The Transnational Experience of Victoria Falls Today

EPILOGUE REVISITING IMAGINATION: THE TrANSNATIONAL EXPErIENCE OF VICTOrIA FALLS TODAY Two of the most popular activities at Victoria Falls today are white-water rafting and bungee jumping. Both of these activities allow participants the unique experience of moving in and out of two different countries as their raft carries them closer to one bank or another and as the bungee cord swings from side to side in the middle of the bridge between the two countries’ border crossings. While many tourists revel in the knowl- edge that they are floating back and forth between two countries, they are unwittingly part of the larger history of transcolonial and transnational development and experience centered on Victoria Falls. This has been, and will continue to be a site of crossing; it belongs to no one defini- tively, yet is claimed by many. It is unsurprising that with its history in the early colonial period as a place of precolonial fluctuation and contested claims and as a marker of the end and the beginning of British expansion, © The Author(s) 2017 259 A.L. Arrington-Sirois, Victoria Falls and Colonial Imagination in British Southern Africa, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59693-2 260 EPiLOGUe Victoria Falls continues to be a fixed point in an ever-changing political, economic, and social landscape. The bungee cords swinging like a pendulum between Zambia and Zimbabwe serve as a reminder of the history of this site, when use of the Falls for cultural ceremonies and political sparring by local and not-so-local African populations and the colonial exploitation that followed kept this as an always contested and transforming feature of the landscape. Although this analysis ends in the 1910s, the pendulum metaphor becomes even more useful when considering how colonial and postcolonial development unfolded at Victoria Falls. Early colonial development first started on the north banks of the Zambezi but by the 1910s, Southern Rhodesia was winning the battle for tourist traffic. The BSACo’s policies made urban development in Victoria Falls Town, Southern Rhodesia much easier and more enticing than the situation in Livingstone, and many Livingstonians felt coerced into moving south to participate in the growing tourism industry that was replacing their earlier endeavors north of the Falls. It was clear by the 1920s that the BSACo and subsequent Southern Rhodesian governments viewed Victoria Falls Town as the home of tourism in Southern Rhodesia. Government publications strongly promoted tourism as one of the most appealing features of living and visiting Southern Rhodesia and Victoria Falls figured prominently in the advertisement campaigns for domestic, regional, and global tourism. At the other end of the spectrum was Livingstone, where BSACo and the governments that followed gave little support to the small tourism industry that persisted on the northern side of the Falls. The BSACo’s priorities changed when North Western Rhodesia and North Eastern Rhodesia merged to form Northern Rhodesia in 1911 and although there was still active pursuit of hydroelectric generation at Victoria Falls, most of the BSACo’s energy went into developing the copper mines. Despite some early forays into industrialization, Livingstone slowly faded into a provincial, outdated town, and in 1935 Lusaka was named the new capital of Northern Rhodesia. It seemed Livingstone’s heyday had passed and tourism was only a small part of the anemic economic landscape of the town for many decades. Returning to L.F. Moore’s vision of the future of Victoria Falls used to open the introduction to this study, it would seem evident that Moore’s optimism was misplaced, or more bluntly, delusional. His high-tech and multifaceted dream of what Livingstone would look like in the mid- twentieth century was aggressively bold and in retrospect seems more sci- EPiLOGUe 261 ence fiction than realistic. That Livingstone would be all but a ghost town by the 1950s is a cruel twist to the story Moore hoped would unfold. Even at the turn of the twenty-first century, Moore’s dreams for his beloved town would appear laughable. I well remember my first trip into Livingstone in 1999, when I felt like I was crossing back in time as I approached the town by foot after crossing over from Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe and being dropped by a share-taxi outside of town. My guidebooks were uncharac- teristically subdued about the offerings of a town that seemed it should be at least close to offering what its counterpart in Zimbabwe provided tourists. I wandered the main thoroughfare, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, and wondered if I just hadn’t reached the center of town, but in less than an hour I realized I had seen what there was to see. Crumbling Edwardian buildings and dusty sidewalks lined the main street and though there was certainly pedestrian traffic, the slower pace and less crowded walking paths surprised me. In 1999, you could certainly seek out tourist activities, but it was a far cry from what you found through the ubiquitous and confident touts in Victoria Falls Town. In subsequent trips over the past decade, I observed that Livingstone experienced a renaissance. The pendulum of time, energy, and most cru- cially perhaps, circumstance was swinging back to the northern side of the Falls. The political and economic woes in Zimbabwe slowly pushed tourists north into Zambia. Livingstone was now more than just a side note or day trip in regional guidebooks. Regardless of political troubles, people still wanted to see the Falls and Zambia made that possible. Resort complexes were opened or being constructed, some that were within walking distance to Victoria Falls. More foreign-owned and Zambian-owned busi- nesses were opening or planned in response to the surge in tourists and Livingstone became a hive of economic activity once again. Zimbabwe’s loss was Zambia’s gain and the people of Livingstone and the Zambian government seized the opportunity to promote Zambia as “the Real Africa” and promised visitors the best view of the Falls with all the modern amenities and adventure tourism activities imaginable. Although the slo- gan “Zambia, the Real Africa” was in use by the Ministry of Tourism for a while, there was momentum and energy in the first decade of the twenty- first century and the description was used to appeal to tourists and offered them a multi-faceted tourism experience, with the Falls as the capstone to any visit to the country. L.F. Moore, we can presume, would be pleased with this turn of events. Early entrepreneurs at Old Drift and then Livingstone had big dreams for 262 EPiLOGUe their side of the Falls and the same concepts of a robust tourist experience, replete with both modern infrastructure, adventure activities, and exposure to exoticized African culture resonate with the ideas of those first white businessmen and the current trends in promoting tourism in Zambia. Moore and his cohorts would perhaps be surprised to see government initiatives to lure local and foreign investors to Livingstone and other parts of the country to help exploit the boom in tourist traffic. There are, of course, some troubling developments though. Foreign corporations own the luxury and mid-range accommodations and restaurants. The roads serving those complexes are improved more frequently than those serving the smaller, locally owned guesthouses and cafes. Prices in Livingstone for rooms, food, toiletries, transportation, and leisure activities are always increasing, pricing out the local population. Despite the hydroelectric power stations and obvious abundance of water within the vicinity of Livingstone and the Maramba, the neighboring township, both locali- ties experience frequent power outages and cut water supplies. Economic refugees from Zimbabwe moved into Livingstone, as did Zambians from less economically active parts of the country, putting a squeeze on the resources and opportunities available to the local population. Where there is increased opportunity, increased challenges follow. Livingstone and the rest of Zambia must figure out how to sustain growth in tourism while also diversifying related industries because even as this was written, the pendulum is swinging once more in a southward direction. Zimbabwe, though not out of the woods yet with its political and economic crises, is on the rebound and Victoria Falls Town is gearing up for a comeback. The notion of tourism capital of the Victoria Falls area will not defer to Livingstone for much longer and the divisions between these two parts of the broader tourism economy in the region will continue to vie for the upper hand. As an outsider-observer who admittedly grew to love the charm of Livingstone as the underdog in this race for tourism revenue but who also felt compassion for the people suffering from deteriorating business in Victoria Falls Town, it would seem that the way forward might be best imagined in less bold terms than L.F. Moore’s prescribed vision. Both sides of the Falls have now experienced down times and they may both be better served in the long term to go back to a transborder approach to development. With other transnational tourism initiatives such as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park between South Africa and Botswana and the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation that crosses South African, Zimbabwean, and Botswanan borders it may EPiLOGUe 263 be worthwhile for the tourism industries in Zambia and Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls to imagine—and then enact—more collaborative practices and designs to ensure that the pendulum of economic benefit does not swing too far south or north in the future. BIBLIOGrAPHY PUBLISHED PrIMArY SOUrCES AND SECONDArY SOUrCES Alexander, Jocelyn, The Unsettled Land: State-making & the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe, 1893–2003.

Load more