"South Africa, it's possible" - the slogan of the official tourism advertisements promoting the Rainbow Nation state.
But the xenophobic violence of the past two weeks has led many tourists, particularly from other African countries, to wonder whether travel to the country is still possible.
Although the violence has been targeted mainly at African migrants, with both white South Africans and foreigners being spared, Europeans were the first to panic.
A day after the devastating spectacle of a Mozambican burning to death was splashed across the front pages of international newspapers, Germany issued a travel advisory. German travellers to South Africa should avoid central Johannesburg and outlying townships, it said.
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'Stability is important. The sooner we arrest this situation the better' The US, Sweden and other countries followed suit, causing dismay in the booming tourist industry, one of the country's biggest employers.
Although it is too early to get a proper measure of the violence, coming two years before South Africa becomes the first African country to host the football World Cup, the fledgling township tourism business has already taken a knock.
Jimmy Ntintili, owner of Face to Face Tours, one of the first companies to begin running tours to Soweto township in the 1980s, confirms that a group of 30 people pulled out of his Soweto tour on Saturday.
"After sending them a quotation and brochures, I went to see them and their first question was: 'How safe is it?' When they cancelled they didn't give any reason," said Ntintili.
The tourists were Africans, who have been shocked at the images of their countrymen being beaten and burnt by South Africans, mostly in the townships around Johannesburg, long a city of African migration.
'Remember when skinheads in Berlin were attacking people?' In another example of Africans getting cold feet, a spokesperson for Tourism Business Council South Africa (TBCSA) said 90 women who had been enrolled at a conference on domestic violence and poverty in Cape Town last week didn't show up.
The women were mainly Africans, from countries like Nigeria, Algeria and Kenya.
Tourism has been good to South Africa in recent years, nudging out gold mining to become the largest foreign exchange earner, contributing 8 percent to GDP and giving employment to an estimated 1,2 million people.
While the country's game parks, vineyards and golden beaches make it a favourite destination with Western travellers, particularly British, Germans and Americans, the homeland of Nelson Mandela also has particular mystique for many Africans.
Sixty-seven percent of the nine million annual foreign visitors to South Africa are now Africans, whose contribution to tourist revenue shot up in recent years to 30 percent.
South African Tourism boss Moeketsi Mosola agrees that African tourism and township tourism are particularly vulnerable to the images of violence.
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