THIS TOURISM WEEK Number 49 - Monday, 7 August 2006
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After all the media hype it’s received, I thought I better check out Neil Watson’s crime exposure site.
You’ll no doubt have read about Neil Watson - he’s the insurance salesman who’s decided to attack tourism in his zealous campaign to attack crime in South Africa.
I’d say (if you’ll pardon the irony of the metaphor) that he’s shooting himself in the foot.
In the “About Us” page of his site, Mr Watson writes: “CRIME EXPO SA aim (sic) to provide victims of violent crime, as well as friends and families of the slaughtered, with an opportunity to collectively register their anger and provide the world with a preview of violent South Africa. Enough is enough my fellow citizens!” (and he signs off “SOCCER 2010 fans are going to step into hell on earth! Neil Watson”).
At first I got impatient and I wanted to confine the man to the loony fringe and click out of there, go find myself a good sports site and read something uplifting about the Proteas or the Springboks (ha! as if!) - but I thought I’d better finish what I’d started and find out more about the man’s campaign.
There’s no doubt he’s dedicated to his task and there’s no doubt that we really could do a lot more to combat crime in South Africa - but you have to wonder why he thinks that tourism should be his whipping boy.
I’d say that tourism in South Africa is something of a model industry in many ways: its practitioners work incredibly hard at developing previously disadvantaged individuals and there’s a real sense of the need to achieve real inclusivity and to make a contribution to the community in which we’re operating (remember the Children in the Wilderness story you received two weeks ago? And one example of a dedicated tourism practitioner: I’ve recently had contact with Jauckie Viljoen of Meet the People Tours in Mossel Bay. Dr Debra Willoughby, an English consultant who specialises in working with post-conflict societies, and who’s worked with Mr Viljoen as a volunteer, says that what he’s achieved in this project with no money is bigger and more effective than anything she’s seen anywhere in the world - and she works with big ticket development projects that have multi-million pound budgets) .
And, putting aside our differences about what constitutes a tourist, no one’s doubting the fact that more than 7 million people came across our borders during the last year. And that that represents a huge inflow of money - which means thousands of jobs.
I understand that he’s trying to frighten our politicians into action - but does Mr Watson think that if he can stem the in flow of visitors, our crime will suddenly go away?
I think he hasn’t thought it through; I think his is just another knee-jerk reaction - because I know that if tourism dries up, we’re going to have even more of a war on our hands.
Mr Watson is right - the level of crime in South Africa is unacceptable and tourism, like everyone, needs to do even more to combat it. We need to change the political will in the country, we need to lobby for better policing, we need to see the statistics - and we need to see them improving all the time.
But tourism IS attacking the problem in many ways, and it’s working from the ground up - which is why I believe that this industry should not take Mr Watson’s campaign lying down. I think we need to think about how we’re going to reply to him - and perhaps work on him to make him understand that you don’t succeed by attacking success.
You succeed by attacking the problem.
This is one of the most remarkable sites I know - it was launched six years ago when photographers Roger and Pat de la Harpe and Nigel and Wendy Dennis amalgamated their stock images to create a library of select photographs of Africa’s people, wildlife, scenery and tourism. Over the years, other award winning photographers have joined the library - Fiona Ayerst, Phillip and Ingrid van den Berg, Gerard Dreyer, Vanessa Burger, Lanz von Horsten and Ariadne van Zandbergen - and it now offers more than 100 000 world-class images for sale.
What amazes me about the site is the breadth and depth of the coverage - and the speed with which it finds the images you want. Visit www.africaimagery.co.za if you’re in need of brilliant, professional pictures for your new web site, brochure or advertisement … and
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Telephone +27(0)44 384 1810 | Cell +27(0)84 951 0574 | martin@thistourismweek.co.za
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