Get ready to build SA from the ground up

The figures on the impact on tourism of the coronavirus lockdown, from the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University, make for more than a sobering read – they are, quite frankly, horrifying. Commissioned by companies in the tourism business to assess the impact that the lockdown will have on that sector in South Africa, the researchers predicted nothing less than a bloodbath, with as many as two-thirds of jobs in travel and tourism in South Africa disappearing by this time next year.

Even in their “best-case scenario”, more than a million jobs will be lost. That’s assuming 58.2% fewer domestic trips and 68.4% fewer inbound visitors in 2020, which translates into a loss of R171.4 billion.

The worst-case scenario is expected to result in about 70% fewer domestic trips and 73.7% fewer inbound visitors and an overall decline of revenue of R195.5 billion.

Undoubtedly, there will be major losses right across the economy – but the reason the hit to tourism is so devastating is because it is the one “renewable” resource upon which the South African economy can build in the future.

Our manufacturing sector has declined in the last two decades and mining will eventually run out of raw materials. Tourism, it was hoped, would help take the place of those traditional industries and become a truly 21st century revenue generator.

Even with the confusing Level 3 regulations – which allow certain leisure activities, like “self-guided” game drives in public and private reserves, but still ban any travel for leisure purposes – there is little or no relief for the tourism sector.

Although some limited domestic air flights will begin this coming week, those who may take them must do so only for business purposes.

The rest of the industry is only set to come out of its lockdown when the country reaches the Level 1 easing of restrictions.

And that doesn’t look like happening any time soon – at least not if President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit yesterday to the hard-hit Western Cape is anything to go by. Ramaphosa described the campaign against Covid-19 as “a war”… and that is frighteningly easy to conceptualise when we look at the daily rising death toll.

South Africa, which at the beginning was praised for the success of its fight against the virus, is now in a position where the government is being forced to relax its lockdown restrictions (or face even more widespread civil disobedience) at a time when the infection curve is shooting skywards.

That is almost the opposite of the situation in most other countries, which are easing their restrictions because they have passed the peak of infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

As the economic destruction – as is now evident in the tourism sector – starts to become unavoidable, more and more questions are going to be asked of the government and it will get more criticism.

Did we lock down too early? Should we even have locked down at all? Those thoughts will be going through many minds from now on.

While we must not abandon hope, flighty optimism is not going to help either.

Just as we seem to be getting back to normal, we need to accept the fact we are going to have to rebuild our country from the ground up … as we would have to after any terrible war.