Where to now?
Iwoke up recently whistling a catchy tune that I had not t hought about or heard for years: “Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from Cotton- eye Joe”. The dance song Cotton- eye Joe was a 1995 global hit by Swedish group Rednex. Their approach was ground- breaking at the time in that they combined traditional folk songs, often American, with modern techno and dance beats. The group also featured lead female vocal- ists in a manner that contrasted with the traditional male role taken by folk songs in the past.
This happened to be the de facto theme song of my very irst overseas trip to market Swaziland ( it was still Swaziland in those days) to foreign travellers. The song was playing during my light to Europe, on my Tube train ride into London, on the U- Baan train in Berlin and latter on the snowboard slopes of Austria.
I associate this song with that feeling of being a country boy in the big city. In those days my closest bus stop was Phuzumoya and my nearest town Si- phofaneni. London, Berlin and Munich were total mind- blows for me, and the ITB travel show, where every nation in the world were vying for attention in 30 or 40 massive halls, was a sobering sight. “Where do you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from Cotton- eye Joe?”
Perhaps it is then no coincidence that my neural pathways connected those distant memories and emotions to my current thoughts about tourism in Es‐ watini. Where do we come from? Where do we go?
GROUND ZERO
Let’s get one thing behind us. COVID- 19 has rewritten global travel, full- stop. Maybe we will pick up some pieces from the past, but the demand is de initely for something new. No need to talk much further about COV
ID impacts, the meteor has already hit, what is left is a smoking crater.
Then we have in our consciousness the recent unrest in Eswatini and the clear feeling that it is not yet behind us. The issues that gave rise to it have not been addressed, not at all. This is also a smoking and smouldering heap of lammable material, and all humour aside, we are not talking the pungent aroma of Swazi Gold either, we are talking the acrid toxic fumes of burning rubber.
The term ‘ Ground Zero’ refers to the point on the earth’s surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb. An alternative de inition puts it as the starting point or base for some activity. Our ground zero is that almost all foreign tourism, and most regional tourism to Eswatini has been halted. We are in a winter of desolation, the grass is brown, if not burnt black by uncontrolled wild ires.
Now is the time to again look far forward. Our attention must be on rebuild- ing for the future, building back better. We must look out for and nourish the irst green shoots of any recovery. However, we as a tourism industry and as a nation of policy- makers must be cognisant that amongst the green shoots there may be weeds and toxic alien species.
Let me talk less in lowery metaphors and more in hard concrete commercial language. I had a foreign operator contact me recently and ask me to re- cost some tourism packages for him for 2022. He tried to sound concerned, but his approach was blunt. “Times are tough,” he said, “We need you to ind a way of reducing your 2019 rates by 25 per cent and using these for 2022. Our mar- kets are cost sensitive and we would need you to commit to a maximum 3 per cent increase in your rates for 2023 and 2024.” I am damn sure I am not the only tourism industry operator getting these approaches. This is an alien weed of the worst possible toxic nature, worse than Lantana, Sandanezwe or Bugweed.