Recent guerrilla attacks are affecting the burgeoning tourism industry in northern Namibia
Angus Begg
Since the killing of three French tourist children and a number of medical aid workers in separate incidents on January 3, the tourist industry in one of Southern Africa’s fastest-growing, exclusive wilderness lodge destinations, Namibia’s Caprivi Strip, has taken a hammering. The killings took place near the settlement of Bagani in western Caprivi, but the effect has been felt across a much larger area: from Rundu, west of Caprivi, to Katima Mulilo in the east, operators complain that their beds are empty.
“Not one lodge around here is open,” laughs Andre Botha, manager at Ndlovu Safari Lodge, situated just outside the Mahango Game Reserve on the Okavango river. “Most of the guys are in Swakopmund; nothing’s happening here.”
It was only in the late mid-Nineties that the Caprivi started developing as a tourist destination. Wilderness that had been a virtual war zone prior to Namibian independence in 1989 – when the former South African Defence Force was engaged in a war with independence-seeking guerrillas based in Angola – and wildlife that had been persecuted by both the military and guerrillas, rehabilitated rapidly. Vast, open tracts of savanna, through which elephants migrated and ancient rivers coursed, lent themselves to heavenly ecotourism opportunities.
Luxury establishments like Impalila Island Lodge went up in the far eastern end of the strip, a 20-minute boat trip from Botswana’s Chobe National Park and the tourism hub of Kasane, where Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia share a border. A further 200km into the Caprivi, a couple of similar “fly-in” lodges have been built by those recognising the unique attraction of wild places so difficult to access.
The western Caprivi Strip has been slower in developing as a tourist destination until recently, mainly because it borders Angola, where a civil war has been raging for 25 years. Many of the lodges that have gone up in the region – with the odd, extremely comfortable exception – have been overnight stops for travelling salespeople, or rustic efforts looking to the needs of the fishing enthusiast.
Fairly new to the contemporary hospitality game-viewing industry and in a few instances situated right on the Okavango river, such establishments are quite a bit cheaper and perhaps slightly removed in the sense of exclusivity from their $200-a-night neighbours at the other end of the strip. Quite simply, the unwritten rule for the traveller used to the finest in accommodation and facilities is that the further east you travel from Rundu into the Caprivi Strip proper, the better it gets.
Especially once you get near the Kwando river, which already has one stupendous lodge – built and run by one of the original directors of what is now Conservation Corporation Africa – with another being built by the owner of Impalila. As Impalila’s Dusty Rogers says – and he is currently living at the site of his new project in the Kwando river region – these lodges are “too remote and inaccessible to be troubled”.
Lodge manager Andre Botha says that in February, after an increase in sporadic terrorist activity in the area – specifically a 200km strip of protected wilderness between Bagani and Katima Mulilo, along the border between Namibia and Angola – the Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) recommended that all tourist operations in the region close.
Wynand Pypers, owner with his wife, Valerie, of the Nkwazi River Lodge outside Rundu, supports media reports that put the trouble as starting in early December, when “Unita began crossing the border into Namibia from Angola, stealing cattle and goods, burning houses and kidnapping Namibian citizens”. Such actions are widely seen as reprisals for the Namibian government’s decision to allow Angolan government troops to attack Unita from Namibian soil.
“Something happens every day”, says Pypers, who has sent his wife south to the town of Grootfontein, deeper into Namibia, since the trouble started. He is still looking after the lodge – which he stresses is a R3-million investment – with a skeleton staff of employees.
“They [the terrorists] come over from Angola,” says Botha, “walk over the ‘border’ through the bushes, target places with food [koka shops] and medicine and go back.” Because they operate under cover of darkness, noone takes the chance of travelling the roads after 4pm.
“They’ve infiltrated civilian life”, says Pypers, “because they also don’t wear uniform anymore. You could be standing next to one of them in the shop and you wouldn’t know!”
Two-hundred kilometres west of Bagani, in Rundu, a regional centre neighbouring the Caprivi Strip, the word is that “there are no tourists whatsoever”. Hallie van Niekerk, owner of the Kavango River Lodge in town – “we have the best position on the Kavango river!” – says because she caters for the likes of businesspeople, sales representatives and consultants, business is not that bad.
“But we’ve had many cancellations from the tour buses [which take tourists from the Namibian capital, Windhoek, through the Caprivi to Victoria Falls]”. And while Cape Town-based tour operator Which Way Adventures says it is rerouting all its tours “away from northern Namibia”, it confirms that three coach operators continue to travel the Bagani to Katima Mulilo road, albeit travelling by day and under military escort.
While Van Niekerk doesn’t understand why there should be a fuss about safety in Rundu, essentially a frontier town – “the trouble is 350km from us” – the attitude of the government is quite different. “It’s not safe,” are the three short words uttered by the Namibian high commission in Pretoria about the security situation in northern Namibia.
Botha exhibits a fatalistic attitude to the situation. “From May most of the lodges in the area are fully booked again,” he says, stressing that “just about all of them” now have security at the lodges. “Things have quietened down; all we can do is hold … thumbs and everything else !” he chuckles.
Far less optimistic is Pypers at Nkwazi Lodge, which has had two guests, “both government officials, for bed’n’breakfast” since January.
“I think this thing will go on for the next year,” says Pypers, likening the situation to a fox terrier (Namibia) taking on a bulldog (Unita). “But the government says only a few months – I suppose my guess is as good as theirs.”
A Namibian opposition representative recently said in the National Assembly that Namibia should bring back its troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect its citizens from Angolan rebels. The problem is, right now nobody seems to know who the perpetrators are.
Meanwhile, the business of tourism at the far, eastern end of the Caprivi Strip, closer to Chobe National Park, continues to grow, largely because Angola, the troublesome common denominator in this part of the subcontinent, is not part of the equation.