China sets pace

and indirectly.

However, for the Government to attain its target there is a need for the country to diversify its tourist packages and consider investing more in promoting cultural tourism taking into consideration that most travellers no longer fancy superficial tourist trips but prefer to explore the history behind and cultural importance of natural landscapes and other tourist attractions.

Renowned historian and cultural fundi who is also founder of Amagugu International Heritage Centre Mr Pathisa Nyathi said there was a need for the Government to channel more funding towards the cultural-oriented activities, heritage sites as well as various arts activities, as these played a big role in highlighting the country’s image to the outside world.

“Culture, heritage and arts are the image of a country. What is important is that they are promoted, marketed and developed. That can’t be done without requisite funding. The Government must fund these but not much is happening when it comes to funding the heritage. What is given goes towards salaries, but we need to inject a lot towards development of arts. We need to pump in money towards creative industry,” he said.

Mr Nyathi said there was a need for the country’s populace, including authorities, to embrace art and consider the role it could play in contributing towards the growth of the economy.

“We need people who will support and appreciate arts because it is an industry. Here (in our country) art is not appreciated, they (authorities) don’t even fully know that it can contribute to the country’s GDP. Art is our pride and it can be a source of employment and it can improve livelihood . . . ,” he said.

Mr Nyathi says the country has a lot to learn from China when it comes to cultural appreciation.

“China is proud of its culture, when they get ideas from other nations they do it on their culture. The language they use there is theirs. Our problem is we despise ourselves and we don’t regard our culture highly. It’s associated with permittivity; it’s an effect of being colonised,” he said.

Renowned Bulawayo arts experts and lecturer at Lupane State University Dr Nkululeko Sibanda said the cultural element was essential to the transformation and sustainable development of tourism.

“Promotion of cultural tourism will allow development at local level, which includes infrastructural development and secondly it will create jobs for the locals, specifically the young who are in a challenging situation where unemployment rate is very high,” he said.

Dr Sibanda also said promoting and funding cultural tourism activities or projects could be used as a conduit to grow economies of underdeveloped communities.

“China has a devolved approach to cultural tourism whereby provinces and districts benefit more from cultural tourism than the Government, so it feeds into the aspect of infrastructural development as well. If we devolve cultural tourism to local areas it then begins to promote certain ethnic groups peculiar to certain spaces and geographic locations,” he said.

Dr Sibanda said there was a need for the country to develop cultural tourism products peculiar to itself.

“We need to develop our own approach to cultural tourism because China developed its own approaches that are peculiar to different regions, that’s something we can learn by saying from a Zimbabwean perspective or African perspective how can we package and market our cultural tourism,” he said.

Dr Sibanda said China’s tourism sector has over the years experienced significant growth largely due to the marketing and promotion of its cultural festivals across the globe.

“We need to promote our cultural festivals as a country because one saleable product from China that promotes their cultural tourism are festivals. They (Chinese) begin to brand cities whereby a certain city becomes known for its cultural festival, for example in Bulawayo there is Intwasa Arts and Cultural Festival.

“If we begin to promote cultural tourism, we then begin to have better returns from Intwasa because people are going to visit Bulawayo because of this event and the festival then begins to grow regionally into an international festival,” he said.

This year from May 15 to June 30 Chinese’s culture centres and tourism offices overseas hosted more than 250 cultural and tourism events in over 40 countries as part of the country’s efforts to showcase a “real China and its modern development” as well as to promote tourism and cultural co-operation between itself and the rest of the world through exhibitions, shows, lectures and forums, the global project, China Tourism and Culture Week, whose tagline is “China Beyond Your Imagination”.