Established 1930 Revival of tourism industry key

Covid-19 is the biggest challenge that the global tourism sector has faced to date. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation estimates a reduction of 58% to 78% in tourist traffic across the world. This means that international tourist arrivals could drop by a billion (across the world).

Typically, the tourism sector is among the first to be affected, and the last to recover during a health crisis (hindustantimes.com)

The twin challenges in the survive stage are to save businesses and save jobs. Furthermore, an online article titled “Tourism as an economic development tool” says the most important economic feature of activities related to the tourism sector is that they contribute to three high-priority goals of developing countries: the generation of income, employment, and foreign-exchange earnings.

In this respect, the tourism sector can play an important role as a driving force of economic development. The impact this industry can have in the different stages of economic development depends on the specific characteristics of each country. Given the complexity of tourism consumption, its economic impact is felt widely in other production sectors, contributing in each case towards achieving the aims of accelerated development.

In Zimbabwe, President Mnangagwa has reiterated that the tourism sector has an important role to play in the attainment of National Vision 2030 and together with agriculture, mining and the manufacturing sector, it is critical in the growth of the economy.

He said this while at the launch of the Visit Zimbabwe Promotion Campaign last Tuesday, which seeks to leverage on the sports and tourism sectors to market the country as a premier tourist destination.

The President said the initiative came against the backdrop of the launch of the National Tourism Recovery and Growth Strategy that seeks to create a US$5 billion tourism sector by 2025.

“The strategy is anchored on Zimbabwe’s vision to be a premier international tourist destination based on the judicious and sustainable exploitation of our unique human and natural resources. It further seeks to re-establish lost contacts with the local, regional and international tourism source markets. Today’s event is therefore informed by that strategic goal, riding on the partnership between the Zimbabwe national cricket teams and the ZTA (Zimbabwe Tourism Authority). The Visit Zimbabwe Promotion Campaign will see a warm invitation being extended to the world to visit Zimbabwe.”

He added that tourism growth was hinged on an aggressive marketing strategy and welcomed synergy between the two sectors leveraging on Zimbabwe’s membership to the International Cricket Council. As part of the initiative the national cricket teams will wear branded merchandise inscribed, “Visit Zimbabwe a World of Wonders,” and will begin with the forthcoming tour of Pakistan and the ICC T20 World Cup.

“I challenge the ZTA, Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority as well as the National Museums and Monuments, among other agencies, to maximise on the benefits of this Visit Zimbabwe Campaign by unveiling unique products which promote Zimbabwe’s wildlife, natural and cultural heritage,” said President Mnangagwa.

He also urged Zimbabwean sportspersons plying their trade abroad to join the campaign and market Zimbabwe in their countries of residence.

The President added that in anticipation of increased tourist arrivals following disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, plans were underway to speedily resuscitate Air Zimbabwe including upgrading of air strips throughout the country.

There is no doubt that in the global economy, pre-Covid-19, tourism was one of the most noticeable and growing sectors. The sector plays an important role in boosting a nation’s economy.

An increase in tourism flow can bring positive economic outcomes to the nations, especially in gross domestic product (GDP) and employment opportunities. To many developing countries, the sector is an engine of economic development and GDP growth.

It is therefore prudent that every stakeholder works hard to make sure that the Visit Zimbabwe Promotion Campaign becomes a success. Its success will certainly boost other downstream industries and improve the livelihood of many people.

Richard Runyararo Mahomva

Last week on Wednesday, (14 October) Dr Obert Moses Mpofu launched his groundbreaking autobiography, On the Shoulders of Struggle: Memoirs of a Political Insider. Being actively involved in the publishing process of Dr Mpofu’s book was quite revealing of the many facets of his intellectual and ideological personality.

His obvious political side was the centre of the authorship of his selfreflection. As an avid participant in the publishing sector through Leaders for Africa Network-LAN, I only assumed the launch would take the conservative model of the usual endorsement speeches –one after the other. However, I was treated to a surprise by the profound academic distilling of Dr Mpofu’s autobiography by the Guest of Honour –who was none other than the Vice President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Retired General Constantine Chiwenga. In prefacing his book officiation speech, the Vice President underscored that the historicisation of the liberation struggle largely resides in the commitment of those who were on the forefront of the nationalist movement:

“The anti-imperialist agenda would be a piecemeal if the frontline participants of our liberation struggle are not pro-active in reflecting on the role of the gun in the birthing post-colonial state in Africa. The failure to reconnect to the ideological foundation of our existence through authentic memorialisation will wipe away the keenness to safeguard our liberation values. For too long the narration of our history has been a preserve of institutions disposed to dignifying colonial control on knowledge production.”

Vice President Chiwenga’s above observation is also emphatically illustrated throughout Dr Mpofu’s book. The Vice President Rtd Gen Cde Dr Chiwenga’s submission further exposes a resolute neo-colonial mechanism to effectively silence liberation theologies by the antiestablishment academia on the claims. This position has been justified by a superficial justification that ZANU PF is guilty of producing a linear and hegemonic liberation memory since independence. This selective appreciation of the Zimbabwean knowledge space is arrogantly inclined to disapproving all historical accounts with a link to the establishment. As a way of positing a counter-narrative to the alleged liberation memory monopoly of ZANU PF, some historians have developed a new affinity for ZAPU/ZPRA history which in the past they abhorred in favour of ZANLA’s contribution to the armed struggle. The same historians were equally collaborating in the creation of what they now problematise as an imposed ruling party narrative of the national memory. Vice President Chiwenga unashamedly pointed out one such a historian:

“… Dr Mpofu argues that the Land Reform produced reactionary academia which was mentored by the archbishop of colonial historiography, the late Professor Terrence Ranger who had been initially known as a friendly force to our liberation struggle until he turned his back against the very “Peasant Consciousness” which he claimed to defend through historiographical advocacy. However, Professor Terrence Ranger was later involved in spearheading a nationalist acrimonious narrative which desperately seeks to dissuade our people from writing their history –especially our war veterans.”

The academic flip-flop tendency exposed by the Vice President in his reading of Dr Mpofu’s selflocation illustrates the manipulation of history in mapping the various dimensions of political contestations in Zimbabwe. On the contrary, Dr Mpofu attempts to take Zimbabwe’s political debate a step further beyond the normalcy of the selective silencing of memory. A reading of Dr Mpofu’s self-remembering is located on both sides of Zimbabwe’s liberation memory divides broadly situated in his experiential engagement with ZPRA, ZAPU and ZANU PF. However, Dr Mpofu situates his contributions in the margins of history because a greater part of ex-combatant auto/biographies have been written by those who were in lines of command in the armed struggle:

“However, not much has been said by those cadres who bore the brunt of the real combat operations against the vicious enemy. I represent that group of liberation fighters whose story of involvement in the fight for independence and the consolidation of its values has not been fully chronicled. Not much has also been exhaustively recounted about the countless men, women and children who came face to face with the full wrath of Rhodesian violence directed at obliterating the continuity of the nationalist struggle (p. 7).”

The Vice President’s submission discouraged the emerging culture of neo-colonial forgetting of our past and the profuse attempt towards dissuading foot-soldiers of the struggle from articulating their place in the contemporary power struggle space. Given the conflict around the land question and how it has triggered discursive tensions in the academia, the Vice President noted how Dr Mpofu’s book exposes the role of the Fast-Track Land Reform as the pivot of contested partisan discourses in Zimbabwe from the late 1990s up to the early millennia. As such, he treats the full address of the land question (as presented by Dr Obert Mpofu) as the starting point to real democratisation. Vice President Constantine Chiwenga credited Dr Mpofu for exhaustively discussing the land reform programme as a pivotal unit of analysis to challenging the constructs of Zimbabwean politics beyond selective rhetoric of ‘‘rehearsed concerns’’ around human-rights and good governance. To this end, Vice President Retired General Cde Dr Chiwenga posits that:

“Given the magnitude of Dr Mpofu’s discursive traverse to the neoliberal notions of the so-called Zimbabwean crisis, our senior politicians especially those in ZANU PF must be motivated to write authentic accounts of our post-independence politics. It is worth reiterating that Zimbabwe’s land reform exercise produced an outrage of neo-colonial emotions expressed through the formation of a colonially sponsored opposition political party.”

However, on a lighter note, the Vice President threw in some wit to Dr Mpofu for his romantic poetics in the book:

“I recommend the book for those young men who may want to extract some romantic charming genius from the wisdom of the old school as espoused by the writer’s celebration of his longtime lover Mama Mrs Sikhanyisiwe Mpofu. It was quite warming to be reading a fat session of the book where the writer overturned the academic gravity of the book by showering her wife with some enticing love punchlines.”

Richard Runyararo Mahomva is a Political-Scientist with an avid interest in political theory, liberation memory and architecture of governance in Africa. He is also a creative literature aficionado. Feedback: rasmkhonto@ gmail.com