South Africa’s Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille kicked off the Future Hospitality Summit Africa held in Cape Town last month.
Having started her working life in a chemicals factory, De Lille became involved in trade-union politics before rising to be mayor of Cape Town between 2011 and 2018 and the government’s minister of public works and infrastructure between 2019 and 2023.
In 2018, she founded Good, a political party that more than any probably needs to live up to its name.
De Lille is its only elected member in South Africa’s Parliament, and she recently was asked to join in coalition with the government of the ruling African National Congress and for which she now is tourism minister.
Politicians are adept at saying a lot and nothing at the same time. To my ears there was some of that, such as “inclusive and sustainable hospitality sector,” “unlock the enormous potential of the continent,” and “most important catalysts for economic success and job creation.” But behind that are well-meaning measures and an understanding of the challenges.
De Lille said in her calculations, South Africa had approximately 70,000 hotel rooms.
“That is a fraction compared with Australia, with 300,000, and Italy, with more than a million,” she said.
De Lille mentioned an even greater imbalance in that 80% of South Africa’s unemployed are semi-skilled or unskilled. But this is an excellent opportunity and labor pool for the hotel industry “if we act with intention, courage and investment,” she added.
I went to the countryside of the Eastern Cape outside Cape Town, places such as Paternoster, Betty’s Bay, Jacobs Bay and Rooi-Els.
The parts of South Africa I saw are mostly beautiful, as are its people. But I was warned not to wander around by myself or even in small groups in or around the larger cities, including Cape Town. Bad situations can happen anywhere, but it is strange to have this warning dictate movements.
On the way to see some interesting bird species — African penguin; Cape rockjumper; Blue crane, and Black harrier, among them — I rode past sprawling townships such as Mitchells Plain, Cape Flats and Imizamo Yethu. The poverty in those areas is striking, even when zooming by it at 60 miles per hour.
I was told a lot of good work is being done in such places. They have not been abandoned, and there are walking and educational tours, museums and youth programs.
But underlying all these achievements is that South Africa is the country with the greatest wealth inequality, a measure known as the Gini coefficient or Gini index. That can only be achieved if some people are able to create great wealth.
In the United Kingdom, it is not difficult to see inequality. But according to World Population Review, U.K. inequality is relatively nonexistent or at least statistically nonexistent to that found in some other parts of the globe.
Hong Kong is fifth-worst on the list, but of the worst 10, Africa has six nations included and South and Central America has three.
Tourism can help wealthy disparity, but this we all know takes time, commitment and investment.
Maybe some of the leaders in attendance at November’s G20 meeting on Robben Island — the prison home of Nelson Mandela and many others — might come up with ways of righting these wrongs.
It seems to me that closing the island for three months to spend millions of dollars on renovations to get the site up to standards for the G20 is a strange way of going about trying to address inequality — if indeed that idea on the agenda.
Why would a prison, however glorious or infamous its part in history have been, need to be gussied up?
One South African newspaper said Robben Island has been “described as a sad sight by many visitors,” which I thought would have been the precise point, a place to make you sad, angry, belligerent, et cetera.
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