TOURISM minister Barbara Rwodzi and her Higher and Tertiary Education counterpart Aaron Murwira have said their two sectors are intertwined as they feed into each other.
Speaking during a Scholastic Tourism Conference at the Sanganai /Hlanganani Expo in Bulawayo on Thursday, the ministers said tourism can’t thrive without education, and vice-versa.
“Without education, we can’t have a tourism industry. We are the first country to bring together these ministries for gastronomy”, said Rwodzi.
Murwira said any system that functions well must have a handshake.
“If a system shakes hands, then it can work well and give good results. I always say you become what you learn. You can’t become what you don’t do or haven’t been exposed to. So if education has nothing to do with your daily life, then I always say it is a waste of time and witchcraft”.
He added: “It’s about acquisition of knowledge and skill. When you are an engineer, don’t say now I will burn the bridges because I have crossed. What about others? Were you not taught for you to get where you are today? If you are a hotelier and you are teaching hotel services, then let’s have a school for that because where are you training the students? A soldier cannot be trained with a fake gun.
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“I repeat that we do not want an education syllabus that has nothing to do with Great Zimbabwe or Matopos. We want it to be heritage based and by that I don’t mean it should be about folktales. I mean let it be about our water, let us be the ones to create our dams, build and design our lakes which can also serve as tourism destinations. Let it be about our minerals and how to use them for development.
“If you have a service providing company and your machine breaks , then you don’t call +263 for a mechanic then you are in the wrong space. There is no sovereignty when we rely on others to then fix it. We saw during COVID-19 when they refused to give us masks and sanitizers. We had no option but to create our own, that’s what we must do. So now we are building Bingwe Ecotourism and Industrial Park Conference Centre in Lupane. It is built for the students by the students after it was suggested to me sometime ago by Minister Rwodzi when she was deputy minister,” he said.
Rwodzi joked that she often pleads with the Home Affairs minister Kazembe Kazembe not to be too strict on foreign tourists.
“I always joke with my colleague Kazembe and say you guys have too much security at the airports there. Tourism is about money and knows no sin. If a person is up to no good, you will see them but let them at least book in and have two dinners than arrest them so that we make money. That way you also investigate to arrest and not arrest to investigate,” she quipped.