March 28, 2004 / By PAMELA NOEL

LINDSAY WINT spent 29 years driving New Jersey Transit buses. Yet when he retired in 2002, the last thing he wanted to do was sit still. He had seen Israel, Greece, Brazil and other far-flung places. But he felt a special excitement when he heard a radio promotion for a tour to South Africa on WLIB-AM, a New York station with a large black and Caribbean audience.

"I wanted to travel - you didn't have to push me," said Mr. Wint, 65, who currently divides his at-home life between a house in the Bronx and an apartment in New Jersey. He liked the trip enough to go again last year. In South Africa, he said, he found the people warm and the food interesting. The tour of Robben Island, the former prison where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years, was "really touching." Last year, his group even met Winnie Mandela, the ex-president's former wife, in her front yard.

Next month Mr. Wint will return to South Africa for his third tour with E-Z Tours and WLIB, making him one of the growing, if still comparatively tiny, number of African- and Caribbean-American tourists who have visited South Africa - often as part of a tour group - in the 10 years since the end of apartheid. Overall, however, the number of Americans visiting South Africa lags greatly behind that of Europeans.

The trip, from April 3 to 13, represents a team effort in marketing by E-Z Tours of New York, in association with WLIB-AM/WBLS-FM and the South Africa Tourism office in New York. A big part of the appeal of these trips, said Selma Edwards, owner of E-Z Tours, is the presence of on-air personalities Ann Tripp and Dahved Levy. Participants pay $2,699 each, based on double occupancy. Registration closed this month with 100 people signed up - twice as many as last year, Ms. Edwards said. A similar (and sold out) tour by Advantage International, of Chicago, will feature Donnie Simpson, a popular Washington radio and television personality.

The "consistent growth of U.S. travelers" is among the biggest changes in South African tourism in recent years, said Prudence Solomon Inzerillo, president of South African Tourism: U.S.A., in an e-mail message from her New York office With the celebration this year of 10 years of democracy, she said, "we anticipate more and more African-American travelers wanting to visit."

Touring in groups has emerged as a key characteristic of African-American leisure travelers, according to Ms. Solomon Inzerillo and a small sampling of tour providers who specialize in marketing to them. Many African-Americans who travel, they say, do so with other members of their churches, fraternal organizations, alumni associations and travel clubs. To raise interest in South Africa, tour operators say, they often rely on word of mouth, direct presentations and mailings, as well as more creative (and expensive) promotions like partnerships with radio stations.

Statistics based on race are not tracked for international travel, American and South Africa tourism officials said. But, most agree, African-Americans represent a tiny but growing slice of South African tourism.

A lot of African-Americans have traveled to West Africa in search of touchstones to their heritage, said Ms. Edwards, a former New York City teacher who started E-Z Tours in 1980, but not to southern and East Africa. Many of those visiting South Africa are older and well educated, she said, and they feel a special connection to the country where the apartheid struggle echoed that for the civil rights of African-Americans. What they enjoy most are visits to heritage sites, cultural experiences and opportunities to interact with black South Africans, she and others said. But the marketing picture is not completely upbeat, partly because of lingering negative perceptions about South Africa.

Gaynelle Henderson-Bailey, a tour operator, bristles at the way she feels Africa in general is portrayed in news reports, a factor that she feels keeps the number of tourists low compared with other vacation destinations.

"So many Americans are still ignorant about Africa," said Ms. Henderson-Bailey, president of Henderson Travel and Tours, of Silver Spring, Md. The agency, which specializes in travel to Africa, was started by her parents in 1955 and took its first tour to South Africa in 1994, just before Mr. Mandela was elected president, Ms. Henderson-Bailey said.

This month 15 people took one of the company's 10-day, 8-night tours to South Africa. The itinerary began in Johannesburg and included the usual staples: the township of Soweto, Sun City resort, Cape Town and Table Mountain. The price was $2,494 a person, double occupancy, including transportation, lodging and many meals. The company also lists a 13-day, 11-night tour of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia July 24 to Aug. 5 ($3,675 a person).

Nomvimbi Meriwether, owner of Meticulous Tours in Potomac, Md., is a South African who lived in Soweto under apartheid but finished her education in the United States and is married to an American. She, like others, feels there is still a long way to go before African-Americans will flock to South Africa in large numbers. "We have to do a lot of educating," she said. But once people go, she said, they are favorably impressed, "beyond their expectations."