The missed opportunity in South African tourism

Developing a sustainable tourism economy in this country has been a buzzword forever. Everyone believes it’s the silver bullet.

It’ll create jobs, sustain the associated industries and help transform the township economies. And it should.

We are inordinately blessed with tourism drawcards from the environment to our history – basically anywhere you go in South Africa. This is an incredible country with a fantastic story to share.

Gauteng, in particular, is as always unfairly blessed. There’s the majesty of the Magaliesberg to hike in, game parks literally just outside the city limits, shows, world-class sport and then our wonderful, contested history.

But do we really appreciate what we have? The onus is always put on us, the ordinary people, to be South Africa’s greatest ambassadors, to be tourists in our land so that we can evangelise the good news to family, friends and even business colleagues – and get them to spend money on other things than the malls when they come up to the Highveld to visit.

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It’s a hard sell in reality. Vilakazi Street in Soweto is the most obvious tourist trap, but probably the easiest to navigate because of it.

You know what’s coming and you can smile, wave and walk on as the touts, the chancers and the dancers try it on with the busloads of Oriental or Nordic tourists following in your wake.

You can understand – at a push – when you get to the biggest drawcard of all, Madiba’s old matchbox house, just why there are entry prices for locals, that are quite brazenly doubled for foreign visitors.

It’s a lot to harder to justify at other venues, like the Ditsong Military History Museum in Saxonwold. It’s a big enough ask to pay R60 as a local to view exhibits that haven’t evolved much in the past 30 years, so R120 for a foreigner is daylight robbery.

And that’s the rub. It costs nothing to walk from Mandela and Tambo’s old offices at Chancellor House, down past the old Randlord HQs in Main Street through to Ghandi Square and then to pop into the Rand Club – and tell a fairly comprehensive and immersive story of South Africa in less than an hour and very safely too.

There are 100 different ways to tell our stories, but we’re killing the golden goose before we give it a chance to start laying those eggs we keep fantasising about.

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