Zim tourism police unit to protect foreign guests

Date: November 17 2003

Source: Star (SA)

Author: Anon

A special tourism police unit is to be set up "aimed at increasing the safety of tourists in all the country's tourist destinations"

Visitors to troubled Zimbabwe are to get special police protection under a government plan to restore confidence in the country as a tourist destination. A special tourism police unit is to be set up "aimed at increasing the safety of tourists in all the country's tourist destinations", the state-owned Sunday Mail reported yesterday. Amid worsening economic hardship in Zimbabwe, foreign tourists have increasingly been targeted by local criminals. Robberies involving tourists have claimed two lives this year, with an Australian killed at the Victoria Falls resort in January and a young South African tourist shot dead in Bulawayo in June. "The need to set up a tourist police unit will restore confidence in the country's tourist industry," Paul Matamisa of the Zimbabwe Council for Tourism said. He noted: "In the past, crimes committed against our foreign guests failed to go through the courts in time as the tourists ... often returned to their countries before the cases were finalised." Tourism was once one of Zimbabwe's main foreign currency earners, but receipts are reported to have declined tenfold since the start of a controversial land reform programme three years ago. The authorities say Zimbabwe is the victim of a hostile media campaign, and have recently launched a number of initiatives aimed at reviving the country's image as a world-class holiday destination.

Meanwhile, a Zambian newspaper reported yesterday that Zimbabwean border police have started confiscating foreign currency from Zambians passing through the country. In the latest incident, a bus travelling through Zimbabwe en route to South Africa was stopped near Bulawayo, the Sunday Post reported. Police searched passengers on the bus and confiscated large sums of South African rands, US dollars, Botswana pula and Namibian dollars. One Zambian passenger who rides the bus regularly told the Post that bags were searched and items in them were thrown out on the ground. Some students were left stranded at the border after having all their cash confiscated. The report said police had explained they were acting under instruction from the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank. People had received receipts with a serial number and a Zimbabwean government stamp if their money was confiscated. Zimbabwe's high commissioner to Zambia, Cain Mathema, said he had not heard of any such reports. Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980. The deepening crisis is blamed partly on the state programme that seized thousands of commercial farms from white farmers for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe is also suffering shortages of local currency - blamed on runaway inflation, the central bank's inability to print conventional notes quickly enough, and people hoarding money.