Mercedes Sayagues
For tourists, The Kingdom, a posh new hotel in Victoria Falls, is a delight. For locals, it is a sore point. Sore enough that angry residents planned a protest in March.
It was cancelled under threat of police repression, but the issue is not dead.
In question are the hiring policies of The Kingdom and, a few years ago, of the Elephant Hills hotel. Locals complain the bulk of the workforce comes from other provinces, that residents are discriminated against for being Ndebele, and that they benefit little from Zimbabwe’s top tourist resort.
Zimbabwe Sun, which owns the two hotels, denies the charges. Zim Sun representative Ray Mawerera says it is “ludicrous” to say managers employ their relatives or people from their area, although he concedes that none of the managers of the company’s hotels in Vic Falls are from Matabeleland.
Zim Sun employs 146 staff, of whom roughly 100 worked at the old Makasa Sun, now The Kingdom. Catering was subcontracted to South African firm Silver Range. Eight interviewers flew from South Africa and hired 300 workers.
In response to a query about the issue from the MP for Hwange, Zim Sun said its recruitment was above board, that it gave preference to residents of Vic Falls, and that it does not subscribe to employment based on tribe.
But locals like Khumbulani Ncube recall seeing prospective employees disembark from trains and buses loaded with more luggage than needed for a day interview, boasting they already had the jobs.
Local council chair and Zanu-PF stalwart Douglas Dube says: “Locals were not employed as anticipated in previous agreements. As a city father, I am not happy with what the hotel did.”
The problem is not new. A 1996 study on tourism in Vic Falls by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recommended building “a sense of partnership and responsibility, so that both company and community have a stake in the ongoing viability of tourism”. It recommended that it be done through equitable local employment practices, complementary small businesses and community partnership agreements.
The IUCN warned: “The threat to the tourism industry from social unrest and security issues should not be neglected. It is in the long-term interests of all in the industry to contribute to poverty alleviation and greater equity of access to the benefits of tourism.”
A walk around Chinotimba township, 15 minutes’ walk from The Kingdom, reveals two worlds aeons apart. Hotel cleaners and security guards live in squalor and filth in appalling shacks. So do thousands of job-seekers.
A dozen shacks crowd the small backyard of a two-roomed house. In the middle is a tiny toilet/shower used by 36 people.
Not surprisingly, there is a high incidence of respiratory and sexually transmitted diseases among the residents of Chinotimba.
It also has Zimbabwe’s highest prevalence of Aids among pregnant women attending health clinics: 46,5 %, according to Ministry of Health statistics for 1998.
Vic Falls’ infrastructure, planned for 8 000 residents and poorly maintained, struggles with a population of 35 000.
According to the IUCN study: “There are problems with roads, storm water drainage, solid waste disposal, housing, schools, health facilities, water supply and recreation amenities. Even the newest facilities, like the hospital and sewage treatment ponds, are failing to cope.”
Vic Falls is Zimbabwe’s fastest-growing urban area. Between 1992 and 1995 it grew at an annual rate of 14%.
“Our infrastructure, especially sanitation, can’t cope. Every day new people come into town, mostly youth under 30,” says Dube.
Among the job-seekers are Matthew and Jullalinda Sibanda. He’s 21, she’s 17. They left drought-prone Gowke two years ago.
Four days ago, their four-month-old baby girl developed a fever. Before going to the hospital, they tried to sell tomatoes and oranges for fees and medicine.
Three hours and no sale later, the baby got worse. By the time they reached the hospital, she had died.
The baby was born in the malaria season in a shack made of black plastic sheets and red-and-white mealie-meal bags on a piece of land without a toilet or water. Her barely literate parents, themselves not far from childhood, are ill-equipped to handle parenting, job-seeking and survival in Zimbabwe’s tough economic climate.
“In 19 years of independence, the government has left us poorer, uneducated and jobless. We can only be curio vendors and tourist muggers,” says a bitter Nkosilati Jiyane.
An accountant with a safari firm, he is the youngest of 11 city councillor candidates the opposition party, Zimbabwe African People’s Union 2000, will field in the local government elections in August.