This column is bringing you a new feature this year – every four weeks we will do a personality profile: someone who has made an impact on some aspect of the tourism industry.    If you know of someone who is a real trailblazer (I prefer the unsung-hero types) please let me know and we will do a personality interview.

The first interview of the series is not really an interview as such, mainly because the person concerned does not like to be interviewed!  So this personality profile is gleaned from knowing and working with someone for close to eight years.  I must apologise in advance if I get some of the detail wrong, because I am writing this from memory, but this is an achievement that I wish to celebrate. About ten years ago, the conservation authorities in KwaZulu Natal decided, experimentally, to hand out concessions for tourist accommodation inside their parks.  Conservation would look after their core responsibility - land management - and outsource the accommodation aspect.  The concessionaire would have some restrictions, get some support, and would pay a handsome rent for the privilege, to go to the upkeep of the park. Tembe Elephant Park, in northern KZN, was the first to hand out a concession to Durban businessman Ernest Robbertse.  He took over the existing ramshackle tented camp in the middle of Tembe, trained up staff and started to trade.  From the beginning, the idea was to empower the local people and eventually hand the camp over to them. In the middle of the process, somebody, somewhere, changed their mind and decided that a private operator in a national park was not such a good idea.  But Ernest had already got his papers signed, had invested a large amount of money in Tembe Elephant Lodge, and was making a success of the camp.  So a quiet war began between the concession holder and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. The details of the conflict are complicated and Byzantine, and it is difficult to get to the truth.  Everyone has a different version of events.  Ernest himself is no help whatsoever.   He is an intensely private man, in appearance a cross between a beaming Slobodan Miloshevich and  clean-shaven Santa Claus.  He is “oh, in exports and imports”, he says vaguely, waving a hand.  He also has a history of being in the security industry, but he is impossible to interview because he does not want to talk about himself.  When the subject touches on Tembe Safari Lodge, however, it is difficult to get him to stop. The lodge has become a beacon of what community tourism should be.  It is a rustic group of semi-solid tents clustered around an open boma where guests gather for stories around the fire.  Open-air bathrooms increase the very real possibility that your ablutions will be overlooked by a curious elephant.  The food is good, the accommodation comfortable, the game drives entertaining, the visitors always an eclectic bunch of local holiday-makers, overseas visitors, honeymoon couples, aid workers and foreign academics. But the most amazing thing about Tembe Lodge is that indefinable atmosphere that makes the difference between a good holiday and a great holiday.  It takes a while for it to seep into one’s consciousness that Tembe is run completely by people from the local community.  Tom Mahamba is the manager, and he grew up in a village a stone’s throw away.  The game rangers have lived all their lives in Tembe, and know every blade of grass and elephant footprint.  The lodge therefore has an overwhelming sense of peace and timelessness, there is nothing superficial about the welcome and the service, it genuinely comes from the heart. This is an example of ‘community tourism’ that has worked.  The lodge is not only run by the Tembe community, but owned by them as well.  Chief Israel Tembe, a genial man, supports the lodge enthusiastically as a shining example of how successful community tourism can be. However, having been a keen observer of Tembe Safari Lodge for almost eight years, one can see this has not been a quick or easy process.  Ernest has had his fair share of setbacks and disappointments, over and above the lack of co-operation from Ezemvelo. The lodge has on occasion been held to ransom by community squabbles and power-struggles.  Ernest has had to subsidise it heavily with his own money – the lodge began to break even only after operating at a loss for five years.  Any profits go to community projects, like the local schools. The staff require constant training and empowerment.  Rural men do not like the idea of ‘their’ women working, and female staff turnover is therefore exceptionally high.  Alternatively, trained staff are snapped up by other lodges as soon as they have developed a degree of proficiency. Another argument is the benefit of the lodge to the community.  Tourism and conservation is often used as an election tool by the local politicos, who perennially wonder aloud why land and animals must be set aside when they could be respectively planted with crops or hunted for the pot. And there is the headache of employees who, out of sheer unsophistication, try to beat the system for their own gain.  A good example:  one employee was sent to collect the weekly meat order from the butcher.  Just before arriving at the camp, he hid half the order in the bush to collect later for himself, and carried on to deliver the remainder to the camp.  It did not occur to him that the camp manager would phone the local butcher to find out why the meat order was short!  He was nabbed rather rapidly, to his eternal mystification.  Ernest has never been able to take his foot off the accelerator at Tembe.  Even though the lodge now ticks over relatively independently it still needs mentorship and the occasional helping hand.  Various well-meaning departments in government and parastatals have attempted to start community tourism projects, but without a ‘champion’ like Ernest, these endeavours have all been doomed to failure.  Community tourism is not a quick or easy process, and requires enormous personal input over a long period of time. Most of the credit for the success of Tembe should go to Ernest’s larger-than-life personality – despite his self-confessed shyness he is a ‘people person’ with a generous heart.  This is what compels people (often against their better judgment!) to help him and ‘his’ lodge – and thereby the people of Tembe. If you would like to find out more about Tembe – and its place in one of Southern Africa’s first Transfrontier Parks - go to www.tembe.co.za