South Africa, riding the wave of a tourism boom, is bracing for record numbers by promoting the neglected African side of one of the world’s most beautiful and culturally diverse nations.
The brains behind the strategy is the livewire chief executive officer of South African Tourism Cheryl Carolus, who has shifted the focus from game reserves, wildlife and what she calls the ”pseudo-European” attractions that had been touted so far.
”When apartheid ended we got 600 000 visitors, 10 years down the line it is 6,5-million. We are now gearing up for more,” said Carolus.
”We’re rolling out a new brand: a brave new nation, a world miracle called South Africa,” Carolus said.
Tourism is one of the biggest money spinners. In the 2002-2003 fiscal year, overseas visitors brought in R53,9-billion (8,7-billion travellers spent R47-billion.
Carolus is honing in on what she terms the ”heritage experience” by developing new trails in all of the country’s nine provinces as well as offering ”package tours” to black ghettos located on the fringes of cities.
For tourists from former colonial power Britain, she has fine-tuned new tours that draw on historic battle sites in the north which were not on the menu.
”These are lesser-known frontier wars which are not showcased like the sites of the bigger Anglo-Boer wars or the wars between the English and the indigenous people. There are graveyards and monuments.”
”In the Eastern Province, for example, we are offering these and a chance for tourists to interact with people whose ancestors fought in the wars as there is a rich tradition of oral history in South Africa.”
Also there is a site where the founder of the Boy Scouts movement Lord Baden Powell set up a club as ”the Boy Scouts are very big in Britain”.
Carolus is offering separate packages to lure visitors from other countries which have had historic links with South Africa such as Malaysia, Indonesia and India from where many slaves and indentured labourers were brought in during colonial rule.
She is also showcasing pre-historic artefacts which were swept under the carpet during the long apartheid rule as they would show ”that our ancestors were sophisticated people trading with other cultures when Europeans were walking around in skins.”
These included ”sophisticated beads” found in Mapungubwe in the former apartheid homeland of Venda in north-eastern South Africa and ”utensils and bowls which show they were on the trade route with other ancient civilisations.”
The other attractions to be touted are the home of Sol Plaatje, the first chief of the African National Congress (ANC) ‒ the continent’s oldest liberation movement — as ”people want to know how the South African miracle was achieved.”
In Pretoria, once a bastion of white supremacy, Carolus is proposing a new route which begins with the Voortrekker Monument — an imposing edifice commemorating Afrikaner nationalism — in which South African Tourism will also highlight the role of the Zulus in the historic battle of Blood River.
The 1838 war heralded the beginning of the end of the Zulu Kingdom after 464 Boers under the command of Andries Pretorius defeated more than 10 000 Zulu warriors.
The trail would then take visitors to the spot where a young black ANC activist Solomon Mahlangu was executed in 1979, a traditional shebeen or tavern in the black township of Mamelodi where a renowned black protest musician-cum-poet Vusi Mahlasela holds court, and finally to the British-built Union Buildings, the seat of power.
”The Union Buildings are a fitting end as it is emblematic of the new South Africa, which is home to black and white, Asian and Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jew.”
A lot of the vision comes from the personal history and struggle of Carolus, a mixed-race woman who was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Cape Town but married a white man when inter-racial unions were banned and frowned upon.
Politically conscious at a young age, she rose to becoming one of the leading members of the ANC and was the main person dealing with the media during the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.
She then served as ambassador to Britain after the end of apartheid. ‒ Sapa-AFP