Don ’ t trifle with tourism
TOURISM is important as an engine for economic growth.
It is inevitable that the world will slowly but surely demand fewer and fewer of the commodities that have been the bedrock of SA’s economic progress for centuries.
Furthermore, the abundance of minerals and other raw materials we have will one day be depleted.
The most valuable currencies in the world economy today and moving into the future are human capital and historical and environmental heritage.
For this reason we should be jealously guarding the market share that we have in this very competitive world tourism sector.
But this will be impossible to do if the current misalignment of policies and agendas continues between the department of home affairs that is in charge of our borders, and the department of tourism that has the task of attracting more visitors to our shores.
The department of home affairs has come under much criticism for its failure to tighten the country’s porous borders. All sorts of crossborder crime is facilitated over our borders. And SA has the unfortunate reputation as a haven for criminals and
fugitives from other countries. Questions have been raised whether this makes us vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. Although we have not had a terrorist attack, this does not mean we should not be vigilant.
Similarly, the government has an obligation to protect vulnerable children from unscrupulous characters who would make a trade out of them by trafficking them.
The tourism industry has lamented the deleterious effect on tourism that the new visa regulations have. People must appear at embassies in person for biometric verification, and parents travelling with children need to apply for and carry unabridged birth certificates.
Given this, it is imperative that home affairs director general Mkhuseli Apleni quickly clarifies the contradiction between the child trafficking figures revealed to parliament – of only 23 cases in the past three years – and the figure of 30 000 a year that the department has cited that Apleni put forward as grounds for these new policies.
If home affairs pushed through these new regulations under a false pretext, it would be discrediting its own efforts to be seen to be addressing the failures for which it has long been criticised.
Moreover, it will be working against its own objective of preventing criminals and undesirable people from entering the country.
Instead it will be working against the tourism department’s objective to draw more people to SA’s shores.
As home affairs implements policies meant to defend our borders and protect all children, these policies should be based on sound research and solid statistics for credibility’s sake.