Ayanda Mnyandu is a man with big ideas and a passion for Johannesburg’s inner city. He’s the co-founder of City Skate Tours – a company he started with a good friend in 2017 – which specializes in providing people with an intimate experience of downtown Johannesburg while navigating the city streets on a skateboard. While that may sound far-fetched, or even plain terrifying, I can assure you that it’s an experience not to be missed, even if you’ve never ridden a skateboard before.

“Part of the reason I do what I do is to make skateboarding more accessible to people who have never done it before…to open it up to a bigger audience. I want your first experience on a skateboard to be fun”, says Ayanda. He spends the first 30 minutes of each tour teaching the basics of riding a skateboard so that his guests are able to navigate the city streets with their newfound skill. And then it’s off onto the streets for the real experience.

“When people come to Africa, a lot of the time the perception is “wildlife safari”, but there’s more to Africa than its wildlife and natural beauty. We have urban centers in Africa where there is a lot to learn and experience. For me the bigger picture is to slowly change the perception of what tourism is in Africa…let’s start exploring urban spaces too and move away from this notion that Africa is just wildlife and rural villages…we have urban centers where there are smart, educated and passionate people…there are a lot of stories in these urban environments”, says Ayanda, whose passion for the Johannesburg inner city is boundless.

And that passion is what you get while on one of his tours. For Ayanda, skateboarding is the means to get you to all the places in the city he has to show, his main goal being to give visitors an insight into the dynamics and culture of the city, and to provide a deeper understanding of this urban space. Says Ayanda, “Let’s start thinking differently about the inner city. What’s the potential in this place? What do we understand by an urban space? Can we live here? Can we work here? What improvements can we make? What is the culture we want to promote?”

By asking these questions, he hopes to stimulate thought on ways to drive Johannesburg forward and create a more integrated city in terms of the people, the transport, and the living spaces, and to try to find a common culture without discounting people’s differences. He sums his approach up well when he says, “I feel that as a resident of the city I can contribute to making Johannesburg a world-class city instead of merely waiting for government to do everything for us.”

In addition to the skate tours, Ayanda works at Skateistan, an international NPO focused on youth development through skateboarding. They have project sites in South Africa, Afghanistan and Cambodia and their focus is on supplementing school learning, particularly science and mathematics, as well as a programme called “Skate Create” which teaches the youth about the world around them through art and play.

And to top it all off, he’s got a post-graduate degree in economics. But instead of opting for the corporate environment, he decided to keep his work and career aligned to his passion of skateboarding. And he doesn’t regret his choice, telling me, “I love skateboarding, I’m really happy that I’m able to do it on a daily basis. Skateboarding brings it all together for me.”

Plans for the future? With a twinkle in his eye, Ayanda tells me that the end-goal is to have skateboarding tours in the major cities of other African countries…he rattles off a list of places that make me want to pack my bags and go on an adventure, ”Kenya, Senegal, Cameroon, Egypt, Mali…”

Well I’d say the future looks bright for Ayanda. And I’d say the future of Johannesburg and Africa looks bright too, especially with someone as smart and passionate as Ayanda leading the way.