Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s 2024 budget, delivered in November, was full of promise for the tourism industry.
After the Covid-19 setbacks in 2020 and 2021, he said tourism was rebounding robustly — it’s boom fortified by stronger appetite across market strata — domestic, regional and international markets.
We soon realised in February that he was on point, when the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) released 2023 arrivals statistics.
Tourism receipts rocketed by 22% to US$1,1 billion during the period, with higher demands from international travellers.
As a travel enthusiast, I was excited, knowing how the boom would propel Zimbabwe to achieving its US$5 billion tourism economy by next year. There were already pockets of concerns about the grave situation that was unravelling on the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road, which had been glossed over for decades by a government that was benefiting from billions of dollars that it delivered to the fiscus.
This is a 439 kilometre stretch that carries the hope of a nation shattered by prolonged mismanagement. It tears through a region rich with wildlife, coal and gas concessions.
The Victoria Falls itself sits on its tip, making it a vital part that drives arrivals.
We cannot talk of tourism without Victoria Falls — an all-weather destination that carried the economy even during waves of political and economic instability that ripped through the country during the decade to 2008.
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Much of what Zimbabwe generates from tourism comes from the waterfall, and its accompanying attractions. Yet due to neglect, the highway is emerging as a headwind to growth.
A huge influx of foreign corporations exploiting coal in northwestern hotspots, twinned with steep surges in heavy trucks in transit from neighbouring economies has destroyed the highway.
On the 100 kilometre stretch between Hwange and Victoria Falls, trucks navigate deep potholes with much struggle, often breaking down or getting involved in fatal accidents. It belies the extraordinary work executed through the Emergency National Roads Rehabilitation Programme in the past five years — and simply tells us about tourism’s bleak future.
The bulk of domestic tourists travel by road, and a significant number of regional arrivals do not travel by air once they touch down — they are keen to explore the country by road.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been full of energy when it comes to his huge infrastructure revamp programme.
On this vital highway, he has taken time to deliver. Perhaps he has been misled by bootlickers keen to make him happy by hiding the truth. Yet it is a highway that Mnangagwa cannot afford to ignore.
It is time the President personally takes a ride on this road to witness first-hand the scale of disaster unravelling under his watch.
