A new partnership has been formed to ensure that the community of the Mutale Valley, Limpopo Province, benefits from the expected influx of tourists wanting to experience the December 4 total solar eclipse.
The Land of Legend Partnership is between publishing house WildNet Africa, the community and Isaac Rambauli, a local tour operator based in Thohoyandou.
“The eclipse represents an opportunity as well as a threat,” says founder of WildNet Africa, Dr Andrew McKenzie. “Unless we are proactive in ensuring that communities derive some benefit from this event, they will simply see it as yet another invasion of their privacy and their land.
“With its established focus on tourism WildNet Africa is ideally positioned to ensure that the opportunities represented by the eclipse are funnelled down to the community. The partnership with Rambauli ensures that local operator expertise is effectively deployed at the same time.”
The Land of Legend Partnership has secured camping and viewing sites, former army barracks for accommodation, and a community craft centre within the Mutale Valley. It is also promoting the allocation of areas of community land for use by overland operators and corporate camps.
“We are finding that a lot of companies see this as an opportunity for a very special year-end function,” says McKenzie. WildNet Africa will be hosting people from the tourism and conservation fraternities in a designated area set aside for this purpose.
Meanwhile, the Limpopo Province launched the eclipse tourism project at the Indaba, Africa’s premier travel trade show, held at the Durban Exhibition Centre earlier this week.
“An event of this nature draws thousands of tourists and can significantly boost tourism to the Limpopo Province, while at the same time acting as a powerful economic stimulator through the creation of job opportunities,” says Fixon Hlungwani, convener of the eclipse coordinating committee.
“A comprehensive strategy for the promotion of the Limpopo Province as a prime destination to experience the eclipse has been adopted. This includes marketing and promoting the event, and the upgrading of transport, roads, accommodation, health, safety and security, and the establishment of a central reservations office and eclipse information centres,” he says.
There are two kinds of eclipses – lunar and solar. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth moves between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow on to the moon. In the rarer solar eclipse, the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, blocking out the sun. The next solar eclipse over Southern Africa will occur in 2030.