2010 World Cup: Will Zim benefit?

It had been hoped that Zimbabwe, whose national team failed to qualify for the prestigious event, could gain tremendously from the high volume of tourist traffic that will descend on the region when the world’s favourite sport comes to South Africa and Africa for the first time, but these expectations are fading as each month passes.
These hopes are being dashed by the effects of the decade-long economic and political crisis which saw Zimbabwe being regarded in some quarters as a pariah state. Despite concerted efforts by stakeholders in the tourism sector to lure teams and visitors to the Soccer World Cup, the industry is still to regain its competitiveness that would enable it to lure a fair share of the tourist traffic come June 2010.
Analysts told The Financial Gazette this week that the sector is still hamstrung by a plethora of problems which include the unavailability of funds for refurbishments, an unsustainably high country risk, exorbitant prices and the uncertainty that continues to blight the country’s body politics.
Zimbabwe’s campaign to woo visitors to the World Cup comes against the backdrop of attempts by the inclusive government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to heal the deep political wounds caused by ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change’s rivalry, which ended with the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) last year. The world had responded to the rivalry by isolating Zimbabwe, a situation that had been aggravated by the global economic crisis.
Many of Zimbabwe’s key source markets such as Europe and the Americas have over the years discouraged their citizens from travelling to the southern African country citing human rights violations, political violence and repression, dealing a near fatal blow to the country’s otherwise unique tourism brand.
The travel warnings slapped on the country were only lifted early this year following the consummation of the inclusive government.
Zimbabwe now hopes to placate itself from the image crisis by sustaining the GPA signed between the country’s main political parties last September.
Without the agreement the country’s tourism sector stands very little chance of convincing a good number of travellers to the World Cup to make a detour into Zimbabwe.
Emmanuel Fundira, the Zimbabwe Tourism Council chief executive officer said while the country was doing everything to attract soccer tourists next year, they were some loose ends that needed tightening.
“We have engaged possible qualifiers to the World Cup to train here and visit our tourist attractions. We have created what we call add-on packages for targeted countries to consider visiting Zimbabwe while they are in South Africa to watch the World Cup,” said Fundira.
“But we need to ensure that our financial payment systems are up to date with international systems. Internati-onally, bookings are done through credit cards. We are still behind in the use of plastic money, yet bookings are already taking place as we speak. We are currently a cash-based economy, a situation which does not help us at the moment,” he added.
Fundira said most disturbing is the fact that while the Zimbabwe government had tried to position the tourism sector by exempting duty on an array of capital goods imported by operators in areas that have been designated as Tourism Development Zones, the implementation of the policy was facing serious challenges.
“The duty-free rebate system is cumbersome and taking too much time for those operators who have the funds to import the capital goods for refurbishments. Government came up with a very good policy but it’s the implementation that is posing problems,” he said.
The majority of tourism players cannot fund refurbishments because there are no lines of credit available and those that are on offer are, according to Fundira, not for long enough to sustain the operations of the industry which requires long-term funding for capitalisation.
In a bid to attract funding, Zimbabwe is grabbing every opportunity presented to it. Minister of Tourism, Walter Mzembi, who has left for a United Nations World Tourism Organisation meeting has been quoted as having said: “We must all understand that Zimbabwe is a destination that has been under attack for 10 years and that such rare opportunities give us the chance to constructively re-engage the world and boost our tourism industry.
“We are going there to seek funds to develop our industry, we want development assistance, sustainable tourism education, risk and crisis management and destination satellite accounting systems.”
Sources at the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority told The Financial Gazette that the organisation was still involved in a fact-finding mission on how prepared the tourism sector was to hosting an anticipated overflow of visitors to South Africa.
According to the website Wikipedia since Zimbabwe’s land reform programme in 2000,the country’s tourism steadily declined by 75 percent in visitors from around 1,4 million tourists in 1999 with less than 20 percent of hotel rooms occupied by December 2000.
“This has had a huge impact on the Zimbabwean economy, where thousands of jobs were lost due to companies closing down or simply being unable to pay staff wages,” writes the website which adds that several airlines pulled out of Zimbabwe. The country may also blow the chance to host some of the teams by offering its football grounds for training before and during the World Cup since most of the facilities are still not yet up to scratch.
Despite the fact that teams participating in the tournament are most likely to fly into the region some days before the event, the sense of urgency for Zimbabwe to get its act together is more in speeches rather than action on the ground.
 Zimbabwe Football Association chief executive officer Henrietta Rushwaya expressed dismay at the state of the country’s football grounds adding that it would be difficult to sell them as training grounds to any foreign team in their present state.
She said: “We have a tendency of doing things last minute. Honestly, our stadia are not up to standard. The general outlook of our grounds is just not up to scratch. What if England or Brazil indicates that they want to train here; can they use Rufaro Stadium with all its filthy toilets and environs?
“It’s unfortunate that we do not have a football ground of our own and as long as we don’t have the resources our hands are tied. But this mentality that local authorities should own these facilities is not on. Local authorities should lease out these facilities to people who have the capacity.”