Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa is excited about his plans to realise the South African tourism industry’s potential for job creation. Fiona Macleod spoke to him
`Just do it.” These three short, simple words make Valli Moosa the Nike man of President Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet.
Ask Moosa, the new minister of environmental affairs and tourism, what needs to be done to realise tourism’s potential as South Africa’s fastest-growing industry, and he replies: “My job is to just do it.
“We don’t need any more studies, commissions of inquiry or White Papers. There is consensus about how to move forward.
“What we need now is just to get things done.”
Ask him how he plans to make the industry grow. He’s full of ideas and he gets animated when talking about them, but his bottom line is: “The ideas are there; it just needs to happen.”
The marketing department of Nike sports clothing and sneakers – whose slogan is “Just do it” – could have a field day with the new minister, who is a keen hiker, a nature lover and an amateur scientist.
“When Mbeki gave me this portfolio, I was delighted because it’s my interest,” he says.
Players in the industry are also delighted: they regard his appointment as an upgrading of the tourism and conservation ministry, and a sign that their industry is being taken seriously by the government.
Moosa has certainly been “doing it” in the month since his appointment. He’s been working virtually around the clock, familiarising himself with his portfolio, meeting all the right people – and most of those he hasn’t seen yet are in his diary.
That he’s determined to be a minister of action was illustrated when the latest Tuli elephant scandal broke three weeks ago.
Recognising the damage it was doing to South Africa’s image among international tourists, he stepped in swiftly.
Within days he’d negotiated to take over the matter from the minister of agriculture and land affairs – who has jurisdiction over issues of animal welfare – and brokered a solution with the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Nobody has since dumped any coal outside South African embassies abroad, like they did last time the Tuli elephant debacle was in the news.
Moosa zapped off to northern KwaZulu- Natal this week to fast-track the Lubombo spatial development initiative (SDI).
He’s working on raising R1-billion from investors for development projects there, and has instructed SDI manager Andrew Zaloumis to “shorten the time lines” of the project.
With tens of thousands of jobs on the line in the mining and public service sectors, the pressure is on Moosa’s ministry to deliver.
Figures presented at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Durban projected that travel and tourism could generate more than 1,6-million extra jobs in Southern Africa over the next 10 years.
But Moosa, who put a lot of energy into networking at the WEF, is wary of pinning too many hopes on such projections.
“There’s consensus that tourism creates more jobs faster than any other industry, and that its spin-offs are good for the economy.
“It’s estimated travel and tourism in South Africa created 200 000 jobs directly in 1998, and 737 000 jobs indirectly in related industries.
“But I’m not the sort of person to set targets, to say in five years we’ll have so many more jobs or so many more tourists … We mustn’t just be making promises.
“We must secure tourism in terms of our overall economic strategies. It’s not the only panacea; we don’t want to see it as the new gold.
“We don’t want to be a country which depends on only one industry, because just as gold has been fluctuating so much, so does tourism.”
In his previous job as minister of constitutional development and provincial affairs, Moosa earned a reputation for political astuteness, and for developing skills and administrative capacity in his ministry.
They’re qualities desperately needed in the tourism industry which, despite its huge potential, has seen precious little pulling together of the public and private sectors.
His deputy, Joyce Mabudafhasi, is from the Northern Province and is a former member of the parliamentary portfolio committee on environmental affairs and tourism.
“It’s coincidental that we used to work closely together as comrades in the days of the United Democratic Front,” says Moosa.
“I think we complement each other well, with me being a pukka Johannesburg boy and she with her experience of growing up in the rural areas.”
Marketing and increasing the volume of tourists coming to South Africa are their immediate main focus, he says.
“South Africa is international tourism’s best-kept secret. One of the first things I did on coming to office was to link up with Detour, Germany’s biggest tour operators.
“They process about 2,1-million German tourists every year, of which only 20 000 come here.
“Detour says we’re doing no marketing in Germany; those tourists who do come here find out about us by word of mouth.”
He wants to develop the domestic market: “It’s still very skewed. There must be possibilities for people other than high- income earners to tour in this country.
“The domestic market is often what makes small businesses in tourism sustainable. It must grow – it’s what sustains and broadens your base.”
Moosa gets excited when discussing some of the ideas bouncing around in his head.
“Just think about the large numbers of African women who’ve been running homes in the northern suburbs.
“They do everything in the home; there’s no reason why they should not look at running small guest houses. That skill is there already; what you need are a few incentives.”
Or, on a grander scale: “There’s tremendous potential to market Cape Town more aggressively as a city destination; to turn Johannesburg into a major African shopping experience; to manufacture jewellery directly as the gold comes out of the ground at the mines … to champion a huge African arts and crafts emporium.
“The way in which we grow this industry must bring new entrepreneurs into the field. Southern African tourism must provide a real African experience, offered by Africans.”
It’s the right talk, but can he walk the walk? A pair of Nikes might help (he says he’s never owned any).
Seriously, though, he’s intent on making “tourism receive a much higher profile from this ministry during my tenure.
“What gives me hope and comfort at this stage is that the sky is still the limit, and there’s a lot of growing to be done.
“It’s a tremendous challenge, but it also places a huge burden on me.”