COMMUNITY OWNED AND RUN GAME LODGE
WINS TOP AWARD.

For the first time ever in KwaZulu-Natal and perhaps in the whole of South Africa, a community-owned
and -run safari lodge has won an accommodation and hospitality award.

Tembe Elephant Lodge, inside the Tembe Elephant Park on the Mozambique border, last night
(Wednesday) won Best Lodge in the category Lodges and Self-Catering at the Tourism KZN Tourism
Excellence Awards, held at Sibaya Casino outside Durban.  What makes this award truly remarkable is that
there is a separate category for community-owned lodges.  Tembe Elephant Lodge competed against, and
won against, lodges that are run by large corporations, wealthy lodge-owners and sophisticated hospitality
companies.

The award is an acknowledgement that Tembe Elephant Lodge can hold its own against lodges anywhere
in the province.

The success of Tembe Elephant Lodge has created a sea-change in the attitude of the local Tembe
community towards tourism and conservation.  The response to the Tembe Elephant Park, when it was
established in 1983, was extreme hostility to yet another perceived example of elitist land use.  Now,
however, the community, as a result of the job creation and empowerment success of the lodge, are keen to
see the Tembe Elephant Park expand its territory.  The Lodge operates as a concessionary with the Park.

The Lodge employs 20 people, ranging from Manager Tom Mahamba to field guides to kitchen and cleaning
staff.

"My ancestors used to own the land here and manage it," says Mahamba. "We still own it and at last we are
managing again, this time earning money for ourselves and the community from tourism. This is
empowerment."

Tembe Elephant Lodge is the only full-service game lodge in South Africa that is managed and operated
100% by the local community, all of whom were previously unskilled and unemployed.

The park itself is home to KwaZulu-Natal's last herd of indigenous elephants, which are the largest in Africa.
For centuries they migrated between the northern sand forests of Maputaland and Mozambique, but in 1989
a fence was erected on the border to prevent them entering the hostilities zone of the Mozambique civil war,
where they were prey to ivory poaching and to land mines. There are plans for the fence to be removed, in
terms of the cross-border Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Protocol, so they can resume
their migration between Tembe and Maputo Elephant Reserve - once their safety can be assured.

The Tembe people were historically custodians of the Maputaland region, controlling the ivory trade and
serving as a connection between the Zulu Kingdom and the inhabitants of Mozambique. The community is
enthusiastic about expanding the Elephant Park into empty areas in their territory.

Tembe Elephant Lodge consists of eight super-luxury tented pavilions, each set in the bush in isolation from
the rest. The main camp has a reception area, dining boma, thatched lapa, swimming pool and evening
campfire site. Meals are taken communally or individually at the tents. Day and night game
drives take tourists through Big Five territory - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo - and a special
feature is a large hide which offers spectacular close-up viewing of elephant and other game at a water hole.

"I grew up in the Park," says Mahamba. "I know these elephants and the other animals. But for many years
the people were hostile to conservation and eco-tourism because there seemed to be nothing in it for them."

"There are people working here who used to cut fences and set snares, just to get food. That has stopped.
They would never dream of doing it today, it would make no sense. Tourism is the community's livelihood.
We have almost no poaching at all."

"Things are going very well. We get about 50% local and 50% overseas tourists, and we enjoy interacting
with both and showing them our heritage."

The Lodge has also had other positive impacts on the local community. Six school classrooms have been
built from the donations of guests at the Lodge, and school equipment has been supplied. A pupil exchange
scheme with a school in Bolton, England, began recently, also initiated by overseas visitors.

Tembe Elephant Lodge has already exceeded the final transformation and empowerment objectives being
set by the government for the tourism industry.


For further information, please contact Tom Mahamba at 072 - 307-3219.  

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From the desk of Niki Moore
Seventh Avenue Communications
t/a Africa News Bank