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Cape Town had got it right when it comes to tourism, and the rest of the country could learn from its success, said Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti.
“Cape Town has been able to use the advantage of tourism to great effect,” he said in reply to a question about the challenges of unemployment at a post-Cabinet media briefing today.
“It has been able to identify tourism as a niche and have worked on it,” he said, saying its success was due to partnerships between the private sector, government and the municipality, which needed to maintain the infrastructure for tourism to flourish.
“Every city in South Africa must look at that. It is not a political thing, it is economic logic,” he said.
“People will want to come to Cape Town because the [tourism] infrastructure is good, the environment is good, it is laid-back,” he said.
Tourism in the city remained stable despite the serious challenges and contradictions the city faced around inequality and an influx of people to the city who were forced to live in poor conditions.
“Notwithstanding that, Cape Town still has the lowest level of unemployment. It has maintained institutional tourism, which is a great income earner.
“There is a lot to be learnt from Cape Town … and we can try replicate in other parts of the country,” he said.
