South Africa's national parks woo private sector
© 2000 Reuters Limited
November 27, 2000
Story by Ed Stoddard
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK - South African National Parks (SANP) is wooing private investors in a bid to boost badly needed revenues for its core activity of nature conservation.
Up for grabs is an enticing - if not permanent - slice of the action in the country's lucrative ecotourism sector.
Under SANP's commercialisation programme, private operators have been invited to bid for 20-year concession contracts to either take over and upgrade existing lodge facilities or choose new sites for development.
Winners of the bids for seven of the 11 concession opportunities were announced earlier this month.
These included six lodge facilities in the famed Kruger National Park and one in Addo Elephant Park in the country's Eastern Cape Province.
Kruger is the jewel in the crown of the SANP empire, with close to one million visitors a year, 40 percent of them from abroad.
Bids dates for four more sites, including one on the South African side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park on the border with Botswana, will be announced later.
"This is a commercialisation process, it is not privatisation," said Dr Salifou Siddo, head of corporate affairs at SANP.
"The concessions are for 20 years and the asset base will always belong to SANP. But we will make it worth while for private investors," he said.
Siddo said the next phase of the bidding process will involve restaurants, shops and services including cleaning and security.
"Our premise is that anything that can be run by private citizens should be left to them and the state should manage things that the private sector would have no interest in," SANP director Mavuso Msimang told Reuters.
He said while private operators were therefore being invited to run luxury lodges, the state would continue to run the no-frills, self-catering rest camps which require a minimum of service and attention to client needs.
The SANP has yet to disclose the price paid by winning bidders or the revenues it hopes to reap from its new partnership with the private sector.
Criteria for bidders includes a commitment to the economic empowerment of previously disadvantaged groups.
IN AFRICA, WILDLIFE MUST PAY ITS WAY
The SANP says the private sector has a vital role to play in the parks, both to raise cash for conservation programmes and to allow the parks to focus their efforts on wildlife preservation while private operators take care of the tourists.
"The management of biodiversity does not really generate revenue to any significant level, if at all, and so it should be the responsibility of the public sector," said Msimang.
But the state's ability to fund conservation projects is becoming increasingly curtailed.
Under apartheid, the country's stunning national parks and game reserves were heavily subsidised by the state and were the privileged preserve of the white minority.
The new South Africa faces pressures to both slash state budget deficits while boosting social spending for the poor masses. This means the parks and their natural treasures now have to pay their way.
"The government has a huge responsibility to provide health care, housing and clean water to historically disadvantaged communities, and so the SANP is not a huge priority," said Msimang.
The apartheid legacy also means that few black South Africans, including members of the emerging black middle class, visit national parks.
"Because of the exclusion of blacks from parks under apartheid the black middle-class does not see game viewing and the bush as part of its culture or recreation activities," Khulani Mkhize, a black South African who is assistant CEO of KwaZulu-Natal's Conservation Services, told Reuters.
Access to the country's national parks is still largely confined to upper income tourists from both South Africa and abroad.
To enter many parks you need a car - which most poor blacks don't have - because African wildlife is dangerous and tourists who take unsupervised strolls run the risk of becoming a meal for a pride of lions or getting crushed by an agitated elephant.
If the parks and wildlife do not pay for themselves by creating jobs, especially in poor black areas adjacent to them, the ruling African National Congress - which gets most of its support from the black community - has little political incentive to promote wildlife preservation.
The South African Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism says tourism accounts for about seven percent of the country's GDP and estimates that every eight foreign tourists visiting the country create one full-time job.
In a country with an unemployment rate of well over 30 percent, fuelling high crime levels and other social problems, promoting South Africa a tourist destination has become a key part of the government's job creation strategy.