ECONOMY-SOUTHERN AFRICA: A Peaceful Alternative for Tourists

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

Maputo, Oct 18 2004 (IPS) - Samao Zandamela of Maputo, Mozambique gazed out his taxi window at the towering bulk of the landmark empty shell of the Four Seasons Hotel, and said, ‘’When that is reopened, it will mean more business for me. More visitors, more passengers. Tourism will not make me rich, but it helps.’’

The taxi owner is typical of most Southern Africans, who benefit from a spill-over effect from the tourism industry. Few own hotels or seaside resorts or game parks, although community-based tourism is being targeted by governments to bring grassroots benefits to ordinary people of the region, by allowing them essentially to market themselves.

‘’Most Africans are rewarded by tourism with jobs, some of which are seasonal but some permanent. These are the waiters, the golf caddies, the game park rangers, the hotel chamber maids, the doormen, gardeners, taxi drivers, and other workers on the lower end of the wage scale,’’ said Amos Khumalo, a tour guide from Swaziland.

Khumalo noted that like most industries in Southern Africa, capital and ownership originate in foreign countries, and opportunities for Africans are usually restricted to employment.

‘’That is not to say that there are not a lot of African managers. One day, these lower-level executives may find the capitalisation to start their own businesses. They have the training, and there will come a time when a luxury resort chain is African owned,’’ Khumalo said.

The Four Seasons Hotel in Maputo represents the reviving tourism fortunes of a region where visitors in the post-independence era dwindled through years of civil war, apartheid struggles, famine and disease. The Four Seasons’ nearly 40-storey tower overlooking Costa do Sol beach was completed over 30 years ago, but its 200 rooms remained empty. The owners abandoned the project, after pouring concrete down the pipes to thwart any attempt by the country’s socialist government of the day to open the facility.

Today, a consortium of private real estate firms and the National Tourism Fund expects to spend 39 million dollars to transform the 1970s-era ghost tower into a 21st century attraction.

The bulk of tourists to the country come from South Africa, having replaced Zimbabweans. The reason is a new toll way connecting Maputo with South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province, and then to Johannesburg. The highway was constructed as part of the Maputo Development Corridor, linking the Indian Ocean attractions of Mozambique with Kruger National Park, Southern Africa’s principal tourist attraction.

Next door in Swaziland, tourism contributes less than 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), but was one bright spot in a poorly performing economy, according to a report by the Central Bank of Swaziland. Bed nights sold, which is the industry standard to gauge hotel performance, increased 23 percent last year, and total tourism receipts were up 22 percent. By focusing on hotels, the statistics show that industry fortunes are tied to the big players. The performance of roadside curio sellers or community-based tourism initiatives is not included in the data.

But the Central Bank report did highlight the reversal of an historic trend of Europeans fleeing the previous decades’ instability in the region. Southern Africa now seems a peaceful alternative to other parts of the world in the age of Western-targeted terrorism.

‘’The industry’s performance was boosted by the war in Iraq, which resulted in travellers re-routing their destinations from the Middle East to Africa,’’ the bank noted.

The average visitor now stays one and a half days in Swaziland, up from one day two years ago. An increasing number of European visitors favour Swaziland, particularly those from Belgium and the Netherlands. However, South Africans dominate tourist numbers, underscoring landlocked Swaziland’s economic dependency on the country that surrounds it on three sides.

Like many Southern African countries, Swaziland is a secondary destination, as far as foreign visitors are concerned. Most Europeans head for South Africa, and venture out to surrounding nations as if following the spokes of a wheel from a central hub.

Lesotho’s largest number of foreign visitors comes from South Africa, who comprise up to 97 percent of all visitors to the country. Visitors from Britain rank second, followed by Botswana, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The Lesotho Tourism Development Organisation says tourism contributes only 1.5 percent to the economic growth of the country, but believes the industry has untapped growth potential. The organisations is projecting a 2 percent growth rate this year, about half of the country’s overall economic growth rate of 4.4 percent.

Angola expects to see nearly twice as many visitors this year, as compared to last year: 198,000 compared to 106,000. The increasing number of tourists drawn to the country’s Atlantic Ocean attractions has convinced government to invest in infrastructure like roads, electricity, bridges and water supplies. Ordinary Angolans in proximity to these improvements can expect a quality of life improvement.

Elsewhere in the region, Zambia has seen an increase in visitor arrivals of 43 percent, up to 173,249 visitors, over the last five years. Most of Zimbabwe’s visitors come from South Africa.

Of the visitors arriving in Namibia last year, 757,201 of them, a majority (591 612) came from Africa. About half of those Africans, 278 691, came from Angola, and 243 894, came from South Africa. More than a third of the 165,589 visitors from overseas came from Germany, the former colonial power of the erstwhile Southwest Africa. The numbers show tourism policy makers in government three things: visitor numbers are going up; if this upward trend is due to temporary global conditions there is a need to solidify the gains to keep visitors arriving when the international situation changes; and thirdly, African tourist themselves represent a significant number of visitors, and nation to nation tourism initiatives are worthwhile.

‘’90 percent of tourists to Africa still go only to Egypt, and if we are interested in job creation and the empowerment of Southern Africans through tourism, we need to better market the region to the world,’’ said Ted Reilly, director of Big Game Parks of Swaziland.

Like others in Southern African tourism, he believes that any region that has Kruger Park, Victoria Falls, the Mozambique coral reefs, the Kalahari Desert, the pageantry of Swazi royalty, two ocean coastlines, and vibrant and varied cities has significant tourism draws.

How these attractions will benefit the ordinary people living in those areas is a challenge, but at least the tourism industry is on the upswing, raising the possibility of broader participation.