South African Minister of Tourism, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane invited tourism businesses to an online meeting to discuss the effects of the recent unrest on businesses. Onne Vegter expresses the frustration of many, that outstanding issues such as the NPTR are still not being dealt with and will hurt the recovery process. 

Onne Vegter

I sent an RSVP to Ms Monakali but got no response. The pass code didn't work for the meeting link given above.

The Minister needs to be aware that it is not only tourism businesses in KZN and Gauteng that were affected by the looting and riots. Every single inbound tourism business was harmed by it, regardless of where they are based. We had to deal with a string of cancellations on the back of a very poor trading year due to the pandemic. We're below 10% of normal turnover, and those few tourists who did book for July, August and September have now cancelled, thanks to the violence and looting [allegedly] instigated by the ANC's Zuma faction.

On top of this, we have the ongoing challenge of the non-functioning NPTR, which has no functional board and does not stick to the provisions and turnaround times of the NLTA for the issuing of operating licences. As a result, none of our vehicles have valid operating licences, so when tourism recovers, we are still unable to operate legally and recover from the pandemic.

Sorry for the rant but my only reason for wanting to join this Zoom meeting with the Minister was to share the above. The Minister has a lot of explaining to do.