Crawl out of your holes

Perspective Stephen Mpofu
Decked out in exquisite Zimbabwean colours and set up on the summit of Mount Inyangani to flaunt your beauty to the world, how else would you (yes, you) want anyone to better shine your star in a world often overcast with menacing dark clouds and with the sun popping out every now and then for shivering creatures to soak in the mellow sunshine?

The above, in a nutshell is a symbolism of what the European Council on Tourism and Trade has done by placing our beautiful country in the much coveted tourism niche with a double — the best tourism destination and world’s most attractive destination in 2014.

On Wednesday ECTT president Professor Anton Caragea presented President Mugabe with the 2014 Best Tourism Award, while Sport, Art and Culture Minister Andrew Langa received the World’s Most Preferred Destination Award, with a personal medal of honour as an academician of the European Tourism Academy being handed to Tourism and Hospitality Minister Walter Mzembi for his contribution to tourism growth in Zimbabwe.

Described by President Mugabe as one of his best performing Ministers, Prof Caragea also announced that Mzembi had also become a member of the academic committee of the European Tourism Academy.

With the top tourism awards, the ECTT has thrown continental Europe, Britain and the United States a lifeline to grab and crawl out of the meandering holes of illegal sanctions against an innocent Zimbabwe, and out of which they have apparently since found it difficult to dig themselves.

Last week, Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia, head of the European Union delegation in Harare, praised the prevailing peaceful atmosphere in the country and said that positive statements by President Mugabe for re-engagement and his clarification of the course of implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment drive could influence the EU to scrap its illegal economic sanctions.

Now, here is a curious case of an honourable (?) organisation clutching at straws to try to justify itself in the illegal Western economic sanctions saga.

Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia is reported in the press as talking about a peaceful prevailing atmosphere in the country, thus, suggesting, by inference that the Western economic embargo was provoked by a violent and therefore unstable situation in the country.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth with the implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment drive also having nothing whatsoever to do with the land reform programme per se against which the West reacted with the imposition of sanctions.

Or, does Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia by sighting indigenisation and economic empowerment suggest that the West never ever wanted blacks to control their economy, preferring instead to have indigenous Zimbabweans living in perpetuity as serfs while foreigners continued to skim the rich economic cream?

The top awards Zimbabwe has pocketed trouncing 27 other countries from around the world, show beyond any shadow of doubt that this country has always been the best tourism destination in terms of what it offers under prevailing safe and peaceful situations.

In fact the US appears deliberately intent on polluting the minds of the outside world by painting a picture of Zimbabwe as a no-go tourism destination, witness that country’s discouragement of its citizens from visiting Matabeleland North Province in which Hwange National game park teeming with wildlife for tourists to savour is situated

But, however, much the enemies of Zimbabwe try to smear it in the eyes of the international community, the muck will not stick on a clean image that the ECTT has helped us portray to all and sundry in the global village.

Now, having demonstrated to the outside world our tourism promotion mettle, it is time Zimbabwe embarked on a massive campaign that this pen has repeatedly called for to promote domestic tourism with home holiday – making effectively widely given the attention it deserves, not only will citizens of this country discover and protect their cultural and tourism treasures, they will anchor the industry in a world that sometimes behaves capriciously, like a chameleon should our political nemesis again attempt to pariah Zimbabwe.

Added to the warm hospitality for which Zimbabweans are now famous around the globe, domestic tourism could turn Zimbabwe into a real gem for adventure lovers.