COVID Impact on Tourism in South Africa

[Dzombo]

SA will have to get its house in order, as people will still be afraid of the SA variant!

As long as we'll have to quarantine after a trip to SA we won't be able to go. No matter how we want to

Tell me about it

But the so called "SA variant" (ie spike mutation) has happened numerous times elsewhere.
Don't think it can be stopped anymore

[Dzombo]

SA will have to get its house in order, as people will still be afraid of the SA variant!

But this is the cr*p peddled by our media:
https://news.sky.com/story/tougher-rule ... y-12261423

Plant scientists

[Mel]

You don't believe in masks and distancing?

[Dzombo]

You don't believe in masks and distancing?

Yes I do
But since when have botanists / plant experts become experts in human viruses and epidemics?

[Mel]

True

On the other hand... EVERY one is an expert now - or at least believes he/she is.

[Lisbeth]

Jabs in arms, not pretty words and optics, are what’s needed

Opinionista • Marianne Merten • 18 April 2021

South Africa is on no-fly/red-fly lists the world over. It will not be a destination of choice until Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out to 67% of adults for population immunity at speed and scale.

Unless the Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out at speed and scale, South Africa will not recover lost economic ground, never mind the restructuring the government talks about.

Or as President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in his Monday newsletter: “We have to both recover the ground that we have lost due to the coronavirus pandemic, and to gain new ground by placing our economy on a fundamentally different growth trajectory.”

The From the Desk of the President missive was about how 600 business executives rated South Africa first in business process outsourcing (BPO) – bluntly put, call centres and IT hotlines – and how that’s a sign of things turning around.

And it is, in limited ways.

Cape Town and the Western Cape, which are central to the BPO sector, have created 7,354 additional jobs in the past year, according to Western Cape Finance MEC David Maynier. Last week, he said 1,166 young people had secured permanent jobs from among the 1,700 youths on the job-training Work and Skills programme.

Covid-19 has boosted working remotely, and the sort of job opportunities that come with that.

But elsewhere, the Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out more than a million jobs and even more livelihoods, given that every worker supports between four and eight people.

Tourism is particularly hard hit.

It accounts for 1.49 million direct and indirect jobs – roughly one in 10 jobs – according to official figures. In 2019, tourism contributed 2.9% of gross domestic product (GDP), but with a total of R425.8-billion spent, it contributed 8.6% to overall economic activity.

Covid-19 has pretty much wiped that out. Never mind the 2019 ambition to increase international visitors from 10.5 million to 21 million by 2030.

South Africa is on no-fly/red-fly lists the world over. It will not be a destination of choice until Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out to 67% of adults for population immunity at speed and scale.

The government’s sweet words and promises do not matter, nor do pretty promos. It’s cold, hard considerations of public health and money.

For, say €770, a tourist from Germany, Britain, France or the Netherlands, which traditionally are central to South African tourism, instead can fly long-haul to Thailand – without quarantine.

Or to Rwanda, which has been declared a “safe country” by the Netherlands and doesn’t seem to feature on Germany’s lists of restricted countries. In the case of the UK, Mauritius was recently removed from the red-fly list. But travellers returning from South Africa must quarantine for 10 days at their own cost. That’s an additional £1,720 at a UK quarantine hotel.

That means maybe only the rich and privileged who, say, have invested in coastal properties, can ditch the European and US winters. That Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi moderated Covid-19 entry restriction to allow stays of up to three months for those visitors with property is an indicator of that.

But that’s not the backbone of South Africa’s tourism industry. And given the prices for accommodation, adventure and attractions, a domestic tourist’s “sho’t left” often struggles to take off.

International tourists’ spending power driven by euros, dollars and pounds is key to tourism’s revival – and South Africa’s economic recovery.

And for the government’s much-promised protection of lives and livelihoods to become reality, what’s needed are not more pretty pledges, but Covid-19 vaccinations at speed and scale. To date the Covid-19 vaccination programme has been marred by procurement flops, ever-flexible inoculation deadlines and missed targets. The government has acknowledged delays – how could it not? – but it has also downplayed the situation.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize on Wednesday blamed “onerous”, “difficult” and “sometimes unreasonable” conditions by Covid-19 manufacturers for the delays. Except, no fault compensation and no late delivery penalties are standard internationally.

It’s all about jabs in arms. Nothing else. And no recovery, economic, ideological or otherwise, can be claimed until sufficient jabs are in enough arms – across villages, dorpies, leafy suburbs and urban shacklands. DM168

[Richprins]

We really need to start moving!

[Lisbeth]

It's the only way to stop the Covid-19 from influencing our lives

[Richprins]

Tourism minister vows to stick to transformation agenda
18 May 2021 - 19:52
Kgothatso Madisa Journalist

Tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubani says she will provide financial relief only to black-owned companies.


Tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubani has told parliament that she will not drop her policy agenda to transform the predominantly white-owned tourism industry.

She was speaking in defence of the financial relief provided by her department only to black-owned companies in the face of a court challenge by AfriForum and trade union Solidarity.


Kubayi-Ngubani was delivering her 2021/2022 spending and policy priorities — or the department's budget vote.

During the debate, the Freedom Front Plus accused the minister of racism for her stance on transformation in the tourism industry. FF Plus MP Ignatius Groenewald said providing financial support to only black-owned businesses in response to Covid-19 amounted to racism.

Groenewald argued that it was not only black-owned businesses that suffered financial losses. According to Groenewald, every entrepreneur in tourism must have access to the R1.2bn relief through the Tourism Equity Fund, as well as further millions in the Tourism Transformation Fund.

“Freedom Front Plus cannot agree that the department helps black-empowered businesses and only assists black-empowered tourism market contributors through the Tourism Equity Fund. This is naked racism,” Groenewald said.

He said that using black economic empowerment (BEE) policy to decide who would get funding was ANC propaganda that South Africans were not interested in.

“Now is the time that entrepreneurship must be promoted and not ANC propaganda. It is time to create job opportunities not to limit them by cadre stealing and relief provided not contributing to the market.

“Any talks after this pandemic about transformation will be to punish any non-black in SA who competed in an open economy and practised good entrepreneurship,” Groenewald said.

However, this did not sit well with Kubayi-Ngubani, who defended the decision to support only black-owned businesses. She argued that at least 70% of the people who worked in the tourism industry were black and women and very few of them were owners.

This, she said, cannot be allowed to continue any longer.

“When we look at this we think that South Africans need to continue to be, especially the ones from disadvantaged communities, workers while watching others to be owners?” she asked.

“The TF [Transformation Fund] is meant to change this landscape and I think we all need to commit to the transformation of the tourism sector.”

She research has shown that black women remained the face of poverty.

As a woman herself, it was prudent, she said, to change this with the little power that she has.

“You can’t continue with such situation and think that it's normal and acceptable. My responsibility is also to lift other women to make sure that opportunities are created for those women who are being left behind as Mama [Charlotte] Maxeke has asked us to do. When you have an opportunity, get in and lift,” she said.

“And this is about all the women in the tourism sector. The fact that this sector is predominantly women, the participation is by women, more than 70% actually. I’d go look for them, why are they nowhere in being CEOs, where are they in middle management of these companies that we’re talking about?

“Why are they not owners of these products? And we think that’s normal. In a country that has majority of the population being women, it can’t be, it can’t be business as usual.”

TimesLIVE

https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/sout ... on-agenda/

[Lisbeth]

Tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubani says she will provide financial relief only to black-owned companies.

“Why are they not owners of these products?

That's an easy question

support to only black-owned businesses in response to Covid-19 amounted to racism.

It is racism.

Having a policy like that she is going to kill international tourism instead of making it grow

Can she decide such a thing all by herself?

I wonder how many ministers of such a low intellectual level there are She might be following the politics of the ANC, but she will certainly not help the country. It will just add another lot of unqualified people to the economy. The ones who are clever enough can surely make it on their own the same way that a lot of white owners have done. Many have probably started with the family farm, but it takes a lot to make a farm into a B&B, a hotel, a reserve or whatever attracts tourists and not all have had a farm from the start.