The World Cup gravy train?

[Dave A]

I see the DA has now responded to our traveling civil servants and politicians wandering over to Germany to "learn". This story on Mweb gives good background.

"It is perfectly understandable that various technical members of the government need to gain expertise ahead of South Africa hosting the World Cup in 2010, but there is simply no need for politicians to accompany these delegations.

"Political leadership and specialised expertise are two different matters. One of them can be learnt in Germany; the other cannot.

Cynically, I hope our politicians do learn something from the German (and other countries') politicians that are bound to be loitering about. But my experience is that our guys tend to look at overseas models and practices so as to be able to ignore them.

More seriously, I think the response is a demonstration of how the DA sometimes shoots itself in the foot. I mean just the other day they were accusing government of not doing enough to get things going. Rather gather information that too many folk of no consequence are using the excuse to take the trip than start shooting at the hip.

Of course the civil servants had to give a few key politicians a ride to get the expenditure approved. The DA should have spent the effort on trying to get a few tickets for their own.

Or do you agree that politicians have no business in going?

[Marq]

If we saw some input from these various sorties overseas in the form of decent mangement reports and plans it might help. If trips are organised as a result of a larger strategic plan delegating tasks to individuals, management teams and to the guys in charge - perhaps they may find credibility, but while they snow us with bullshit and smoke and mirrors stuff and one sees no output - what do they expect?

Politicians are elected employees driving a bus that is no different to a large business operation - in this light I would expect them to go overseas and obtain information, ensure the underlings are getting the right stuff and network with their counterparts for benchmarking and ideas generation. But this is what I would expect in a perfect world and unfortunately there is probably too many thoughts in that previous sentence for the average politician to absorb.

Soccergate here we "come".........or is that "go".

[duncan drennan]

More seriously, I think the response is a demonstration of how the DA sometimes shoots itself in the foot. I mean just the other day they were accusing government of not doing enough to get things going. Rather gather information that too many folk of no consequence are using the excuse to take the trip than start shooting at the hip.

I sometimes think the DA should consider changing its name to the AANC for anti-ANC party. This may be a case of how the DA is reported on, but their title of "official opposition" seems to be their mandate too - oppose everything

[Dave A]

This commentary article is soooo good.

A sample.

Parliamentarians were also complaining that the Rugby and Cricket World Cups didn't benefit previously disadvantaged individuals. How so? I personally paid R75 for a Springbok cap during the 1995 euphoria, giving a PDI entrepreneur at least a 90% profit margin.

Many parking attendants, street vendors and hookers must have enjoyed a bonanza in tips. It's small business that creates jobs and you have to start somewhere.

The beer and empowerment discussions in parliament were settled when one MP said that now that the Bills were in the domain of parliament "we'll come up with our own solution".

If parliament wants to come up with solutions for 2010, I suggest they handle the travel arrangements for tourists and officials and leave the Fifa negotiations to Jordaan & Co. Parliamentarians have shown themselves more than adept at extracting the most value from travel schemes and voucher systems, not to mention government jets.

[Marq]

Magic article - great tone and wit.

I see in a related article

"Last year we passed the seven million international tourists-per-annum mark. Our objective for 2010 is to have at least 10 million international visitors in this country," Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters in an interview.

"At the moment tourism is the fastest growing sector of our economy. We are now getting 10 times the international tourists that we received here in 1994 (when apartheid ended)," he said.

Now these figures are somewhat skewed as are all statistics - but do you know how crooked they are? - the numbers behind the numbers go like this.

Bear in mind that everyone moving around that is not in their home town, is considered to be a tourist for purposes of the Kortbroek stats department. So when we have a Johannesburg businessman coming down to Durban he is considered a tourist. When Robert Magabes relatives cross the border for a two day affirmative shopping spree they are considered tourists.

From the barefoot writer of "This Tourism Week" we get a breakdown of the "overseas tourist" numbers and commentary.

Total arrivals from Africa and the Middle East grew 15.69% from 4,673,724 in 2004 to 5,407,216 in 2005; from Europe the number grew 1.68% from 1,287,057 in 2004 to 1,308,634 in 2005; and from the Americas it grew from 290,625 to 322,099 (statistically, a 10.83% increase). Asia and Australasia sent us 71 less tourists lat year - down 0.03% from 275,001 (which leaves you wondering what happened to that much-vaunted ‘preferred destination status’ which China conferred on us with much fanfare a year or two ago).

Looking at those African figures a little more closely, I found that Lesotho provided us with 1,657,119 tourists in 2005 (up 12.66% from 2004); Swaziland, 909,966; Botswana, 794,705; Zimbabwe 773,991; Mozambique, 596,462 and Namibia 219,303. Nigeria sent us 28,995, Angola 27,801, Kenya 20,738 and Mauritius 13,921 people. And air arrivals from the rest of Africa amounted to 118,692.

And what did all those people do here? Were they leisure, business, religious or medical tourists? Neither the Stats nor the Tourism Growth Strategy brochures could tell me.

But lemme guess: our five top source markets for foreign arrivals to South Africa are Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique; most of the people who visit from those country’s spend two nights in South Africa (I got that from the Tourism Growth Strategy) - and South Africa is the economic powerhouse of the sub-region.

Now - two nights is usually too short for a holiday and as far as I know South Africa hasn’t all that many places of pilgrimage. So those people must have come here to do business (for which read ‘shopping’) or for medical reasons, right?

And how does that help the tourism industry?

Such huge numbers of people do make a massive and undeniable difference to the country’s economy as a whole - but, as reader Allan Duff put it to me: “you can't [lump] Kenyans coming to Gauteng to shop with Europeans coming to the Cape to live it up... Though I appreciate your Gautenger needs to know about the Kenyans.�

The truth (and it’s not a politically correct truth, I’m afraid) is that the tourism industry as it’s represented at the Indaba can’t count on the millions from Africa to make any real difference to its bottom line.

... Uncomfortable, I know, but it’s something the politicians and the officials need to recognise: at 1,308,634 our arrivals from Europe were less than 1.7% up on 2004.

And that’s the figure that counts.

We also know that there was a stagnant figure of 1mil tourists in the 70's and 80's and I'll bet that they did not include these numbers mentioned above. So if that is true, we have had roughly a 70% increase in tourists over the last 12 years or so - say about 5% a year - makes more sense given the 1,7% increase last year?

Me thinks those broeks have just got too tight keeping all that BS inside.

[Marq]

While we're on the subject of my favourite politician......I have this theory.

Remember in the early "transformation" times called AA and EE before BEE and other insects, the way to go was to place a black face on the management team (known as window dressing). The position that was usually filled by this role was the Marketing function as it was felt that this face would be seen as "out there" doing and being the new SA, but would probably do as little damage as possible while the team would carry on doing their own thing.

Now the theory is that Mbeki has seen through this, learnt the lesson and thought.....we need a white face in amongst the black ones to show face and have window dressing in the new SA you know. He said we need somebody in the Marketing department. Of course there was a big debate as to which department that would be - It could be the Dept of Foreign Affairs - they deal with overseas people - tourists? mmm but then another Zuma would have to go.....no go there........Ah how about Tourism Affairs, thats pretty Marketing department if you ask anyone....Have we got one of those.....No....ok lets lump Environment Affairs with Tourism Affairs....nobody else around the world has that combination...that should realy confuse the enemies.....hey and we can confuse them even more...where is that oke in short pants - that one that was the last one standing from that party we just annilated.......yes him.....he won't get a job out there....offer him the marketing position and we can flash him about and show the world that we are not cross and he should be able to talk to the masses and make them believe the stats that we have built specially to show everyone how good we are. Valli...where are you..moosa over now and make a way for the new Marketing boy, we want to show the world that we are also clever.