WeeklySA_AdminPartnership: High level bilateral talks and intra country visits ensure easier access for tourists and entrepreneurs
By Victor Mecoamere
The South African tourism sector is recovering from the two year-long Covid-19 pandemic related lockdown, although the country is not yet out of the woods, but things are looking up regardless, top SA diplomat Mninwa Mahlangu told an interviewer in Nairobi, Kenya recently.
Mahlangu, who is South Africa’s High Commissioner to Kenya, told highly respected Kenyan journalist Fabian Mutinda on the popular YouTube based show Fabz TV that, to mitigate the devastating effects of the pandemic related lockdown which had ground the country to a virtual halt between 2019 and 2020, the government had realised good results from the tourism recovery strategy, which sought to reenergise the domestic, regional and international tourism sectors, from 2021 to date.
After adding that there had since been promising tourism traffic numbers from Kenya, the rest of Africa and across the globe, Mahlangu told Mutinda that the strengthening of bilateral relations between Kenya and South Africa had also played a pivotal and fruit bearing role in increasing the number of visitors from Kenya to South Africa.
“Kenya has the highest level of cordial relations with South Africa,” Mahlangu said, adding that the vastly improved intra-country friendship had been boosted by former Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit for wide ranging talks with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in 2021, Ramaphosa’s 2022 reciprocal visit for the continuing consolidation of bilateral relations, this time with Kenyatta’s successor William Ruto, and the impending visit to Kenya by SA International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor sometime this month.
Mahlangu said, following the strengthening of cooperation and collaboration between the two countries, Kenyans could now visit South Africa visa free for up to three months, starting from January 2023, whereas previously, Kenyans could only visit South Africa visa free for a month, all thanks to the related agreement that was reached when Ramaphosa visited Kenyan President William Ruto in November last year.
Mahlangu said that Ramaphosa had also attended the memorial service of Kenya’s former president and Kenyatta’s predecessor Mwai Kibaki recently, which was followed by SA Deputy President Paul Mashatile gracing the inauguration of Kenya’s latest president, William Ruto. According to Mahlangu, the different high level diplomatic encounters between the two countries had led to the establishment of several different trade agreements, some of which were benefitting the local tourism sector.
These tourism recovery strategic mechanisms included the establishment of joint technical committees as well as a string of related memoranda of agreement which sought to ensure that not only tourists could take advantage of the two countries’ improved relations, but also that the two countries’ business community members could capitalise in the tourism sectors’ facets including accommodation, and the transportation of tourists between Kenya and South Africa.
Mahlangu said that he also expected Kenya’s tourism industry players to take full advantage of the forthcoming annual SA Tourism organised Tourism Indaba in Durban in April 2024. He said South Africa had also took bold steps to similarly strengthen bilateral relations with many other countries, regionally, across mainland Africa, in Europe, Central America, South America and North America.
As a result, between 2022 to date, South Africa had received about six million of the 46 million tourists who had visited Africa, with SA only trailing Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Mahlangu has also said that hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup tournament had boosted South Africa’s standing as a noteworthy international tourism destination.
He said approximately 310 000 people had visited the country during the tourney. Significantly, about 40 percent of the World Cup event attendees were from across Africa, while 24 percent were from across Europe, 13 percent were from Central America and 11 percent came from North America. The huge tourism traffic had earned South Africa a total of R3.6 billion.
Mahlangu told Mutinda that one of the niggling challenges or obstacles in the path of South Africa making bigger strides in tourism was the shortage of airlines and the high cost of ferrying tourists from across the world to South Africa. But Mahlangu said a partnership by several key tourism industry players, provincial tourism departments’ leaders and Airports Company SA was addressing the matter urgently.
