Anne TootillSouth Africa, It's Possible or is it?
May 28th 2008 00:13
Would you still go to South Africa for a holiday?
"South Africa, it's possible" the slogan on official tourism advertisements promoting the delights their country.
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.
The United States, Sweden and a number of 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 given any reason," says Ntintili.
The tourists were Africans, who have been shocked at the images of their countrymen being beaten and burnt by their South African neighbours, mostly in the townships around Johannesburg, long a city of African migration.
In another example of Africans getting cold feet a spokesman for Tourism Business Council South Africa said that 90 women who had been enrolled at a conference on domestic violence and poverty in Cape Town last week didn't show up.
The absent women were mainly Africans, from countries such as 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 per cent to GDP and giving employment to an estimated 1.2 million people directly and indirectly.
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 anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela also has particular mystique for many Africans.
Sixty-seven per cent of the 9 million annual foreign visitors to South Africa are now Africans, whose contribution to tourist revenue has shot up in recent years to 30 per cent.
South African Tourism boss Moeketsi Mosola agrees that African tourism and township tourism are particularly vulnerable to the images of violence.
One in five overseas visitors now takes a township tour, says Mosola. While the Soweto tours are the biggest draw, the sprawling townships outside Cape Town and Durban are also popular with tourists looking for a slice of slum life and activism history.
Within 10 days of the first attacks on African migrants in Alexandra township north-east of Johannesburg, Time Out in Africa agency, which also runs township tours, reported business was down around 10 per cent.
"What I would like to see is James Chamanga (Zambian footballer who is the top goal scorer in South Africa's premier league) say, 'Ok guys, if you want foreigners to go, I'll go.' There'd be uproar in the stadium," says Mosola.
The past two weeks have been "difficult," the tourism boss admits. Both tour operators and financial institutions with investments in the tourism sector are all looking to him for reassurance.
For Mosola, much of the growth in tourism since the end of apartheid has to do with South Africa being perceived a stable country, free from political violence.
"Stability is important. The sooner we arrest this situation the better," he says. While Tourism South Africa was giving tour operators "on-the-hour" information on the situation over the phone, people had to make their own choice, he insists.
"People can go to Soweto. People can go to Khayelitsha," he says.
While applauding the government's response to the crisis, TBCSA's spokesman Reynold Thakhuli worries about the long-term effect on tourism.
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