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Zimbabwe, 'Outpost of Tyranny,' seeks tourists
Michael Wines, New York Times
November 12, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=15484

How does a pariah state convince the rest of the world to come visit on their next vacation? Zimbabwe’s tourism industry surely would not pose the question that way. But that is the near-insuperable marketing challenge the country - which Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice classified as an "outpost of tyranny" last year - has faced since its autocratic president, Robert G. Mugabe, started a scorched-earth campaign against all vestiges of Western colonialism six years ago. In 1999, just before the government’s first seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms sparked both an economic downturn and Western condemnation, tourists streamed to Zimbabwe to visit sites like Victoria Falls. The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority recorded 2.2 million arrivals at its airports and border posts, 600,000 of them from overseas. Last year there were 1.56 million - and barely 200,000 were foreigners. "Tourism was growing at the rate of 15 percent a year, and then came the land reform program," Shingi Munyeza, the chief executive of ZimSun Leisure Group, one of the nation’s top hoteliers, said in a telephone interview from Harare.

Zimbabwe’s loss has been its neighbors’ gain. Botswana’s international tourist receipts have soared to $280 million a year, and Zambia, on the other side of Victoria Falls, has seen its tourism take quintuple this decade, to $150 million a year. Meanwhile, tourism revenues in Zimbabwe came to just $30 million last year, said the Harare-based economist John Robertson, compared with $200 million at the height of the country’s popularity. It appears that many tourists have the idea that because Western governments have plastered Zimbabwe with travel warnings, that because a million or more citizens have gone into voluntary exile, that because the government bulldozed or burned the homes of at least 750,000 slum-dwellers last year, sending them fleeing into the countryside - that because of all that and more, a vacation there might be less than idyllic.

And they are, for the most part, right. The economy is a mess, and for the tourist that means frequent shortages not only of essentials like gasoline, but of everything else, from Coca-Cola to toothpaste, and lately, electrical power for hours at a time. And with inflation nipping along at a rate of 1,200 percent a year, prices, denominated in Zimbabwean dollars, rise almost daily. (Tourists can exchange their currency for Zimbabwean currency, but only the highly risky black market will deliver their money’s worth; the government-rigged legal exchange rate robs visitors of up to half their money’s true value.) Furthermore, if you get sick or hurt, there is little medical care - or even medicine - available. And getting around the country is also problematic. Air Zimbabwe has had many breakdowns and in-flight emergencies in recent years, and the trains are not particularly reliable either. And yet. Zimbabwe still has magnificent Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park, which teemed with wildlife until 2001, when government mismanagement and starving poachers began killing much of it. But what remains - giraffe, antelope, all the big five game — is impressive. There are still comfortable lodges, vibrant Harare night life and stunning art, from elegant Shona sculpture in soapstone and verdite to handmade textiles and pottery.

But the ethical considerations in visiting such an autocratic state are double-edged: many tourists avoid Zimbabwe for fear of helping finance its regime, while the tourism industry and its desperate workers could use some foreign exchange to feed their families. All that, however, is a tough sell in the face of travel warnings, like the latest from the United States State Department, which raises the specter of political and economic turmoil, food shortages and violent crime. "These travel warnings have really prejudiced both the travelers from North America and Europe from coming here and enjoying the attractions and facilities we have," Mr. Munyeza said. Zimbabwe’s government says its tourism woes are rooted in Western economic sabotage and propaganda, which it calls foreign aggression. "After we embarked on what we think was the right thing to do- to redistribute the land - Zimbabwe was really ravaged, not only as a destination, but as a country," said Karikoga Kaseke, the chief executive of the government’s Zimbabwe Tourism Authority.

The government’s image-polishing counterinsurgency is called the Perception Management Program, and it consists in part of handing out junkets to travel writers, travel agents and tour operators. Last year, Mr. Kaseke said, the program brought 533 such people to Zimbabwe from around the world, including the officially reviled United States and Britain. "The people are now hearing another side, and they are making a decision with information," he said. At the same time, Zimbabwe officials began a diplomatic campaign, lobbying foreign embassies to soften or even lift their travel warnings. President Mugabe’s government has also looked to Asia to replace lost Western investment and tourism. Mr. Mugabe’s Look East policy, focused mostly on Beijing, has brought to Zimbabwe Chinese shoes, buses, passenger planes, jet fighters, clothes and, increasingly, Chinese and other Asian tourists - Asian arrivals are up 75 percent this year, the government says, although the absolute number is unclear.

Finally, both the government and the tourist industry have taken some practical steps to reassure visitors. Victoria Falls now has a squad of tourist police, modelled on those at Egyptian tourism spots, whose job is to disperse beggars and pickpockets and to project an aura of security. The country’s parks agency has begun to renovate some of its prime properties, including lodges along the Zambezi River. While Sheraton gave up on Zimbabwe this year, turning over its nouveau-Soviet tower to a local operator, other hoteliers are sprucing up: ZimSun, for instance, is refurbishing its Crowne Plaza hotel in Harare, one of the city’s largest, to the tune of $5 million. For the Christmas holidays, the company plans to give fuel coupons to South African vacationers who come by car. Whether any of this has made a difference depends on whom one consults. Mr. Kaseke’s tourism authority says that visitor arrivals in Zimbabwe leaped by one-third in the first half of 2006, to over a million arrivals, compared with the same period in 2005. While visits from Europe were down, he said, American tourism - mostly adventurers and hunters - rose sharply, and arrivals from Germany and Asia soared more than 75 percent.

"We thought it would work," Mr. Kaseke said of his agency’s campaign, "but we never thought it would work as good as it has." Alas, however, none of that success was reflected in the hotel business. Occupancy rates fell to 32 percent, from 38 percent in the same span of 2005, according to the tourism authority. Hotel operators say that is because the crashing economy has made hotels too expensive for domestic clients, offsetting a rise in international visitors. And the latest numbers indicate that overseas tourism in 2006 was virtually flat compared with 2005. That was the year in which the government’s slum-clearance project, dubbed Operation Drive Out Trash, rendered hundreds of thousands homeless and loosed a torrent of international condemnation. Foreign tourism seems not to have recovered from that blow. Perhaps the answer to whether a vacation in this particular Outpost of Tyranny is worthwhile and even ethical, lies in the type of tourist one is. Even casual tourists should abide by some precautions. Tourism Web sites abound with stories of visitors who innocently snap photos of forbidden sites, only to find themselves under interrogation in the local police station. Changing money outside official channels can make economic sense but is dicey, risking arrest or, perhaps, a clever fraud.

Having said that, tourists can comfortably revel in the marvel of Victoria Falls or Hwange’s wildlife in considerable luxury and with little risk, though more luxurious - and costlier - accommodations are available across the river in Zambia. Tourists who travel in groups are virtually assured of a trouble-free trip. Still, the visitor who totes a backpack instead of a cartload of Tumi luggage may be the most satisfied category of tourist. Victoria Falls has bungee jumping, microlight aircraft flying and extreme whitewater rafting, and the rest of the country, a rough-hewn work in progress, is the sort of place that may actually appeal to travelers whose sense of adventure cannot be quelled by police roadblocks and fuel shortages.

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