UNLOCKING THE BEAUTY OF SOUTH AFRICA
IF YOU travel a little further north past the city of Polokwane, you will come to place called Venda, where you will find the holy forest.
Covered in thick white mist and with an austere silence broken only by the chattering of the birds or the eerie tinkling of the bells of the cows which roam that area, the forest receives its legend from the first King of the Venda tribe, Dimbanyika. He became stuck in a cave in the forest and his dog escaped and managed to find his son Thoyandou who could not free his father but promised him that he would unite all the Venda tribes. Thoyandou was successful in doing this and is known as one of the greatest kings and now the largest village is known as Thoyandou, which literally means head of the elephant. Now if you ever make your way there, Venda men say hello by saying, Ndaa and women reply by saying, Aaa. And the phrase Nda comes from Nda ndou, which means hello elephant.
Today, legend says that Thoyandou’s spirit guards the holy forest in the form of a white lion.
Tourism contributes 3% of our Gross Domestic Product. I think we often don’t tell our greatest stories enough. I am not sure how many of our people know the story I related above – yet we hold some of the world’s most gorgeous landscapes, we have a diverse people and we are home to some of the greatest icons. Tourism must be a high growth sector used to propel our economy.
There are several measures I think we could use to entice more visitors to our shores. In terms of younger visitors, and we understand millennials especially see travel as a high priority, we should formulate an annual musical festival to attract new younger visitors.
This can be like Coachella in the US or Glastonbury in the UK and if you think we are aiming too high, Malawi annually hosts a music festival, the Lake of Stars, against the backdrop of Lake Malawi. Our cost of living remains low, we have energetic and talented artists and we can use a setting such as Soweto, rooted in history, to popularise our unique offering. These events should also have a quintessential South African feel to them so that goers experience our deep sense of culture.
Our state airline must offer a free (nothing is free) stopover as it carries to routes either in Africa or as a connection to South America or Australasia We can then utilise this as a gateway into Africa and generate profits from tourists travelling to safaris in Botswana, the mountains of Rwanda or the Victoria Falls in Zambia. Airlines in the United Arab Emirates and Israel have used this tool effectively to generate airline profitability and enhance tourism.
The embassies and consulates set up all over the world by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation must also be given targets in terms of visitor attraction to our country. We enjoy a strong global positioning and thus have access to the global economy and we invest significant resources in the infrastructure we have set up in these countries. No travel fair should be hosted where South Africa does not enjoy presence.
Travel broadens horizons. South Africa, globally, has the greatest story, in my opinion, to tell.
It’s time for us and our young people to tell our story to the world – and indeed to broaden the world’s horizons to what the power of reconciliation can do.
It is time for us… to tell our story to the world… and broaden the world’s horizons to what the power of reconciliation can do