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ABOUT DEAD LIVINGSTONE TOURISM

By Miles B. Sampa, MP

May 15th, 2024

Spent some few days in Livingstone on Parliamentary duties in the health committee that I belong to. Composition was both PF and UPND MPs in main house proportional order. It was an oversight role to check on status of devolution (localizing management from Lusaka MOH) of health facilities in sampled Kazungula and Mwandi districts. A topic for another day but today is about our tourism capital of Zambia called Livingstone where we spent our nights on the tour of duty.

Bane Livingstone tourism as I saw it is just about dead but as usual the technocrats responsible will refute the obvious and make some excuse including long gone covid.

Well not to forget that I lived in the tourist capital for some good 6 months as the provincial minister some years back. Then made it a point to sleep in about all hotels and sampled all tourism activities so can market them better. I just forgot to sample the banji jumping 😊.

The 4 star big hotel we stayed at has about 300 rooms but it looked like only us 8 MPs and our support staff were present clients. In the breakfast room which is a spot measure of rooms occupied, I could hardly spot anyone away from us other than some old white couple possibly celebrating their pension sponsored 50th marriage anniversary.

We went on a weekend Zambezi river big boat cruise that can accommodate even 100 passengers but alas we were only about 15 passengers in total and some 10 boat cruiser workers. It was an arranged freebie for us MPs meaning only about 5 passengers had paid for that cruise. Ours was to experience so we can help the tourism private sector on policies that will benefit them. So it was not about jolly riding.

Drove past the Chrisma and Protea hotels and from the few types of vehicles in the car park, I could tell that it was just the usual civil servants on some ‘strategic planning’ workshop or conference.

Waterfall mall along the main road still looks like the white elephant it has been last 15 years with a number of majority empty shops visibly vacant. Zero consumers or tourists means zero tenants for the mall.

Then took my Matero security peeps to see the Victoria falls. As we walked down to the knife bridge soaking in the falls water splash, we hardly met a single tourist. We however met the big David Livingstone statute and took my opportunity to tell him off that it was a lie that he discovered the falls.
I asked the statute “so you mean when you arrived here in Livingstone you found no human beings ai? Did the toka leya bantus you found here not the one that led you to the falls to show it to you ? Insoni ebuntu …” lol.

The Chinese multi million dollars debt funded huge Harry Mwanga Nkumbula international airport activities are also a sorry experience. The Zambia airways I took from Lusaka was about 15% full. Upon arrival witnessed Kenya airways boarding and also looked 15% full. The small Proflight boarding to Lusaka had a few people also and most looked Boma Boma or civil servants. One airport staff whispered that there was very few international flights landing as most prefer at airport on the opposite side of the falls in Zimbabwe because their landing and visa rates were very low. Why do we think being expensive is attractive when if we even made entrance or plane landing Free, that is what could generate more planes landing and more tourists into our Livingstone? The lost landing or visa fees can be compensated big in others taxes, fees and jobs created at hotels where tourists would stay.

In short, our government and the Livingstone local council needs to do more to jump start activities in our tourism capital called Livingstone. It’s a dead elephant for now only waiting to host accountants, engineers and lawyers (LAZ) annual general conferences.

Zambia cannot afford to only rely on copper when God has given us the long Zambezi rival and it’s Victoria falls that is a marvel 12 months of the year. As for Kenya and South Africa, Tourism is what keeps them afloat away from mining and unpredictable agriculture. We can also ‘do it ‘ with tourism.

We must think hard about jump starting tourism economic activities in Livingstone and start implementing solid plans for now , 5 years, 10, 25 and 50 years later. The key words here are thinking, planning and implementing. The Chinese are good at it and call it R&D (Research & Development).

Imagine if we changed the name Livingstone city to Li Jinping and Victoria Falls to Mao Tse Dong. It would actually attract the Chinese tourists because the Europeans don’t visit anymore. We also in forced life debt marriage with the Chineses and they are Chambia to stay.

Otherwise we can rename the town and falls with local habitats Zambian names like Musokotwane, Mukuni, Siampazanga or Lewanika.

Heniwe dashed back to Lusaka to go check on Matero level 1 patient queues.

Nitumezi enisha
MBS15.05.2024
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