By Prof Uchendu Eugene Chigbu
One humid morning, on a flight from Kampala to Windhoek via Johannesburg, I had a conversation with someone that later made me think twice about tourism in Namibia. A lady had just boarded the plane and moved to sit next to me. She buckled her seat belt and took out a tablet, keen to put her time to use.
“I’m Elke. Are you also stopping in South Africa?” she asked, looking sternly at me. “I’m flying to Namibia,” I replied. Surprised by my response, she kicked off a long story of her escapades travelling through Namibia five times during her 75 years on earth. As anyone would imagine, it turned into a long flight during which I listened to a German woman’s adventures in Namibia.
What I had thought would be a conversation turned into a session where Elke talked, and I listened. After my changeover in Johannesburg, I was lucky to have empty seats around me to Windhoek. So, I had the space to think over and visualise what I had heard from that lady. On processing the sights and sounds projected by Elke, I learnt that she views Namibia as a landscape of opulent lodges, rustic sights, and the folklore of animal life.
Decolonising the Tourism Industry
This encounter reminded me why decolonising the tourism industry in Namibia is more important than ever before. I know that ‘decolonisation’ has become a cliché. Ideologies of the decolonisation of African countries are not new, but I am genuinely invoking them in this article.
There are too many Elkes coming to Namibia for tourism. They come into our country and leave with the impression that our land is a mere commodity. They leave with only stories that narrate exotic wilderness.
While the precolonial history of the land that is Namibia today is that of a sparsely populated place inhabited by courageous warriors and hunters, we cannot say the same about its colonial history. Namibia’s colonial history is that of dispossessions of land, cultures, voices and human rights.
This means that local communities do not own the means of tourism production, such as lodges, tour guiding and storytelling. This has made it challenging to have tourism that facilitates an inclusive relationship between guests and our land, people and animals. It has made it difficult to develop tourism that promotes Namibian culture and community livelihoods in modest, uncondescending ways. The consequence is that we have a sector that does not always align with community needs. But instead, trades luxury for authenticity.
‘Disneyfication’ of Namibia
Elke’s story is one that millions of tourists who have visited Namibia tell around the world — that Namibia is a land of exotic animals walking through virgin landscapes. While this is not a bad story, per se, it reflects a conscious or unconscious ‘Disneyfication’ of Namibia.
It is time to change the impression that Namibia is a Disneyland. Namibia is neither an amusement park nor a wildlife reserve. Namibia is more than just a vast desert land of wildlife and luxury lodges. Visitors to the Land of the Brave should see Namibia as more than wildlife. It is high time that tourism became more about the people, cultures and communities that call this land home.
*Prof Uchendu Eugene Chigbu is a professor of Land Administration at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). The views expressed in this article are entirely his own and not those of his employer.
