It is a ghost town. The few tourists on the streets — Japanese, German and South African and a sprinkling of Britons — are followed by polite hawkers with wood carvings. ”Give me some business, please, I haven’t eaten today.”
For these Zimbabweans there is no ethical ambiguity about foreign visitors in a country sliding into penury: the more the better. ”The only way I have to feed my family is to sell CDs and for that I need tourists,” said Joko Nyirongo (24) of Vuka Mthwakazi, a group which performs Ndebele songs and dances.
Hotels are four fifths empty. Guests’ conversation centres on whether the falls were as impressive as expected. Most thought they were. Guests are also much preoccupied by the black market rate for converting foreign currency into Zimbabwean dollars. Left undiscussed are the rights and wrongs of holidaying in hell — a dictatorship which has stifled free speech and jailed and brutalised political opponents.
”Hadn’t really thought about it. Coming here was a last minute thing,” said Joseph, a 34-year-old German. The ethics of such visits, however, are preoccupying those Zimbabweans who say tourism benefits the regime by injecting foreign currency as well as legitimising its claim to be ruling a normal country.
”I wish the tourists would not come now. They play into Mugabe’s hands by giving the state machine money,” said Nkosilathi Jiyane, a Victoria Falls councillor and member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Many ordinary Zimbabweans relied on tourists for jobs but the regime’s coffers also benefited. The tourists still posing for snaps at Victoria Falls are a minority. According to the president of the Zimbabwe Council for Tourism, Shingi Munyeza, money earned from tourism and downstream activities had collapsed from $700-million in 1999, when the political and economic crisis accelerated, to just $70-million in 2002 and it is still falling.
Zimsun, the country’s largest hotel operator, was working with the government to improve the country’s image as a safe destination but its occupancy rates fell to 39% in the six months to September. But the government strives to be upbeat. The Central Statistics Office told a Harare-newspaper last month that arrivals from Europe have soared 67%, Asia 80%, and America 19%.
It makes no difference to Khowmani Tshuma, a former member of Vuka Mthwakazi, a group which performs Ndebele songs and dances, and has been forced to retire at 25. He was beaten up by the ruling party’s youth militia last February.
Interviewed at his home in Mkhosana, outside Victoria Falls, Tshuma said he had been targeted because Vuka Mthwakazi had performed at an MDC election rally.
The group did it for money, not politics, but that did not matter to the youth militia who detained him for 14 hours of punching and hitting with a stick studded with nails.
The singer tried to resume performing for tourists but bleeding in his lung left him short of breath and unable to dance. Tshuma wanted tourists to continue coming – ”otherwise we have no work” — but also wished they knew the reality of Zimbabwe. – Guardian Unlimited Â