I noticed a small article entitled Musician to become Zim ambassador tucked away on page 20 of last week’s Mail and Guardian newspaper. It looks like the Zimbabwean government is going to give our musical icon Oliver Mtukudzi ambassadorial status with full diplomatic credentials in a bid to revive our country’s flagging tourism industry.

The mind boggles. About a few things actually. First that there should be any confusion as to why our tourism industry is all but dead. I mean it’s hard enough for Zimbabweans to drive around their own country because of the scarcity if fuel. I can’t really imagine how tourists would cope. They’d probably hire a car and merrily set off only to find that every fuel station they pulled into didn’t have any fuel to sell.

Then of course there’s the rampant gold panning taking place in the beautiful Chimanimani mountains in the Eastern Highlands.

And let’s not forget the poaching of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s national parks.

“On the one hand, Zimbabwe is trying to promote tourism, and on the other it is destroying any chances of reviving it,” said the Zimbabwe Conservation Taskforce in its latest monthly report.

Second, I can’t quite fathom how Oliver Mtukudzi can even consider accepting this dubious “honor”.

Mtukudzi said, “I never thought they would go that far. I have been marketing the country as a tourism ambassador, but if that recognition can go to the extent of getting a diplomatic passport, that will be great,” he said.

I certainly hope that Mtukudzi won’t gleefully grab an ambassadorial passport and continue to “promote” tourism in Zimbabwe while remaining silent about the root causes of the crisis in the tourism sector.

This entry was posted on November 1st, 2006 at 10:34 am by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.