Nkonkobe Oxfordshire Heritage Tourism Project

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Nkonkobe / OxfordshireHeritage Tourism Project

• Lubabalo Gwintsa Head of Strategic Development,
  Knysna Municipality (former Acting Municipal
  Manager, Nkonkobe Municipality)
• Luvo Mbatani History Teacher (former Councillor
  and Speaker of the Nkonkobe Council)
• Matt Prosser Strategic Director, South
  Oxfordshire District Council (former Head of
  Leisure and Tourism, West Oxfordshire District
  Council)
• Dr Keith Borien CEO, BEFSA, (former Senior
  Education Officer, Oxfordshire County Council)

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Map of the Eastern Cape
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The Partnership

• The Heritage Tourism Project was a partnership
  between Nkonkobe Municipality in the Eastern
  Cape, SA and Oxfordshire County Council in the
  UK. Oxfordshire County Council had been working
  in the Eastern Cape since 1995.
• Other partners included
• West Oxfordshire District Council Amatole
  District Municipality
• Oxford Brookes University, Oxford the
  University of Fort Hare, Alice
• Atkins Property Consultants, Oxford Tshani
  Consultants, East London (Environment and
  Tourism)

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The Aim

• To restore and improve the areas tourism
  infrastructure
• To enhance the capacity of local government and
  local tourism bodies to attract visitors and
  investment
• To create jobs and generate small and medium
  sized businesses
• VIA a series of workshops, work shadowing and in
  house consultancies, and by embedding the tourism
  strategy in the communities. The latter involved
  Oxfordshire personnel working with SA museum
  staff, school educators and learners to build
  their living heritage curriculum

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Funding

• Funding was provided by
• CLGF
• The Department of Environmental Affairs Tourism
  (DEAT)
• The British High Commission

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Benefits

• Three main benefits of the Heritage Tourism
  Project
• the creation of jobs
• the revitalisation of the municipalities in small
  towns which had been degenerating at an alarming
  rate
• capacity building

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Jobs

• 20 part time temporary jobs. All the post holders
  were history students employed to carry out an
  audit of the heritage sites
• 298 people employed to clean and restore the
  heritage sites
• 1 full time tourism post (route coordinator)
  funded by DEAT and 2 part time tourism officers
  employed at the Visitor Information Centres
• 2 additional staff employed in the town planning
  department
• 2 project workers employed by the Masambe
  micro-credit project
• 243 women are being supported by Masambe in the
  development of small businesses

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Lubabalo Gwintsa,Nkonkobes Acting Municipal
Manager

• The confidence invoked in our business sector
  has been phenomenal because of the anchor of
  tourism. People now acknowledge that for tourism
  to prosper we need to create a conducive
  environment clean towns, improved infrastructure
  for residents and visitors and of course
  economic growth. Through this project, the
  municipality has become more aggressive in
  addressing the problems confronting our principal
  town of Alice

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Lubabalo Gwintsacontinued

• There has been a huge impact on our grass
  cutting, drainage cleaning and infrastructure
  rehabilitation. We have employed 298 extra people
  to clean our heritage sites to prepare for the
  restoration. We have also secured funding for one
  extra tourism post, and two further staff in the
  town planning department.

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Capacity Building

• Tourism reference group and local network of
  tourism organisations created throughout the
  municipality
• Strategic plan including marketing plan
  formulated and adopted for the development of
  heritage tourism in the municipality
• Plans developed for the establishment of 3
  Visitor Information Centres and the restoration
  of the main heritage sites
• Support programme for cultural villages and craft
  centres formulated
• A skills development programme created for
  officers

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Additional Benefits

• There were benefits in terms of professional
  development, personal aspirations and experience,
  and a sense of mutual understanding and trust.
• Everyone involved librarians, museum curators,
  university lecturers, school teachers, property
  specialists, tourism and micro-credit consultants
  has testified to a life-changing time. They
  now use a word from the Xhosa language ubantu
  roughly translating as humanity or
  humaneness, learned from their South African
  hosts. They have also learned about the stoicism
  and creativity of the Xhosa people during
  successive persecution and defeats and their
  leadership in the processes of reconciliation and
  building a new, democratic South Africa.

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Oxford Brookes University

• Oxford Brookes is currently establishing a
  support fund to support exchange students from
  the University of Fort Hare wishing to pursue
  higher level study in the tourism field.
• Other joint ideas include
• A tourism degree programme at the University of
  Fort Hare with Brookes providing consultancy on
  issues such as curriculum development
• Flying Faculty to assist each side with
  teaching on tourism programmes
• Staff exchanges for personal development

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Atkins Property Consultants

• Planners of Fort Hare Universitys proposed new
  Archive Building are learning from Atkins work
  with Oxfordshire on their new County Archive, and
  from other archival projects undertaken by the UK
  firm.
• Atkins have agreed to sponsor South African
  students through engineering and architectural
  studies at Fort Hare University, either with
  individual sponsorship or by prizes given for
  high achievement in school competitions. Atkins
  will also offer industrial placements for
  students at Fort Hare with their 14,000 staff in
  offices across the world.

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Waste Management

• Other unforeseen benefits have come from the
  presence on one visit of a Waste Management
  expert, accompanying his wife, an Oxfordshire
  museums specialist. The Nkonkobe waste management
  officials took advantage of this serendipity to
  seek his views. Since his return to Oxfordshire,
  he has taken steps to bring Nkonkobe staff to the
  UK to shadow his own work force, and has returned
  to Nkonkobe to assist with the development of a
  Municipal Waste Management Plan.

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Micro-Credit

• Paul Boateng, the British High Commissioner in
  Pretoria, joined DFID in finding funding, extra
  to the project, for a micro-credit scheme. This
  allowed a British specialist to live in Nkonkobe
  for three months. Expert in preparing women
  entrepreneurs to enlarge their markets, she was
  able to contract 140 women craft workers to
  establish and develop new businesses. This
  Masambe micro-credit project has since seen the
  appointment of a two local project workers, and
  an increase in the number of women starting new
  businesses from 140 to 243.

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Conclusion

• This project, along with other Good Practice
  schemes, can be seen as a blueprint for useful
  intervention by the UK in Africa. Such a
  blueprint starts with modest Government funding
  for council-to-council collaboration and local
  leadership, and is augmented by the involvement
  of the private sector and two first class
  universities. People in one area, with the
  support people and organisations in others,
  become the agents for change, responsible for
  their own development.
• This project was ambitious in its scope to create
  jobs and reduce poverty but it had genuinely
  broader boundaries than the one which CLGF had
  envisaged and funded.
• We thank Lucy and Rahima for their wise counsel
  and for their support during the lifetime of the
  project.
• All the project partners have committed
  themselves to continuing their support of SA.