens (taverns).

"It's been about four months of me living in Dunoon township, and I can say I've truly started to become part of the community here, and make some special friends in the process," Fyvie wrote. "I think it's safe to say that the honeymoon period has officially worn off — and I've started to see both the good and the bad to this place."

It's important to note that Fyvie, a young film director, can leave whenever he wants, a luxury many black people living in the townships aren't able to afford. He is also not the first white person to make the move to a township.

In another headine-grabbing move, a white, middle-class family relocated from their leafy Pretoria suburb to a shack in Mamelodi township in 2013. They lived there for a month on a budget of about $10 a day while blogging about the experience.

And in a twist on the "township tours," which are popular among tourists to South Africa, in February two young, black photographers from Langa — another township in Cape Town — went to the super posh Camps Bay area for an "alternative township tour."