Plans to establish a Great Limpopo Transfrontier Area — almost trebling the area of land currently protected by the transfrontier park of the same name — are moving ahead, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Thursday.
Speaking in Cape Town’s Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens at the launch of this year’s National Tourism Month, he said preparations have started on a joint marketing plan for the area, to be presented at a ”high-level investor conference” next year.
”We aim this year to initiate the development of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Area, which will combine national parks, private game parks and conservancies, hunting areas, eco-tourism development areas and communal land.”
These will be brought together into a ”world-class eco-tourism destination … with some 100 000 square kilometres under protection”.
The existing Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park — which straddles parks and sanctuaries across the borders between Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and includes the Kruger National Park — covers about 35 000 square kilometres.
Van Schalkwyk said a further 20km of fence between the Kruger National Park and Mozambique will be taken down.
”Over the past year, South Africa has invested R40-million in tourism-related infrastructure [in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park], dropped large portions of the border fence and completed the construction of the South African side of the Giriyondo border post.”
There are also plans to build a bridge across the Limpopo to ”improve access” between the Zimbabwean and South African portions of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.
Van Schalkwyk also highlighted plans to turn KwaZulu-Natal’s St Lucia Wetland Park into what he called ”the first transfrontier marine park and the first transfrontier world heritage site in Africa”.
”The next phase will see us expanding our partnership with Mozambique and Swaziland, whose ministers I will be meeting before the end of November,” he said.
National Tourism Month is a joint venture between the government and the tourism industry, and is aimed, among other things, at encouraging South Africans to travel within their own country.
This year’s events will culminate in a ceremony on September 27 in Phalaborwa, Limpopo, to mark World National Tourism Day. — Sapa