How three-day weekends can help promote tourism in SA

My Scottish grannie, who had the distinctly un-Scottish surname of Smuts due to the fact she’d been married to the district surgeon in Aliwal North, sparked my political awareness back in the 1960s when the Labour Party proposed introduction of a four-day working week in Britain.

Grannie, who taught art to secondary school ladies in the posh Edinburgh suburb of Morningside, would have been happy to be rid of the snotty wee beasties for an extra 24 hours but the idea of “legislated sloth” offended her work ethic.

She had no time for such socialist nonsense: “What do you think would have happened if we’d fought Hitler Monday to Thursday?” she’d ask.

I’ve been a full-time freelance photojournalist since 1991 which means that, for the best part of 30 years, I haven’t received a salary in the widely accepted sense of the word. I get paid per word I write, per picture I shoot … and having a good month financially means putting in extra hours.

And I don’t buy the argument that people will be just as productive working four days a week as five. If that’s true, then there’s something damned wrong about their workload.

Grannie Smuts would therefore initially have been horrified last week when I welcomed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s suggestion that employers consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options.

Ardern proposed that New Zealanders hit the roads of the “Land of the Long White Cloud” to revive the economy by stimulating domestic tourism while borders remain closed to foreign visitors.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Picture: AFP / Mark Mitchell

For years, I didn’t think much of New Zealand; the country that spawned rugby playing show-pony Justin Marshall deserved what it had coming, I thought.

I started changing my mind after meeting Richie McCaw and my liking for the nation grew considerably after a close friend’s son moved there nearly a decade ago. In that time, he’s been at the centre of an earthquake and – on another occasion – floods swept through his home just days after his missus returned home with their newborn daughter.

Not only did the country rebound with aplomb from those natural disasters (not the baby girl) but the community rallied magnificently around the Connellan family to the extent, I gather, their home was more comfortably furnished than before the deluge.

Nice one, Kiwis. Pity you speak funny.

Also last week, I wrote for The Citizen quoting Stellenbosch University’s Bureau for Economic Research (BER) saying well over a million tourism and hospitality jobs could be lost by this time next year because of coronavirus.

“The Covid-19 pandemic,” said the analysis, “effectively brought all domestic and inbound tourism to a standstill and is expected to result in massive job and revenue losses in this industry.”

Under the BER’s worst-case scenario, internal tourism expenditure (from both incoming and domestic travellers) is expected to halve to about R190 billion this year. However, at the same time and based on 2018 statistics, South Africans venturing abroad would spend in the region of R80 billion.

Picture: iStock

Times might be tough financially but families still need to go on vacation. They won’t be flying long-haul for a while so that money’s going to be spent at home … one way or another.

Three-day weekends make a lot of sense in promoting domestic tourism simply because Africa is much vaster than New Zealand.

Think about it rationally: you can’t afford to fly the spouse and rug-rats anywhere (have you seen how airfares have rocketed since lockdown moved to Level 3 and allowed some forms of travel) and, in any case, you’re too scared to lock yourself in a test-tube with 100 strangers for several hours.

But, with a 72-hour weekend, you can load the car and head out in virtually any direction without busting the bank or endangering your medical aid. Did I hear anyone whoop “ROADTRIP!”?

You’re talking the same social distancing everyone’s been practising for the past two months, right?

And places like Clarens, Cullinan and Dullstroom (if you’re travelling from Gauteng) have any number of hotels and guesthouses with rooms that have separate, external entrances.

Jacinda, ma’am, I’ll be watching you Kiwis and hoping you do a damned sight better with a four-day working week that Harold Wilson’s minions would have done.

If only the government doesn’t get silly with the petrol price, I think my Jeep might have a busy year ahead.

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