Introduction
Tourism is an important topic in the field of political economy, as it involves the flow of capital, finance, goods, knowledge and people on a very large scale, along with the associated global consequences (Cornelissen 2005). Recent studies on the political economy of tourism have focused on global commodity chains in tourism, class analysis in tourism, regulation theory, governance and foreign direct investments (Bramwell 2011; Clancy 2011; Cornelissen 2011; Hall 2011; Meyer 2011). On a more profound level, the political economy of tourism pays attention to how international tourism manifests global inequality, which is defined here as unequal economic, political and social structures between nations deriving from colonial times (Greig, Hulme, and Turner 2007). As Bianchi (2002, 297) remarks, the core question is to what extent different modalities of global tourism are leading to a reduction or an increase in the inequality of access to power and resources.
The political economy of tourism is a highly relevant topic in academic research considering that tourism has evolved into one of the world's most powerful socio-economic forces with 980 million international tourists in 2011 and an expected 1.6 billion by 2020 (UNWTO 2012). In Africa, the share of global tourism is claimed to be much larger than the continent's share of world trade (Mitchell and Ashley 2010, 7). This is not surprising since tourism as a development strategy reflects the prevailing development ideology of neoliberalism that advocates for free trade, foreign investments and economic growth (Andreasson 2010; Bush 2007; Duffy and Moore 2010, 761; Harrison 2010). In fact, Harrison (2010, 4) argues that Africa is at the forefront of a globalised project of neoliberal reform through global social engineering, a project to envision, compel, encourage and socialise African states into a trajectory of marketisation. Neoliberal tenets can be seen in the emphasis provided for the African tourism industry by international financial institutions and in the commodification of wildlife, culture and landscapes as tourist attractions. Tourism is embraced by donors because it is expected to bring foreign exchange, required by most African countries for economic growth and the repayment of their foreign debts.
This article applies the political economy approach to the Namibian tourism sector, which is characterised by highly unequal ownership deriving from the apartheid era. The aim is to analyse current efforts at increasing indigenous ownership and participation in tourism, i.e. how to increase the share of the previously disadvantaged population as owners and managers of tourism enterprises. In the Namibian context the previously disadvantaged includes all those who are not white Namibians or their descendants, but in this article the term ‘black’ is applied because the empirical material involves only black Namibians and not the mixed population groups. Two policy approaches are analysed more thoroughly, namely Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Community-Based Tourism (CBT). The major questions are how do these approaches promote indigenous ownership and what challenges do they involve?
The article draws on a larger study on tourism as a development strategy in Namibia (Jänis 2011). Fieldwork consisting of semi-structured interviews and observations in 16 tourism enterprises was carried out in four Namibian regions (Caprivi, Kavango, Khomas and Erongo) in 2006–2008 (see Figure 1). The enterprises include five private lodges, three private trophy hunting farms, three small tour operators and five community-based tourism enterprises (CBTEs). The lodges and farms are owned and managed by white Namibians, whereas the tour operators are owned and managed by black Namibians. The CBTEs are owned and run by black rural communities. The article begins with an overview of the Namibian tourism sector and the economic significance of tourism in the country. Thereafter the article introduces Black Economic Empowerment as a government intervention and describes how it has been adopted in the tourism industry. Challenges related to the implementation of BEE at local level are discussed with reference to the colonial legacy in human resources and prevailing prejudices in Namibian society. The other government intervention, Community-Based Tourism, is introduced as a way of devolving the ownership of tourism to local communities in Namibia's rural areas. The article analyses practical challenges for the studied CBTEs in being part of the competitive, profit-oriented tourism sector. These challenges include differences in values and cultural contexts together with a lack of institutional capacity. Finally, the article provides overall conclusions.
Post-apartheid context in the Namibian tourism sector
Namibia is a country in southern Africa with a population of approximately two million. Namibia was occupied by South Africa after Germany lost its colonial power over German South West Africa in 1919. The policy of apartheid was officially introduced in South Africa in 1948 and was similarly extended to Namibia (Frayne 2000, 54; Jauch, Edwards, and Cupido 2009, 6). According to Andreasson (2010, 22), apartheid constituted the codification, expansion and intensifying of existing racially discriminatory legislation in southern Africa. Namibia's independence in 1990 was preceded by two decades of armed liberation struggle led by the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). Although SWAPO adopted openly socialist principles, independence coincided with the ascendance of a neoliberal governance model, which became the prerequisite for international development aid and replaced the vision of a liberated independent economy (Kaapama 2007, 35; Winterfeldt 2007, 67). Therefore, Namibia adopted capitalist development that emphasised the role of the private sector in promoting economic growth and creating an attractive environment for foreign investment (Lamb 2007). This set-up, together with highly developed infrastructure and numerous national parks, paved the way for tourism as a development strategy.
The Namibian economy has been restricted to a few major sectors such as mining, fishing and commercial agriculture. Therefore, tourism is expected to reduce the country's heavy dependence on mineral resources and to diversify the economy (Turpie et al. 2004, 3; Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit 2010, 5). Furthermore, as a largely arid and semi-arid country that is counted among the driest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia's economic sectors may suffer from accelerating climate change (Reid et al. 2008, 454). With the unemployment level above 50% and reaching up to 80% in some areas, tourism plays a major role in employment creation both in the formal and informal sectors (Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2008; Republic of Namibia 2008). However, black Namibians own only 6.6% of all registered tourism enterprises (The Namibian, December 17, 2010). The dominance of foreigners or the white population in the tourism sector is not restricted to Namibia alone, but is in fact common throughout southern Africa. This has caused some researchers to regard tourism as reinforcing neo-colonialist patterns (Manyara and Jones 2007).
Namibia's major tourist attractions are landscape and sceneries, wildlife and cultural diversity. In fact, 70% of total tourism expenditure is attributed to nature-based tourism (Turpie et al. 2004, 3). Tourism accounts for 20% of Namibia's total exports and in 2008 foreign visitors spent N$4 billion in the country (Travel News Namibia 2009, 5). The majority of the tourism revenue comes from entrance fees to national parks and tourism concessions provided for the private sector in state-owned land. In addition, tourism brings tax revenue in forms of personal and corporate tax as well as VAT. (Sherbourne 2009, 241). International tourism to Namibia is steadily increasing, but there is heavy competition with other southern African countries. In 2005 Namibia's share of all tourist arrivals in southern Africa was 5.1% (Rogerson 2009, 31). In 2011, Namibia hosted 1,027,229 international tourist arrivals, out of whom about 217,000 came from Europe and the USA as overseas leisure tourists. The rest included some 361,000 Angolans, 272,000 South Africans and some 151,000 people from other African countries (Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2012). The African travellers consisted mainly of people visiting friends and relatives, people coming for business purposes and South African nature tourists.
The economic impact of tourism is reduced by leakage that is similarly common in other developing countries (World Travel and Tourism Council 2006). Edgell et al. (2008, 109) define leakage as occurring when tourism revenue generated in one destination is spent in other communities that produce goods or services not purchased in the original destination. Nearly all hotel chains in Namibia are in South African or German ownership (Karamata and Gwari 2007, 42). In addition, there are a lot of German- and South African-owned tour operators, travel agencies and guest farms (Moseley, Sturgis, and Wheeler 2007, 7). According to Namibia's Tourism Board, 25% of all registered tourism enterprises in the country are foreign owned (The Namibian, December 17, 2010). Apart from foreign ownership, large amounts of products required by the tourism industry are imported from South Africa. Furthermore, Lapeyre (2010, 767) demonstrates that holidaymakers spend 25–40% of their budget on services paid to foreign companies prior to arriving in Namibia.
Promoting indigenous ownership through Black Economic Empowerment
Similarly to South Africa, Namibia has introduced Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBEE), shortened to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), as a government intervention to engage the black majority in the mainstream economy. However, Southall (2007, 89) remarks that a government programme which is so centred on race involves a philosophical dilemma in post-apartheid countries that are devoted to the pursuit of non-racialism and the abolition of all forms of discrimination based on colour. Nevertheless, he argues that BEE has been historically necessary in South Africa to overcome the legacy of internal colonisation and the same justification is applied in Namibia (Gaomab 2005; Southall 2007). Even though BEE is clearly defined and well established in South Africa, in Namibia it has taken time to even agree on the definition of BEE (Jauch, Edwards, and Cupido 2009, 359). Hangala (2007, 7) comments that BEE is not the only means to empower previously disadvantaged people, pointing to the fact that extension of basic infrastructure, improvements in educational and health systems and efficient delivery of basic services are equally important interventions in redressing inequality. Similarly, Jauch (2007, 10) points out that the key questions in BEE should be: who is supposed to benefit from it and to what extent are socio-economic structures supposed to be transformed?
The concept of BEE originates in South Africa, where it has been systematically practised in a variety of fields, including tourism (Allen and Brennan 2004; Cornelissen 2005, 70; DEAT 2005; Rogerson 2004). For example, the South African Tourism Scorecard measures seven indicators and their sub-indicators in tourism enterprises, on the basis of which the enterprise receives a BEE score. The indicators include, for example, the percentage of black people and particularly black women as shareholders, managers, supervisors and employees. A positive BEE score is one of the criteria for accessing government incentives and support (DEAT 2005). In Namibia, BEE is officially supposed to consist of increasing the ownership, management and control of productive assets by previously disadvantaged Namibians through the promotion of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), human resource and skills development, employment equity and preferential procurement (Gaomab 2005). However, different understandings and conceptualisations of BEE exist in Namibia and it is currently being transformed into a new concept called the Transformational Economic and Social Empowerment Framework (TESEF). The primary aim of TESEF is claimed to be the empowerment of previously disadvantaged Namibians through social justice, economic growth and transformation (Angula 2007, 11). Furthermore, BEE is closely connected to ‘affirmative action’, which was similarly introduced in the two countries after independence to restructure the civil service and private sector in order to make them more representative of the populations (Jauch, Edwards, and Cupido 2009, 45).
The tourism sector was the first one in Namibia to create its own Transformation Charter. The draft was openly discussed before its adoption in 2004. The charter outlines seven mechanisms to promote transformation in tourism (see Table 1). However, it is a voluntary guideline that does not bind the actors and despite its existence the process of transformation in the tourism sector has been extremely slow. The reasons for this have been attributed to the nature of the industry and a lack of skills rather than a lack of commitment from various players in tourism (Karamata and Gwari 2007). Moreover, unlike other countries in a similar situation, Namibia does not provide financial incentives to support BEE activities. Nevertheless, the Namibian tourism policy states that the government will encourage the formation of a National Tourism Advisory Council that will develop, implement and monitor the progress on transformation in the tourism sector (Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2008, 17). Furthermore, the tourism policy states that investors are required to commit themselves to the principles of empowerment.
| Mechanism | Description of the mechanism |
|---|---|
| 1. Skills development | The tourism industry commits to spending its own resources to train formally, improve and recognise the skills of employees, rural partners and new entrants to the industry. |
| 2. Apprenticeships, mentorships and sponsorships | The tourism industry commits to providing access to its business for Namibian tourism students to learn the practical aspects of the industry. |
| 3. Strategic representation and employment equity | The tourism industry commits to the goal of identifying and promoting qualified and/or competent previously disadvantaged employees to positions of responsibility and authority. |
| 4. Ownership and joint venture partnerships | The tourism industry commits to promoting ownership and/or building partnerships to include the previously disadvantaged. |
| 5. Preferential procurement | The tourism industry commits to promoting and increasing use of services and products of previously disadvantaged Namibians. |
| 6. Enterprise development | The tourism industry commits to supporting previously disadvantaged Namibians in the identification and development of viable businesses in the tourism economy. |
| 7. Social responsibility programmes | The tourism industry commits to supporting and/or implementing projects that improve social conditions of employees and local communities, and that conserve environment. |
Source: FENATA (2004).
Apart from the private sector, BEE is promoted by the Namibian government in the state-owned Namibia Wildlife Resorts. The company provides accommodation in national parks and it has been subsidised by the government since it was established in 1998 (Sherbourne 2009). The BEE efforts, including the recent Public Private Partnership programme, have been heavily criticised for the lack of transparency and sustainability and instead representing mainly the interests of Namibia's political elite (Sherbourne 2009). Similar challenges have been highlighted in other sectors too, including financing, mining, agriculture and fisheries (Melber 2007; Motinga 2007; Shejavali 2007a, 2007b; Sherbourne 2009).
Asheeke (2008), the Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of Namibian Tourism Associations (FENATA), claims that the members of FENATA can be divided into different groups according to how they regard BEE. About one-third consist largely of expatriates and highly educated people who have adopted and fully support BEE in Namibia. Some of the representatives of the studied enterprises could be loosely categorised as belonging to this group. For example, two lodges are part of larger lodge and hotel chains and the managers express their commitment to BEE (see Table 2). They embrace it as an entire process where an unskilled person climbs up the ladder from an entry level to the managerial level, such as a cleaner in the kitchen ending up as a kitchen supervisor. The reason for the commitment of large chains to BEE is obviously related to their established position in the tourism market, which means that they do not need to fear competition to the same extent that smaller enterprises do. In addition, the interviewed managers are relatively young and come from South Africa, where BEE is more systematically endorsed. Furthermore, part of their enterprises' competitiveness and marketing strategy is apparently related to certain corporate responsibility principles. The other lodges and trophy hunting farms regard their contribution to BEE as taking place mainly through training unskilled people for various positions within the tourism sector. However, several major challenges can be identified in the effort to promote BEE in the studied enterprises. These are the colonial legacy in human resources, and prevailing prejudices. Furthermore, the entrepreneurs interviewed expressed their concern about the current implementation of BEE as an ‘elite enrichment scheme’.
| Major characteristics | Trophy hunting farms | Lodges | Tour operators |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mode of ownership | Family owned | Three family owned, two belonging to lodge and hotel chains | Owned by a private entrepreneur |
| Major tourism products | Trophy hunting | Accommodation | Self-drive safaris |
| Game drives | Game viewing | Tailor-made tours | |
| Tailor-made tours | Guided boat trips | Day tours | |
| Bird watching | Airport transfers | ||
| Number of employees | Owners and 5–11 employees | Owners and 10–40 employees | Owner and 3–5 part-time employees |
The colonial legacy in human resources
The Namibian tourism policy recognises human resource development as one of the major challenges for the tourism sector (Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2008, 19). Due to the colonial legacy, there is a lack of sufficient skills in tourism and hospitality and this is accentuated by a lack of experience in the field. According to Asheeke and Katjiuongua (2007, 60), in 2003 the number of people who had attended formal tourism courses in the past 11 years represented about 1% of the total amount of employees in the sector. The situation is similar in other sectors too. Out of the total labour force, only 9.8% are in possession of post-secondary qualifications (Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit 2010, 4). In practice, the lack of skills implies both that there are not enough trained personnel for tourism enterprises and that the personnel already employed possess insufficient hospitality skills, which affects the quality of service (Asheeke and Katjiuongua 2007, 60). Apart from degrees in tourism and natural resource management offered at the University of Namibia and the Polytechnic, there is no tourism-related training provided by the Namibian government.
Therefore, it is common for private tourism enterprises to train their own employees. Nearly all the employees of the studied lodges and trophy hunting farms have been trained in the enterprises by the owners, managers or senior staff. Such in-house training can be viewed as an opportunity for those who face unemployment and difficult access to few public sector posts. However, the employees rarely receive certificates of the training and the acquired skills are often limited to a certain field such as gardening, tracking animals, waitressing or cooking. Such concentration on specific narrow fields in training stems from the colonial times (Asheeke 2008).
Related to the lack of skills is the lack of experience in tourism. Even if a person is trained with practical skills in one or several fields, he/she is not necessarily familiar with the tourists' origins and the concept of hospitality (Asheeke and Katjiuongua 2007, 60). Several lodge and farm owners emphasise that they face difficulties with their employees' limited understanding of the tourists' culture and expectations. This is hardly surprising, considering that both the lodges and the farms employ most of their staff from the areas where they are located. This is partly a deliberate effort to offer job opportunities for local people and partly an economic question. Customer service duties in particular require responsiveness and initiative that have to be constantly taught to people with a low educational level and no prior experience of the hospitality sector. Different values and cultural backgrounds cause challenges for relations between the employers and their staff and sometimes the employers have to sort out disputes related to ethnic and gender relations among the employees.
Prevailing prejudices, inequality and misuse of BEE
As a young nation where official apartheid policy was demolished only some two decades ago, Namibia is still in the process of building national identity and coherence among its population groups. In this regard, it is understandable that prejudices prevail in the country. Asheeke (2008) estimates that some two-thirds of FENATA members include people who benefited from apartheid and who are therefore scared that transformation may imply a partial loss of their economic achievements. This is seen in the interviews of older male owners of private lodges and trophy hunting farms. These entrepreneurs openly resist the idea of BEE and question the need for large-scale transformation of the tourism sector and entire Namibian society. Although such attitudes are not rare among the white minority in southern Africa, they tend to have wider influence in the tourism sector as they affect also the employees and tourists.
The issue of existing racial prejudices is pointed out by the tour operators too. They assert that the white-owned enterprises try to maintain their hegemony through vertical integration, thus making it difficult for black entrepreneurs to enter the sector. According to Lapeyre (2011, 198), horizontal and vertical integration is an increasing tendency in Namibia. Tour operators merge with travel agencies and accommodation providers into bigger companies in order to gain market power and control tourist flows. At the same time, lack of capital and collateral for bank loans are pointed out as other major obstacles for emerging black tourism entrepreneurs. The lack of access to finance in the SME sector is recognised as a key challenge in the recent Namibian Business and Investment Climate Survey (Schade 2011). However, the tour operators emphasise that capital is not the only requirement for establishing tourism SMEs. Training in entrepreneurial skills and mentoring from existing enterprises are specified as similarly important but currently inadequate due to bigger companies’ unwillingness to carry out mentoring.
Even though some of the white entrepreneurs view BEE as a positive step through training and skills development, the idea of having more black people at a managerial level is contested. Obviously, skilled labour is to the advantage of all the private enterprises in the tourism sector, whereas highly qualified black professionals tend to increase competition in the sector and the entire question of BEE becomes an economic question besides being a political one. Furthermore, the implementation of BEE often involves additional costs. In South Africa, smaller businesses are often more negative about BEE policy since they are concerned about short-term costs related to it (Andreasson 2010, 176). In Namibia, the majority of tourism enterprises are rather small family-owned units and therefore the aspect of cost cannot be ignored.
There is severe criticism among the enterprises studied towards BEE as an indirect mechanism to increase the wealth and of the new economic and political elite. The government's BEE efforts in general are regarded as artificial in terms of placing black persons in management posts of different companies previously managed by whites even though the new managers do not necessarily have the relevant experience and skills for the position. The lodge owners are convinced that a similar strategy cannot work in tourism enterprises either. Several Namibian scholars share such criticism. Sherbourne (2009, 359) argues that the Namibian government's ‘attempts to promote black Namibian business interests have taken place outside any overall coherent, transparent and accountable policy framework and [have] generally been highly discretionary and shrouded in secrecy.’ In South Africa, there is similar dissatisfaction with BEE, which despite its achievements is claimed to be an elite enrichment scheme that leaves the poor neglected and perpetuates existing inequalities and indignities (Andreasson 2010, 174; Lindisizwe 2010; Southall 2007, 87).
Devolving ownership through community-based approaches
Community-Based Tourism (CBT) is characterised by two major elements. The first one is the full participation of a local community in the planning and management of a tourism enterprise and its ownership of it (Rogerson 2005, 36). The second is that the tourism product being offered is based on local social, environmental and cultural assets (Cornelissen 2005, 21). According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (2006), Namibia has been a pioneer in the development of community-based models for tourism management. The Namibian government recognised the role of CBT back in 1995 when it approved the Policy on Community-Based Tourism Development, which called for the opening up of opportunities for rural communities to increase their involvement in the tourism sector (Republic of Namibia 1995). Currently there are close to 60 registered Community-Based Tourism Enterprises (CBTEs) throughout Namibia, of which around 30 function actively (Katjiuongua 2008). They include campsites, cultural villages, museums, craft centres, rest camps and township tours, among others. The Namibia Community Based Tourism Assistance Trust was established in 1995 to promote and lobby for CBT and to help the members in marketing and skills development. However, the organisation has been heavily reliant on external donor funding and the current situation is even more precarious (ibid.; Lapeyre 2011).
CBT can be regarded as a practical intervention to reduce the inequality of the Namibian tourism sector and to distribute the benefits of tourism more evenly. CBTEs are expected to contribute to local economies especially in communal areas by providing employment opportunities and sources of income. In Namibia CBT is closely related to Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Since 1996, communal area residents have been entitled to establish conservancies, which are provided with concessionary rights for tourism development. The conservancies are legally designated rural areas in which local communities are allocated ownership and management rights over natural resources such as wildlife and grazing lands. Currently there are 59 registered communal conservancies, covering 16.1% of the country (NACSO 2011). Tourism-related activities such as joint ventures, trophy hunting and CBT constitute nearly 90% of all the income in Namibia's communal conservancies, including the conservancies where the four studied CBTEs are located.
The total income of conservancies increased from N$600,000 in 1998 to N$45.8 million in 2010 (NACSO 2011). However, almost 90% of CBNRM funding in Namibia has come from international donors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (Bandyopadhyay et al. 2009, 734; Barnes 2010, 115; Lapeyre 2011). Apart from revenue, CBT has contributed to social empowerment and increased self-esteem, particularly among women (Miettinen 2007; Spenceley 2008; Symonds 2008). The challenge of CBT is how to engage rural communities in tourism that requires specialised business skills and understanding of the supply and demand patterns of the sector. Such understanding would be vital for including CBT as a competitive part of the global tourism commodity chain. The following sections of this article describe these challenges in the context of the studied CBTEs (see Table 3).
| Major characteristics | Rest camp | Campsite | Craft centres (3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mode of ownership | Community based, owned by a community development association of 300 members | Community based, owned by a conservancy of 4000 members | Community based, owned by craft producers’ associations of 300–1500 members |
| Major tourism products | Accommodation in bungalows and campsites | Accommodation in secluded campsites | Arts and crafts |
| Restaurant and craft centre | |||
| Guided mountain climbing | |||
| Number of employees | 23 employees | 3 employees | 1–3 employees |
Commercial versus communal values
In order to become successful, CBTEs are expected to function as business entities, aiming to attract customers for properly designed and marketed tourism products. If the tourism product is not well designed or the quality is low, private tourism enterprises are neither likely to market it nor to bring customers to consume the product (Asheeke and Katjiuongua 2007). All this requires basic understanding of profit-oriented tourism culture, but such awareness appears to be limited among the CBTEs studied. Furthermore, Asheeke and Katjiuongua (2007, 21) point out that rural communities engaged in tourism may not understand the risks involved in entrepreneurial activities and the time lag involved before a new venture becomes profitable. In fact, it is important to bear in mind that the idea of transforming hospitality into a commercial product that is part of the cash economy is relatively new to many rural residents in southern Africa. Furthermore, expertise tends to be similarly limited among other interest groups related to CBTEs, such as regional, local and traditional authorities. This lack of expertise easily leads to unequal power relations between the less knowledgeable and financially weaker local actors and the more knowledgeable and financially stronger private enterprises and donors.
Community-Based Tourism takes place in a local cultural context and especially in rural areas the values of communality and reciprocity tend to conflict with the profit-oriented capitalist nature of tourism. In practice, this easily leads to challenges in financial administration and juxtaposes commercial interests with communal ones. Since Community-Based Tourism is supposed to create economic benefits for the community members it may be difficult to understand the economic needs of the enterprise related to sustainability and profitability. The studied CBTEs use their income for various community development projects such as supporting social services and maintaining physical infrastructure. However, it is difficult for them to determine what amount of income is required for sustaining the enterprise, such as maintenance and salaries, and what is left as profit to be distributed to the community. Furthermore, the CBTEs are perceived by some community members as cash reserves where people in immediate need can borrow small amounts of money even though their ability to pay back the loans is not guaranteed. In two craft centres, money-lending eventually led to serious financial problems where crafts producers could not be paid as the cash reserve was constantly exhausted.
Chabal (2009) claims that in sub-Saharan African societies accumulation of wealth is not a public virtue, but what matters is how the wealth is distributed. Therefore, generosity tends to outweigh efficiency and individual achievements become meaningful when they are translated into public recognition as interpreted by the community. While such broad generalisations can be contested, this kind of socio-cultural contextualisation helps us to understand why the major goal of CBTEs may not be profit accumulation and further investment, but rather the acquisition of tangible benefits by the entire community from a tourism product. Furthermore, those in powerful positions who decide how tourism income is distributed and who actually provide support or loans to community members may deserve special prestige in the eyes of the community. Some managers of the CBTEs studied appear to have acquired such a key role, although decision-making and financial management is supposed to be the duty of the entire community or elected representative committees.
Inadequate institutional capacity of CBTEs
The majority of Namibia's CBTEs are in rural communal areas that are highly undeveloped in comparison with urban areas. This stems largely from the apartheid policy of ethnic homelands. Ten such homelands were created in Namibia following a proposal by the South African Odendaal Commission in 1964. In practice, it implied that 93% of the non-white Namibians were forced into 10 reserves that represented 40% of the land area (Lee 2003, 24). The establishment of the homelands enforced the territorial, symbolic and structural spatial divide important to the apartheid regime. Therefore, official policy was one of spatial separation, not of regional development (Du Pisani 2000, 58). In Namibia only 7.1% of the rural population have access to gas or electricity (Republic of Namibia 2008, 196). This obviously affects Community-Based Tourism, including the rural CBTEs studied. Asheeke and Katjiuongua (2007, 38) point out that without electricity, CBTEs are barred from using important communication methods such as fax, email and cell phone, which are a prerequisite for bookings and other communication. Other constraints in CBT include poor road infrastructure, and inadequate water supply and sanitation.
Despite being a middle-income country with a low population, Namibia has higher income inequality than any other country where it has been measured with the Gini coefficient. The rural areas host more than half of the poor households (Republic of Namibia 2006). Rural poverty is largely related to the dualistic pattern of the agricultural sector, low soil fertility and the general aridity of the Namibian climate (Republic of Namibia 2008). In addition, gender inequality and HIV/AIDS are regarded as major reasons for persisting poverty (Jauch, Edwards, and Cupido 2009, 40). Apart from poverty, the rural communal areas are characterised by low educational levels.
Poverty and low education affect the availability of capital and institutional capacity in CBTEs. Therefore, donor organisations play a crucial role in Community-Based Tourism by assisting in drafting business plans, setting up basic infrastructure and training staff with adequate skills (Lapeyre 2011). All the CBTEs studied have received donor support in these fields. The purpose of donor support has been to provide initial capital and build the institutional capacity of the CBTEs in order for them to become self-sustainable. Three of the CBTEs studied have indeed reached financial self-sustainability, but the quality of their tourism products varies. According to Lapeyre (2011, 195), the low quality of Namibia's CBT products is a major challenge in terms of providing additional value to tourist experience. Furthermore, all the CBTEs studied continue to require external support for institutional capacity-building. The institutional support refers to assistance in management conflicts such as a poor relationship between the management committee and the staff as well as committee members who are not committed to their positions and tasks. The perceived continuous need for external support and intervention is associated with the lack of self-confidence apparently deriving from the colonial era, but it may also be related to a perceived inability and sense of inferiority in running a tourism enterprise, which seriously challenges the longer term viability of CBTEs. Similar findings on other Namibian CBTEs are documented by Ndlovu et al. (2010) and Lapeyre (2011, 194), who states that CBT projects in Namibia seem to be more a by-product of nature conservation projects than real and efficient development initiatives.
The lack of institutional capacity is further reflected in the lack of marketing. Even though the CBTEs studied have their established tourism products, none of them practise active marketing on their own. Instead, they are marketed through the websites of NGOs, donors and some private enterprises. Forstner (2004) illustrates the challenges of marketing in Community-Based Tourism. According to her, distance from markets appears to be the major issue in CBT, but apart from physical distance it may refer to ‘socially and culturally determined distance’ between rural service providers and their markets (500). The latter refers to the different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of local communities and their international visitors. In fact, Symonds (2008) explains that people do not understand the need for marketing, instead they expect people to come to them. Lapeyre (2011) and Saarinen (2010) further demonstrate that tourism awareness is still limited among the members of CBTEs in Namibia and this poses a serious challenge for efficiently integrating rural communities into the tourism sector as active participants. Without awareness of how the entire tourism commodity chain functions, the rural communities are not able to penetrate the mainstream distribution networks and this reduces the revenue they are able to generate.
Conclusions
This article has discussed the political economy of the Namibian tourism sector with a special focus on addressing post-apartheid inequality through increasing indigenous ownership of tourism enterprises. Two policy approaches were examined, namely Black Economic Empowerment and Community-Based Tourism. These policies are important efforts in transforming the tourism sector into being more inclusive, but the empirical research material from the Namibian tourism enterprises indicates that there are several challenges involved. The challenges, such as the limited human resources, racial prejudices, and the political and economic interests of the Namibian elite behind the implementation of BEE, are not new, nor are they limited to the tourism sector (Jauch, Edwards, and Cupido 2009; Melber 2007, 2011). Nevertheless, the Namibian government should address them, for example through providing affordable training and mentoring opportunities to increase human resource development and economic possibilities of tourism SMEs. In fact, the cooperation of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in this regard is a step forward (Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2008, 16). A more difficult task is to tackle prejudice. In this respect, it is important to remember that Namibian independence is only 21 years old and removing the apartheid legacy from people's mindsets requires time, patience and intervention. Tourism can, however, play its part in the process by highlighting cultural diversity as a valuable asset worth exploration, not only by overseas visitors but also by domestic tourists.
The challenges related to CBT in this article support similar findings in other southern African countries (Dixey 2008; Lepper and Goebel 2010; Mbaiwa 2004; Spenceley 2008). CBT plays a crucial role in Namibia's rural development strategy and tourism is often perceived as the most lucrative way of earning income in rural communities. Not all rural areas, however, have the necessary attractions and accessibility for tourism and it is important that conservancies and rural communities also practise income-generating activities such as forestry, harvesting veld products and beekeeping. At the same time, the government should seriously address the regional disparities and prevailing poverty in the rural areas. Access to quality education and social services will not only improve the rural standards of living but increase rural residents’ capacity to engage in commercial tourism activities. In areas with high levels of poverty and material scarcity it is understandable that the CBTEs studied tend to prefer the distribution of direct community benefits instead of the accumulation of profit in order to invest it in the development of the enterprise. However, if not carefully executed, such community support easily leads to poor financial management of the accounts and eventually may hamper the sustainability of an enterprise. This in turn jeopardises the eventual benefits to be distributed to the community. Notwithstanding such challenges, it is important to acknowledge that skills development and other requirements for successful engagement in tourism in the rural communal areas take time. As Diggle (2007) and Davidson (2008) emphasise, expected changes in rural attitudes and the level of skills required for communities' effective participation in tourism tend to take several years, if not decades. Figure 1
