Cultural and heritage tourism as a tool for enhancing rural livelihood diversification in Sehlabathebe National Park, Lesotho.

Abstract

In Southern Africa, heritage tourism has been identified as a tool for poverty reduction in rural areas because it has the potential to play a key role in enhancing livelihood diversification. Cultural and heritage tourism provides World Heritage communities with sustainable livelihoods, yet many African World Heritage Sites are surrounded by communities with visible high poverty and unemployment levels. Sehlabathebe National Park, a World Heritage Site in Lesotho, is not an exception in this regard. It is against this background that this study aims to explore the awareness, perceptions and role the World Heritage and tourism play in the livelihoods and everyday life of the local communities in Sehlabathebe National Park. The study sought to explore the participation of local communities in tourism and conservation at the World Heritage Site. Among other objectives, the study examined the impacts of heritage tourism on the rural livelihoods and evaluated the community’s perceptions and expectations of Sehlabathebe National Park as a World Heritage Site. It also assessed the benefits to the community resulting from Sehlabathebe National Park as a World Heritage site. To explore the complexity of rural livelihoods, the study adopted the philosophical underpinning of pragmatism complemented by Convergent Parallel mixed method design. The study was anchored by the Social Exchange Theory, Stakeholder Theory and Sustainable Livelihood Framework. The researcher administered questionnaires to a stratified random sample of 286 households in 12 villages and conducted in-depth interviews to a snowball sample of 11 experts. The quantitative and qualitative data analysis was done using SPSS and thematic analysis respectively. The key non-parametric tests conducted were Chi-square, Multiple regression analysis and Mann-Whitney. The study revealed that cultural and heritage tourism did not enhance livelihood diversification in most villages. It could not reduce household vulnerability and poverty. The local communities had not yet seen the benefits of Sehlabathebe National Park as a World Heritage Site seven years after getting the status. Local community participation in tourism and conservation was limited to consultation. Although the local communities still had high expectations of benefits from the Site, the study concludes that the establishment of Sehlabathebe National Park and the World Heritage status have not significantly improved the livelihoods of the local communities. The key recommendations were the adoption of Public Private Partnership (PPP) to bring in the much-needed investment and business expertise in the sustainable management of the park. The study also recommended giving back the custodianship and stewardship of the park to the local communities which entails empowering the village Chiefs to protect the park. This study contributes to new knowledge on tourism’s specific socio-economic impacts on rural livelihoods of the poor living around World Heritage Sites. The thesis makes a theoretical contribution to knowledge and academic rigor by testing complex sociological theories to examine a tourism phenomenon. Ultimately, this thesis has demonstrated that cultural and heritage tourism, though commonly perceived as the panacea for poverty alleviation, it should be supported by an appropriate tourism policy framework. The implication is that the park management should review its tourism policy and develop a comprehensive inclusive cultural heritage tourism product.