Trying to sell nature-based tourism in game reserves to people who would rather go to the beach on holiday, if they go at all, sounds like a case of real hard sell.
Research shows that 51% of black South Africans prefer to go to the beach for their festive and other holidays. Blacks make up less than 12% of the local visitors who go to national parks.
Isidore Bandile Mkhize, newly appointed director of the flagship Kruger National Park, wrote a doctoral thesis on the reasons behind this and is determined to turn the situation around.
Mkhize (42) grew up on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. He completed a BA (Hons) in geography at the University of Zululand and a master’s degree in the geography of recreation and tourism at the University of South Carolina in the United States.
When he returned to South Africa in the early 1990s, he did a PhD on ”The meaning and expression of tourism among urban blacks” through the then University of Durban-Westville.
His professional career saw him appointed as Mpumalanga’s director of tourism and then as chief director of economic affairs, gaming and tourism. In 2001 he went back to his home province to set up Trade and Investment KwaZulu-Natal, a non-profit organisation that assisted the provincial government with investment and export.
Mkhize says his appointment as director of the Kruger means he can embrace his ”first love” ‒ tourism. He talked to the Mail & Guardian about his seduction plans.
What did you learn from your research on black tourists?
I targeted urban blacks because there is a general perception that people from urban areas are wealthier than those from rural areas. I wanted to see where they go on vacation and what they do.
My study was based in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. I discovered that most prefer to go to urban areas for their holidays, because they have family and friends there. Their thinking is based on the availability of friends and family, not on the availability of accommodation and facilities.
This is my own experience in relation to my friends and people I know visiting Kruger, because I have moved here. They say, we can now go to the Kruger because you are there, otherwise it would never have occurred to us to visit the park.
This is the mindset I confirmed through my research. I discovered that black people are not really adventurous in terms of tourism. They don’t say, I’ll go there, I don’t care who I meet there, I’ll go because all that I am after is the experience and I want to see how those people think. In most instances, this factor counts more than the monetary aspect or the perceived costs involved.
Another thing I discovered is that black people don’t see why they should go to nature reserves. Very few of my subjects had ever been to a reserve, to them the thought of seeing lions and leopards in the wild was not fascinating.
Black people have not really been into this heritage stuff. In the past they weren’t allowed to go into places like the Kruger Park unless they were going to work there.
We’ve got to change that mindset now; 10 years of democracy must have taught us that these places are for everybody. Like we say in our vision for the Kruger, everybody should be able to enjoy it.
We need to get the word out there to say the parks are accessible to everybody and they are affordable.
How are you going to go about this hard sell?
We are going to embark on an awareness campaign, not only in the immediate communities but also in the broader black communities.
What I have noticed is that even those people who would want to go on a holiday in the Kruger are not well-versed in what happens there.
A personal story indicates this point: a friend of mine who is a prominent person in Johannesburg came to visit me recently and he didn’t know the Kruger offered accommodation. He was surprised when I said to him, come and visit me and you can stay in the park.
He thought you had to stay outside the Kruger and then make trips into the park to visit.
We need to increase awareness and we plan to use the media to communicate this message. We have already had journalists, many of whom were visiting the park for the first time, and we encouraged them to communicate their experiences with the public at large. They were really surprised at what the park has to offer.
What does the park have to offer?
A different tourism experience, based on biodiversity — what is popularly known as ecotourism or nature-based tourism.
We are conserving nature so that people can come and see how it is done. We do this on behalf of the people of South Africa, so we want South Africans to come and see what we are doing.
What is the experience you are trying to sell?
Tourism is about experience. What you take away with you is the experience that is different from what you have been exposed to before.
Not a lot of people are privileged to see a lion or a leopard in its natural setting. The beauty of this is that, unlike what you see in a zoo, in the Kruger park you see these animals in their natural setting.
When we explain to you how the ecosystem works, it’s a fascinating experience. This is what we want tourists to take with them.
How does this compare to relaxing on the beach?
That’s another kind of experience. The emphasis in the park is on the fauna and the flora, so we talk about wildlife and indigenous plant species. It gives you an idea of how people can co-exist with nature.
People tend to believe that the animals are wild and they have no respect for people, but when you go to the park you find a different story. It takes you back to the days when animals used to roam freely among people.
That’s exactly how we live in the park and it’s a wonderful experience to watch how the animals live with each other and the way in which they interact with each other and with nature itself in their natural setting.
As a human being, this experience allows you to respect the nature that is around you because nature has its own way of doing things, and that is what is demonstrated in the park.
What about the expense? Even relatively well-off white people are complaining these days that it is too expensive to visit the park.
In some of our chalets, you can stay for a night for R120 per person sharing. You can get a chalet with three or four beds for R400. That’s not too expensive, but there is a perception it is.
In spite of the fact that we talk about visitors having a wilderness experience, we’ve got to make it possible for people to enjoy the park. This means improving infrastructure and quality of service. We have to get money to be able to do these things.
How will you marry tourism, your first love, with the conservation side of your new appointment?
The park is an example of how ecotourism must be put into practise. All I have to do is to ensure that what the people come to see, they find. When the people go to the park, it is unlike any mass-based tourism experience, they want to see nature. So everything that is there must be nature-based.
That is why we don’t have very high bridges in the park, why we don’t kill animals and birds. The tourists go there precisely to see these creatures.
The emphasis is that our tourism is an adjunct of our nature conservation. We don’t conserve it just for its own sake, but so that generations to come can also appreciate it. So I find it very easy to balance the two.
What about other stakeholders?
We are trying to get local communities involved in some of the programmes we run in the park, through our People and Conservation Programme, headed by Helen Mmethi. This is a new section, it became fully fledged in November last year. It used to be part of the social ecology unit.