Libro Sudafrica

The Urban Book Series
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Ronnie Donaldson
Small Town Tourism

in South Africa
123
Ronnie Donaldson
Geography and Environmental Studies
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch
South Africa
ISSN 2365-757X ISSN 2365-7588 (electronic)

The Urban Book Series
ISBN 978-3-319-68087-3 ISBN 978-3-319-68088-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68088-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953811
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corrected.
Contents
1 Small Towns in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Scale of Small Towns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Rationale of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 A Decade of Small Town Tourism Research in South Africa . . . . . . 13
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Second-Home Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Festivals and Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4 On the Margins of Small Towns: Water, Nature
and Agricultural Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 LED and Tourism Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.6 Connecting Small Towns Tourism Through Tourism Routes . . . . . 27
2.7 Visiting Friends and Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.8 Other Research Foci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3 In the Name of Tourism: Developing an Image and Brand
in the Book Town of Richmond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 Small Towns and Branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2.1 Place Imaging and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2.2 Place Branding, Culture and Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.2.3 Theme Towns and Branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.3 Book Towns as a Brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.4 Case Study of Richmond Book Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
xi
xii Contents
4 Some More Branding: ‘Town of the Year’ as Stimulus

for Tourism Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2 Background to Kwêla Town of the Year (KToY) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.3 De Rust—2011 Kwêla Town of the Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.3.1 Background to De Rust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.3.2 Organising the Win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.3.3 Residents’ Opinions of the Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3.4 Business Owners’ Opinions and Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.4 Fouriesburg—2012 Kwela Town of the Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.4.1 Background to the Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.4.2 A Different Approach to Organising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.4.3 What Winning Meant for the Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.5 Conclusion: What are the Key Lessons of the Two
Case Studies? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... 83
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... 85
5 Cittaslow: Going Nowhere Slowly? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.1 Introducing the Slow City Concept Slowly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2 Slowness in the Urban, Food, Housing and Tourism Realms . . . . . 89
5.2.1 Cittaslow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.2 Slow Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2.3 Slow Tourism and Slow Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.2.4 Slow Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.3 Africa’s First Cittaslow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.4 Sedgefield: Meeting the Criteria? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.5 A Club of Exclusivity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.6 Slow City Accreditation as Strategy for Tourism
Development and Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.7 Is Sedgefield as Cittaslow Going Nowhere Slowly? . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.7.1 Sedgefield’s “Sea Change” Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.7.2 Developmental Pressures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.7.3 Clashing of Fast and Slow Food Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.7.4 Dedicated and Interested Slow Tourists or Accidental
Slow Tourists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6 Rural (Small Town) Tourism-Led Gentrification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.2 Conceptualising Small Town Gentrification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.3 Greyton as Archetypical Rural Gentrification Town . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.4 Rural Exodus and Forced Removals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.4.1 Demographic Change and Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Contents xiii
6.4.2 Property Market Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

6.4.3 Tourism Gentrifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
6.4.4 Residential Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6.4.5 Tourism Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7 And Then There Was Another Festival… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7.2 Festivals Conceptualised as Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7.3 Small Town Festivals in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
7.3.1 Categories of Festivals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
7.3.2 Festival Investments and Market Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
7.3.3 Non-financial Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
7.4 Methods and Challenges of Assessing Economic Impacts . . . . . . . 160
7.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
8 Conclusion: The Power Behind Tourism Development . . . . . . . . . . . 173
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
8.2 Power and Tourism in the Small Town Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . 174
8.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter 1
Small Towns in Context
Rural/small communities are facing a time of transition.

They are re-envisioning and repositioning themselves through
diversifying their economic base, enhancing quality of life and
reinventing themselves for new functions and roles. Issues of
retaining and engaging youth, attracting new residents and
businesses and maintaining community vitality and identity
overarch these efforts. There is awareness that with many
traditional resource-based industries in jeopardy, rural
communities must look to develop not only new sources
of wealth, but a new sense of self (Duxbury & Campbell,
2011: 111).
Abstract Factors why small towns decline are numerous and include declining
populations as a product of history and geography; the unstable world commodity
market; changes in technology; changing lifestyle options and consumer habits; low
incomes and rising debt levels; a general decline in education and health services;
national policies and practices regarding competition; deteriorating infrastructure;
and high family-related and business costs. A promising trend observed in the
South African literature over the past ten years though is the growth of tourist
towns. In this introductory chapter, therefore, the main reasoning behind writing a
book on small town tourism development is explained.

Keywords Small towns South Africa Small town classification Role of the

rich Small town decline
1.1 Introduction
When asked in 2006 to contribute a literature review on small town tourism

(Donaldson, 2007) for the edited book Urban Tourism in the Developing World:
The South African Experience (Rogerson & Visser, 2007), I had difficulty finding
appropriate literature to review due to the scant attention given to the topic in South
Africa. Similarly scholarly debates and popular commentaries on smaller cities and
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

R. Donaldson, Small Town Tourism in South Africa,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68088-0_1
2 1 Small Towns in Context
towns internationally are less often in the news. For example, the 635-page The
Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (Parnell & Oldfield, 2014),
arguably the most comprehensive reconceptualisation of the urban Global South,
only mentions the term ‘small town/s’ a mere ten times, notwithstanding the fact
that the majority (52%) of the world’s urban population continue to live in settle-
ments of less than 500,000 people. Small cities, especially those with under
100,000 inhabitants, generally have more unaddressed problems and fewer human,
financial and technical resources at their disposal. Moreover, they are notably
underserved in housing, piped water, waste disposal and other services. The con-
tinuing role of smaller cities in absorbing urban population growth, however, offers
both comfort and concern (Knox & Mayer, 2013; Donaldson & Marais, 2012;
United Nations Population Fund, 2007).
The international literature suggests that the decline of small towns towards the
end of the twentieth century can be ascribed to a number of external factors
(Hinderink & Titus, 2002). An elaborate listing of such factors include, inter alia,
declining populations as a product of history and geography; the unstable world
commodity market, particularly for communities that have been dependent on
mining, fishing and traditional agriculture; growing environmental concerns;
changes in technology; changing lifestyle options and consumer habits; low
incomes and rising debt levels; a general decline in education and health services;
national policies and practices regarding competition; deteriorating infrastructure;
and high family-related and business costs (Donaldson & Marais, 2012;
Hoogendoorn & Nel, 2012; Hoogendoorn, Marais, & Visser, 2009; Van Niekerk &
Marais, 2008). Furthermore, decentralisation, which creates increasing pressure on
small towns to be financially viable, provides adequate services and attracts skilled
people. Intergovernmental relations have become more prescriptive, and the small
scale of small towns and cities has often led to them being unable to secure enough
funds compared to larger towns and cities. Nonetheless, small towns are not given a
high priority on the policy agendas of governments in the developing world, despite
these centres facing profound development challenges, including issues of rural
decline, inmigration, economic collapse and the lack of adequate technical and
financial resources (Nel, 2005).
The South African context is by no means different. Although the country’s
urban settlement landscape has undergone fundamental socio-spatial, political and
economic changes since the demise of apartheid in the 1990s (Harrison & Todes,
2015; Newton & Schuermans, 2013; Jürgens & Donaldson, 2012), a new menu of
challenges and problems has been set. These include a smorgasbord of corruption,
xenophobia, unemployment, re-segregation, protests, lack of service delivery and a
general collapse of the state’s institutions (the annual municipal audit of the Auditor
General is testimony of the latter). In short, South Africa has according to Penfold
(2012: 1006) “rushed from the dystopian extreme of apartheid into an attempt to
imagine and realise its utopian opposite. Despite the intentions contained in the
constitution, however, the democratic state has not realised utopia”. Changes have
1.1 Introduction 3
been differentiated across space and between settlements types (Harrison & Todes,
2015). Moreover, Turok (2014: 749) cautions that “continuity and incremental
change have been more evident than transformation and development”. Hence, the
stark contrasts of change, transformation and development between small towns
and metropolitan areas.
The most recent (2011) national census revealed that 61% of the population are
living outside metropolitan municipal boundaries. However, only five metropolitan
city regions dominate the economy by generating more than half of gross value
added (GVA) (NUDF Steering Committee, 2009). The decline of South African
small towns is a phenomenon noted in academic research as early as the 1980s (Van
der Merwe, 1982). By the mid 1990s, more than half of the 500 small towns in the
country were in economic decline (Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE),
1996). Van Niekerk and Marais (2008) reported that many of these economically
declining towns also had to cope with population increases. Furthermore, it is
remarkable that although many of these towns fall within extreme economically
impoverished areas of the country, they are not regarded as key elements in South
African national development (Van Niekerk & Marais, 2008; Donaldson & Marais,
2012; Donaldson et al., 2012).
Nel (2005) has provided a useful overview of the most noticeable changes that
took place in South African small towns in the first decade of democratic South
Africa. First, many once prosperous mining towns had collapsed, such as the coal
towns in KwaZulu-Natal. Second, there had been a significant demise of railway
and transport towns. Third, the decline in agricultural output in many areas and the
shift to new activities like game farming had significantly reduced reliance on small
local centres as points of sale and service supply (Figs. 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). Fourth,
advances in transport technology and changes in retail patterns had facilitated
access to more distant regional centres and displaced the role of small agricultural
Fig. 1.1 Small town decay in

the once prosperous
agricultural and tourism town
of Warmbaths (Bela Bela).
Photo Author (2016)
Fig. 1.2 Some more small

town decay in Warmbaths
(Bela Bela). Photo Author
(2016)
Fig. 1.3 Closed down

general dealer shop in
Rietbron. Photo Author
(2012)
service centres. Fifth, as a result of the amalgamation of smaller centres under a

single municipal authority, many towns were weakened by the loss of local gov-
ernment status, and the new local authorities were often incapacitated by insuffi-
cient finances and incapable personnel. These trends continue today. Last, the
growth of larger centres, which extended service fields and a diversified economy
and which often displaced and absorbed the functions of smaller towns in their area.
Many smaller centres are experiencing continuing poverty, the loss of job oppor-
tunities in the formal sector, the outmigration of skilled workers and a dependence
of much of the towns’ population on state welfare. A promising trend though is the
growth of tourist towns. Contrary to predictions made between the 1970s and
1990s, “small towns in South Africa are not all experiencing absolute decline” (Nel,
Taylor, Hill, & Atkinson, 2011: 395).
1.2 The Scale of Small Towns 5
1.2 The Scale of Small Towns
So what constitutes a small town in the South African context? Brenner and Schmid
(2015: 166) contend that it “is misleading to equate the urban with any singular,
bounded spatial unit (city, agglomeration, metropolitan region or otherwise); nor
can its territorial contours be coherently delineated relative to some postulated
nonurban “outside” (suburban, rural, natural, wilderness or otherwise)”. It is gen-
erally agreed that a classification of settlements is useful for understanding urban
processes and has great value in the formulation and monitoring of policy (Marais,
Nel, & Donaldson, 2016; Pacione, 2001). However, the difficulty in South Africa is
that the country’s settlement structure is far more complex than the ‘urban’ category
allows for; therefore, a typology is useful because “different settlement types have
been experiencing very different rates of economic and demographic growth in
recent years” (NUDF Steering Committee, 2009: 30). The complexity of settlement
types in post-apartheid South Africa is evident from, among other policy docu-
ments, the White Paper of Local Government (1998) and the Urban Development
Framework (1997). By the mid 1990s, there were an estimated 500 small towns of
less than 50,000 persons in the country (CDE, 1996). Until 2001, urban places were
defined by means of administrative function. Census 1996 used an administrative
definition as criterion, whereas Census 2001 applied size and density. Nel (2005:
254) warned that it is important to recognise a bipolar categorisation when
attempting to conceptualise small towns in South Africa.
Table 1.1 sets out four typologies of small towns. The Centre for Development
Enterprise’s (CDE) report distinguished three types of small towns. Similarity
between the Australian and South African settlement systems is evident in
Murphy’s (2002) classification, where metropolitan primacy in most states (pro-
vinces in South Africa) is the norm. Perimetropolitan settings are urban places
beyond the edge of the suburbs of a metro area but within commuting distance.
Towns within the zone of influence of metro areas exhibit a significant increase in
non-agricultural activities, and people have relatively high incomes. Easy access via
the national motorways, relatively safer living environments and a sense of rurality
—a concept with multiple meanings but basically entailing an “idealised lifestyle
emphasising small-scale built landscapes, community, unhurried quietness and
localism” (Perkins, 1989: 62)—contributed to a population increase in such towns
during the 1990s. Population turnaround settings are located beyond the daily
commuting limit to a metropolitan area. They can also be categorised in a tourism
context as the pleasure periphery, places where urbanites migrate to over weekends
and vacations. Populations are ‘turning around’ because of increases in number of
permanent residents, especially those in the middle- and high-income categories.
Interprovincial transport route settings fall beyond the population turnaround set-
tings but show signs of growth and/or revitalisation, or the converse. Remote idyllic
settings show signs of growth and/or the potential to develop, and they lie outside
the perimeter of the other three settings. This settlement system impacts directly on
tourism development trends in small towns around South Africa. Atkinson (2008)
Table 1.1 Classifications of small towns

Source Small town categories
CDE (1996) • Former homeland towns acting as welfare distribution centres
• Platteland (countryside) towns acting as service centres or contrarily
as reservoirs of displaced workers
• Larger centres in productive farming areas having a regional
comparative advantage
Adopted from • Perimetropolitan settings
Murphy (2002) • Population turnaround settings
• Interprovincial transport route settings
• Remote idyllic settings
Atkinson (2008) • Function
• Economic performance
• Historic economic legacy
SA Treasury (2011) • They are characterised by no large town as a core urban settlement.
Typically, these municipalities have a relatively small population, a
significant proportion of which is urban and based in one or more
small towns. Rural areas in this category are characterised by the
presence of commercial farms, as these local economies are largely
agricultural based. The existence of such important rural areas and
the agriculture sector explains their inclusion in the analysis of rural
municipalities. There are 111 such towns.
used function, economic performance and historic economic legacy in her classi-
fication. The South African Treasury’s classification is linked to municipality status.
For example, there are metropolitan authorities, B1 municipalities which are sec-
ondary cities, B2 municipalities (large towns) and small towns which are B3
municipalities. There are 111 such small town municipal structures in the country
that constitute the bulk (39%) of municipal settlement types (SA Treasury, 2011).
Toerien and Marais (2012: 7) stated that towns in South Africa are “more
connected to the rest of the country and the world than before, and it is no longer
possible to assume that the economy of the South African towns is driven only by
the needs and practices of their hinterlands”. Houghton, Dlamini, and Mthembu
(2013: 15) have recently reviewed the conceptualisation of small town classification
in South Africa and concluded that “classification beyond size is viewed as the most
useful means of critically engaging with a range of small towns and their devel-
opment concerns”. The foregoing illustrates that there is no uniform way to define a
small town in the South African context. While some classifications use quantitative
data, others can interpret a classification in qualitative terms.1 For the purpose of
this book, small towns investigated as case studies all had populations of less than
100,000.
1
For example, the case study of small towns across the USA divided small towns into four groups:
(i) Recreation or retirement destinations or adjacent to an abundance of natural assets; (ii) Have
historic downtowns or prominent cultural or heritage assets; (iii) Have or are adjacent to a college
campus; and (iv) Adjacent to a metropolitan area or an interstate highway (Lambe, 2008).
1.3 Rationale of the Book 7
1.3 Rationale of the Book
Tourism-based development is a theme equally important in the developing world

as in the developed world. When we think broadly about urban tourism in the South
African context, the vibrancy, trendiness and sophisticated infrastructures of the
metropolitan regions, combined with their impressive skylines, come to mind.
While the country’s metropolitan areas are being positioned to become globally
competitive, there are many small towns which depending on their location relative
to the metropolitan regions are struggling for survival with crippled service delivery
and a lack of competent urban management, whereas others have been transformed
into prosperous local post-production (agriculture-orientated) economies function-
ing as vibrant tourist destinations (Donaldson, 2007, 2009; Donaldson & Marais,
2012; Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2016). Glances through national and regional
tourism brochures reveal tour itineraries replete with references to small town arts
festivals, unique local culinary delights, interesting cultural and social practices,
historically significant built environments and the ever present ‘friendly locals’
eager to share their pride of and interest in their town or village with tourists and
visitors. Yet, the majority of small towns face daily struggles: literally to survive
(Donaldson, 2007). This leads to the question why some small towns prosper and
others not given that the redevelopment and revival strategies adopted in small
towns are little different to those applied in larger urban places. However, because
of their smallness, historic preservation planning is generally the starting point for
renewal in small towns. The most common strategies for small town rejuvenation
remain that of tourism promotion, hosting festivals and theming (Paradis, 2002).
In view of an unknown urban research chronicle of South African towns
(Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2016) and given the magnitude of the dilemmas and issues
in such places, Visser’s (2013) call for scholarly interrogation into aspects of small
town rejuvenation is answered in this book by investigating the three
tourism-related strategies mentioned above. On this subject, Davidson and Maitland
(1997) have suggested that locality can successfully emerge as a tourism space if
three critical factors are in place. First, localities are required to develop a total
tourism product that will attract visitors. This product is a combination of resources
and services. Second, the success of any tourism space must be linked to the
process Helmsing (2001: 17) calls “locality development”. An example is the
establishment of local training institutions aimed at providing skills for employment
in tourism. The third factor is the effective planning and management of tourism
through a partnership of the public and private sectors. Rogerson (2008) has sug-
gested that most of the successful tourism spaces in South Africa owe their
development to entrepreneurs or private developers who saw opportunities for
profitable investment. He earlier pointed out that many tourism spaces emerged as
products of proactive local economic development (LED) interventions using
tourism as the main economic sector (Rogerson, 2005). Buy-in by and active
involvement of local communities are necessary for tourism development to be
successful (see for example Donaldson, 2007; Nel, Hill, & Taylor, 2007; Booyens
& Visser, 2010; Rogerson, 2013a, b). The overarching rationale of this book is
premised primarily on observations made in two recent studies. First is Harrison
and Todes’ (2015: 148) contention that while transformation in the post-apartheid
era has been influenced and shaped by proactive state policies, these are outshone
by the “roles of private enterprise and people in shaping spatial change, enabled in
part by forms of state loosening”. Second, in the context of Pieterse’s (2009: 5)
statement that “developmentalist obsessions tend to focus on the poor and allow the
rich and wealthy classes to go about their routine reproduction of urban space
outside the analytical attention of scholars, or when they do come into the frame,
they are caricatured as rational market actors or exploitative class agents”, Visser
(2013: 88) calls for a focus in urban research in South Africa not only on the poor
but also on the millions more fortunate cohorts and argues that if we were to know
more about them, we “might suggest strategies that could provide insight into the
role they can play in developmental outcomes that could hold significant benefits
for the poor”. Particularly relevant to this volume is Brenner and Schmid’s (2015:
160) assertion that a broadly nominalist approach in the quest for new geographies
of theorising, inter alia, calls for its main orientations and commitments to include
“attention to contextual particularities and local experiences within places”.
The contents of the book resonate with the intersection of the power elite and
their impacts on small town tourism—in some chapters more vividly than others.
Because the book focuses on small town tourism geographies in South Africa, the
literature on small town tourism in the country is reviewed in Chap. 2 to provide a
contextual background. Each subsequent chapter2 begins with an overview of
international literature to give the conceptual context of the case studies each
chapter explores. In Chap. 3, the concept of small town tourism branding is
illustrated by an exploration of the Richmond book town. In Chap. 4, the branding
theme is probed further in an investigation of two winners of the Kwêla Town of
the Year competition namely Fouriesburg and De Rust. Chap. 5 documents the
branding of Sedgefield through its proclamation as Africa’s first Cittaslow (slow
town), a process driven by the local power elite to the exclusion of town’s poor who
have no understanding of the intentions of the Cittaslow movement and its potential
benefits for the town. Chapter 6 is a case study of Greyton’s tourism-led rural
gentrification by which a small town has transformed in three decades to become a
sought after place of residence for elite in-migrants so making the town a jewel
tourism destination while reinforcing racial segregation. Because festivals and
events—creations of the wealthy—have made significant financial contributions to
small towns, Chap. 7 considers festivals and events as strategies to market and
2
All the research-based chapters in the book are based on qualitative research where interviews
were conducted with key role players in the case study towns. For a detailed explanation of the
methodologies, see the respective sources referenced in the chapters. Thanks are due to Ruth
Massey, Manfred Spocter, Lizette Vermeulen and the postgraduate urban geography students of
2012 and 2014 for selected fieldwork assistance, as well as Pieter de Necker for language editing.
1.3 Rationale of the Book 9
brand small towns in a particular way. Case studies of the economic impacts of
festivals on small towns are assessed, and the assessment methodologies used are
critiqued. Chapter 8 provides a synthesis by drawing on the thesis of the urban
growth machine by which power elites help to shape the identities, brands and
tourism-led developments of small towns.
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Chapter 2
A Decade of Small Town Tourism
Research in South Africa
Abstract There has been limited focus on small town tourism as a research focus
in South Africa until the mid-2000s. However, since then, there has been a major
multidisciplinary scholarly interest into this field of tourism and urban studies.
Previous literature reviews mostly covered work done by geographers. This chapter
reviews the expanded literature grouped into selected overarching themes that
include the following: second homes; LED and developmental issues of small town
tourism; economic impacts of tourism; nature-based tourism and rural dynamics;
and niche tourism.

Keywords Second homes Small town LED and developmental issues

Economic impacts of tourism Nature-based tourism and rural dynamics
Niche tourism themes
2.1 Introduction
In the first review of small town tourism in South Africa, Donaldson (2007) started
with a broad introduction about the geography of small towns in South Africa, in
particular the policy environment (more specifically local economic development—
LED). On this followed a focus on the then current thematic issues such as heritage
development, the conservation of the built environment, tourism development and
the hosting of arts and other locally themed festivals and events. Attention then
turned to the emerging contours of a selection of impacts caused by tourism
development, and more particularly, the problematic occurrence of second-home
development and emerging processes of tourism-led rural gentrification were
spotlighted.
With the exception of a few studies by a few specialists in the field of tourism
marketing, the bulk of scholarly tourism research undertaken in a South African
context over the past decade was done by geographers. Three recent reviews on
tourism scholarship illustrate this by identifying specific focus areas in tourism
geography. First, Visser and Hoogendoorn (2011) identified four overarching

14 2 A Decade of Small Town Tourism Research in South Africa
themes: (1) responsible tourism; (2) pro-poor tourism impacts; (3) tourism as a
vehicle for LED; and (4) the role of small medium micro enterprises (SMMEs) in
tourism development. Second, Rogerson and Visser (2014) identified five clusters
of research: (1) tourism and urban economic restructuring associated with the
establishment of new products for leisure tourism; (2) the role of the accommo-
dation sector; (3) slum tourism as a distinctive form of pro-poor tourism;
(4) African cities as non-leisure destinations; and (5) informal sector tourism. Third,
the most recent review (Hoogendoorn & Rogerson, 2015) adds research themes like
tourism policy issues, local economic restructuring and urban tourism. Their the-
matic foci include regional tourism, nature tourism and various forms of niche
tourism, namely heritage, culinary, gay and lesbian, spa, township, volunteer,
backpacking, birding, agritourism and adventure tourism.
Spatially, the post-apartheid tourism boom has, in the main, perpetuated a
skewed pattern of product provision for urban tourism, where the large metropolitan
regions reign supreme. This is clearly reflected in academic debate and research
(Hoogendoorn & Rogerson, 2015; Rogerson & Visser, 2011a, b, 2014; Visser &
Hoogendoorn, 2011). These reviews do not all highlight small town tourism and
those that do (Visser & Hoogendoorn, 2011; Rogerson & Visser, 2014) refer to a
handful of studies under the umbrella of small town tourism geography. Although
the incidence and impacts of urban tourism have grown and become increasingly
recognised over the past ten years, this chapter argues that the imprint of urban
tourism development is now emerging in smaller urban settlements in South Africa.
This chapter casts a wider net to incorporate small town tourism scholarship across
disciplines in South Africa over the past ten years by not only reflecting on
geographers’ scholarship.
The scholarly contributions on small town tourism over the said period can be
grouped into five fields. First, the bulk of research has focused on second homes.
Second, research into LED and developmental issues of small town tourism have
continued to strengthen. Third are the investigations into the economic impacts of
tourism, especially festivals. Fourth, nature-based tourism and rural dynamics have
come to the fore. Fifth, niche tourism themes have appeared of which route tourism
and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) are the most prominent. In addition, some
new unexplored themes in South African contexts are covered elsewhere in the
book. These include the branding of towns (Chap. 3), Africa’s first “slow city”
(cittaslow), Sedgefield (Chap. 4) and a renewed look at rural (small town) gentri-
fication with the small town of Greyton as case study (Chap. 6).
2.2 Second-Home Research
The tourism theme on which the most scholarly papers have been produced over the
past ten years, albeit mainly by two scholars (Gustav Visser and Gijsbert
Hoogendoorn; the latter’s doctoral research being the fulcrum of the activity), is
second homes (see, for example, Hoogendoorn, 2011; Hoogendoorn & Visser,
2.2 Second-Home Research 15
2010a, b, 2011a, b, 2015; Visser & Hoogendoorn, 2015). Principally, their research
argues that rising prosperity of the middle- and higher-income groups, mainly
whites, combined with growth in leisure time explains the increased demand for
second homes in small town South Africa, stimulating the onset of the
post-productivist countryside (Ingle, 2013). Hoogendoorn (2011) has, however,
made the link between labour migration of the poor and tourism migration,
claiming that second homes is not a phenomenon of only the elite. Visser and
Hoogendoorn have identified some noteworthy prospects for second-home
research. These include a call for an historical look at the phenomenon, the con-
text of these homes in relation to government services (e.g. water usage and
traffic-related issues in peak seasons) and, oddly, a call for national policy on
second homes, especially international second homeowners. Furthermore, investi-
gations on issues of the so-called swallows, the non-residents and their migratory
patterns are suggested. Finally, a critique of the neoliberal approach that will
concentrate on the nexus between tourism and urban development, and the
potentially desirable aspects of second-home development, must mainly look at the
economic advantages and their role in a post-productive countryside.
Due to the scenic and attractive localities of second homes outside metropolitan
and secondary city areas, small towns have served as fitting study sites to inves-
tigate those aspects of second homes that relate to the environment (Long &
Hoogendoorn, 2013, 2014), the economy (Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2010a, b,
2011a) and the social dimensions and constructions of place (Van Laar et al., 2014).
Spatially, the case study towns covered in such research are typically within reach
of a metropolitan area, for example Hartbeespoort Dam (Baker & Mearns, 2012;
Long & Hoogendoorn, 2013, 2014), Rosendal (Hay & Visser, 2014), Franschhoek
(Van Laar, Cottyn, Donaldson, Zoomers, & Ferreira, 2014), Dullstroom (Hunter &
Mearns, 2014), Greyton and Clarens (Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2010a), but they also
included geographically isolated case studies such as Rhodes (Hoogendoorn,
Marais, & Visser, 2009) and Nieu-Bethesda (Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2010a).
2.3 Festivals and Events
An extensive informational literature on festivals as tourist attractions has been

produced, and Quinn (2005) has argued that the term ‘festival tourism’ has pri-
marily been investigated in terms of economic potential. Although the focus here is
on small towns in South Africa, it coincides with the international research focus
over the past ten years. Cultural festivals have become important tools for tourism
promotion in small towns. Indeed, Rogerson (2014) has assented that festivals,
especially those staged in small towns, can be key levers for place-based LED.
Local authorities view these events as significant platforms for marketing the
tourism assets of small town economies as part of their strategies for LED and
growth (Donaldson, 2007). In particular, the economic impacts of festivals and
events have been studied on both town and regional scales (Ngandu, Gwenhure, &
Mbanda, 2014; Snowball & Antrobus, 2013; Van Wyk, Saayman, & Roussouw,
2013; Donaldson, 2011, 2012, 2015; Saayman & Rossouw, 2011; Van der Merwe,
Saayman, & Saayman, 2009); market segmentations (Saayman, Saayman, &
Joubert, 2012; Kruger, Saayman, & Ellis, 2011); and the management issues of
organising festivals (Saayman, Kruger, & Erasmus, 2012a; Marais & Saayman,
2011). Furthermore, there have been investigations of motives for attending festi-
vals as well as the experiences and viewpoints of festival attendees (festinos)
(Saayman, Kruger, & Erasmus, 2012a, b; Kruger & Saayman, 2012a, b; Slabbert &
Saayman, 2011; Saayman, 2011; Kruger, Saayman, & Ellis, 2010; Saayman &
Kruger, 2010; Kruger, Saayman, & Saayman, 2009; Snowball & Willis, 2006a, b);
the socio-demographic characteristics of attendees and their visiting patterns
(Saayman & Saayman, 2006a, b); and who spends what at the events (Saayman,
Saayman, & Slabbert, 2011; Saayman & Krugell, 2010; Saayman & Kruger, 2010).
Issues of the greening of festivals have received little attention apart from the
study by Dobson and Snowball (2012) that reported that visitors were willing to pay
an average of R2.30 more for tickets to fund a recycling programme at small town
festivals. The measuring of community perceptions of the impacts of key festivals in
small towns such as Oudtshoorn and Grahamstown (Viviers & Slabbert, 2012) has
received scant attention. Some research has paid attention to the contribution of the
transformational nature of art festivals as platforms for debating the goals and values
of society in post-apartheid South Africa (Snowball & Webb, 2008; Snowball &
Willis, 2006a, b). A single study has investigated the VICE model (visitors, industry,
community and environment) as a crucial success factor in the sustainable devel-
opment of any tourism destination (Van Niekerk & Coetzee, 2011).
In their application of omnivore/univore1 hypothesis to the Grahamstown
National Arts Festival as case study, Snowball, Jamal, and Willis (2010: 467)
observed an “intriguing intermediate state between Bourdieu-like high culture
univores and Peterson omnivores, which could have interesting implications for the
development of social tolerance in multi-cultural South Africa.” When South Africa
hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010, the Grahamstown Festival was scheduled to
coincide with this global mega-event to augment the economic impacts. However,
Snowball (2012) found that less than a quarter (23%) of the festivalgoers also
attended World Cup soccer matches in nearby host city Port Elizabeth.
South African small towns host a total of more than 1000 festivals every year but
typically not all are geared to attract visitors from outside the towns’ catchment
areas. The exceptions are the three main national art festivals (Grahamstown in
July, KKNK in April and Aardklop in October). The works by Saayman and
Saayman (2006a, b) and Labuschagne and Saayman (2014) have shown that the
location and the size of a town are vital determinants of the impact of an event on a
1
Cultural omnivores (generally higher-income and education groups) are consumers of a wide
variety of both high and popular cultural goods. Contrarily, cultural univores have a narrower
cultural taste and are less open and tolerant, and are more likely to exclude other cultures
(Snowball, Jamal, & Willis, 2010).
2.3 Festivals and Events 17
host town and its region. In Chap. 7, selected small town festivals are compared
regarding their economic impacts and visitor trends.
Sports events have been shown to make major capital injections into the local
economies of metropolitan areas (Kotze & Visser, 2008). Similar to the many small
town festivals, there are as many regional sports events and usually the festivals and
sports events are aligned. Inexplicably, research on small town sports events has
been limited to only a few studies. A Mafikeng case study demonstrated that sports
tourism can improve the town’s economic activity through the hosting of regular or
small sports tourism events (Marumo, Lubbe, & Pelser, 2015). Swart, Bob, and
Arrey’s (2008) study revealed that local communities along the Berg River are not
involved in managing and planning the annual Berg River Canoe Marathon and that
the event gave very few opportunities for locals to leverage any economic and
social benefits associated with the event. Yet, Ingle (2008) has argued that the
obscure small town Fauresmith should use the international and national media
attention it receives during the annual 200-km endurance horse-riding event, by
mounting a focused destination branding campaign.
A novel addition to festival tourism studies is the spotlight on the Matric Vac
Festival, an annual post-matric rite-of-passage festival, held in November and
December. According to Rogerson and Harmer (2015), “[T]his festival has parallels
with similar rite-of-passage youth tourism festivals occurring in USA and Australia.
It is shown this festival is a post-school rite of passage for mainly affluent, white
youth in South Africa and focused geographically at a small number of coastal
destinations where common themes are the provision of beach entertainment,
organized parties, night clubbing and live music acts”. The most popular venues are
the small towns of Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape, Umhlanga Rocks and
Ballito in KwaZulu-Natal.
Other events are associated with towns entering competitions to be awarded
town of the year status (see Chap. 4 for a discussion on the Kwela Town of the
Year competition). A similar competition for branding exercises is the Volksblad
Tourism Town of the Year Competition as a means of stimulating sustainable
tourism in Free State and Northern Cape provinces (Hattingh & Kokt, 2013).
Unlike Kwela Town of the Year, where the general public votes for a regional town
to enter the national competition, followed by a round of voting, the Volksblad
towns are shortlisted to ten by means of the public voting via SMSs. Thereafter, the
sponsors adjudicate the ten towns based on a set of criteria and on the towns’
presentations made to the adjudicators.
2.4 On the Margins of Small Towns: Water, Nature

and Agricultural Environments
Although rural and conservation areas fall outside the scope of this book’s theme of
small towns, is it appropriate to reflect on how the conservation and rural areas
surrounding the country’s small towns are being presented in research. What fol-
lows is an overview of this particular set of the literature.
Studies of nature tourism and its impacts on nearby small towns and rural
villages include those about investigating economic linkages (or the lack thereof)
and economic leakages. Hunt, Rogerson, and Rogerson (2013), Rogerson C. M.
and Rogerson J. M. (2014), and Rogerson J. M. and Rogerson C. M. (2014) view
nature and agritourism as vital mechanisms for achieving the objectives of pro-poor
tourism (see also, Hill, Nel, & Trotter, 2006) and as first steps towards maximising
pro-poor impacts. However, Pillay and Rogerson (2013) point out that the coastal
tourism economy of KwaZulu-Natal is characterised by a pattern of sourcing by
hotels which, on the one hand is geographically localised but, on the other hand, is
not pro-poor. Van der Merwe, Ferreira, and Van Niekerk (2013) contend that for
rural, ecotourism and agritourism products to be successful, they must secure dis-
tinctive, innovative and spatially focused product packaging, marketing and pro-
motion. A success story of doing this is the pairing of wine and food in
Stellenbosch (Ferreira & Muller, 2013). Tourism development tends to favour the
economic rather than a combination of ecological, economic and social dynamics.
Regrettably, tourism studies on environmental and ecological linkages and impacts
are rare in South African small town and rural contexts. Because poor “under-
standings of interlinks between coastal ecosystems by both public and private
entities has led to short-sighted tourist investment which fails to consider beach
capacity or resource constraints… [a]…participatory risk assessment of the tourism
sector by interrogating land use-ecology interactions as necessary for optimal
relationships between coastal uses and protection of coastal ecosystems” has been
proposed by Ahmed and Nadasen (2013: 7).
Tourism strategies and initiatives have been linked to various national and
provincial non-tourism-specific policies since 1994. The spatial development ini-
tiative (SDI) launched in 2001 was aimed to spur development in previously
underdeveloped areas having significant potential. While the initiative initially
focused on industrialisation, tourism development was included to help alleviate
poverty. Tourism is currently an important component in six of the 13 SDIs. But the
provision of necessary infrastructure has been identified as critical for developing
tourism initiatives in these areas (Rogerson C. M. 2001, 2013a, b, 2014).
Traditional villages and small towns in the former Transkei homelands have been
targeted for ecotourism and nature-based tourism, where these have emerged as a
strategic focus of entrepreneurship and SMME development. Mazibuko (2007)
examined tourism leakages in rural northern Drakensberg and showed how partici-
pation in tourism by the local African communities was severely limited and that
blacks were mainly providers of labour. Similarly, a case study of Cork and Belfast,
villages neighbouring the Kruger National Park, also shows no benefits to the local
communities (Strickland-Munro, Moore, & Freitag-Ronaldson, 2010). On the other
hand, the Wilderness National Park, located next to the small town of Wilderness, has
shown to be a major tourism spin-off for the town, more so in terms of social impacts
than economic gains (Saayman, Van der Merwe, Saayman, & Mouton, 2009).
Using Mpumalanga towns as case studies, Nieman, Visser, and Van Wyk (2008)
proposed a three-factor instrument as a diagnostic tool to identify problematic areas
for remedial action to manage sustainable tourism and prevent the leakage of
2.4 On the Margins of Small Towns: Water, Nature and Agricultural Environments 19
profits. Magi and Nzama’s (2009) established the degree to which local commu-
nities from iSimangaliso perceive any benefit accruing from increased tourism
activities in the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg World Heritage Sites and found that the
communities were not fully conversant with the policies and strategies meant to
enhance their participation in tourism activities. The study also revealed that
community members were not generally keen on following a
tourism-developmental path. But Mearns’ (2012a, b) research found that there is a
strong spatial association between community-based tourism and Peace Parks,
which creates a mutually beneficial situation. Regarding community-based tourism
in deep rural traditional villages, Giampiccoli and Kalis (2012a) located
community-based tourism within a more general strategy of diversifying rural
livelihoods and found that local culture becomes a tourism resource by using
indigenous foods, arts and crafts as tourism attractions. Similarly, community-based
tourism can play a role in poverty alleviation as discerned in a case study of
Mpondoland (Giampiccoli & Kalis, 2012b). Decision-making, power and control in
the tourism economy of many small towns are in the hands of a group of white
tourism operators to whom accrue most of the local revenue stream from tourism,
whereas the local impoverished communities feel excluded (Mograbi & Rogerson,
2007; Irvine, Kepe, De Wet, & Hamunime, 2016).
According to Spierenburg and Brooks (2014: 151) “[S]paces of privatised
wildlife production, in the form of game farms, private nature reserves and other
forms of wildlife-oriented land use, are an increasingly prominent feature of the
South African countryside. Whilst there is a well-developed literature on the social
impacts of state-run protected areas, the outcomes of privatised wildlife production
have thus far received little attention”. They argue that the socio-spatial dynamics
of the wildlife industry, driven by capitalist imperatives, relate to the commodified
production of nature and ‘wilderness’. Emotional geographies of farm conversions
to tourism-related game farms perhaps do not fall under the broad theme of tourism
studies, but the political, social and land-use planning contexts thereof are inter-
twined with tourism development. The impact that such developments on the lives
of farm dwellers in private game reserve initiatives in northern KwaZulu-Natal left
was disempowerment and their lives effectively invisible (Brooks & Kjelstrup,
2014; Kamuti, 2016). Similarly, concerning the Cradock area, Mkhize (2014: 207)
concluded that “the extreme nature of the historical land question and the continued
dominance of a historically white land-owning class in the semi-arid areas render
farm workers/dwellers structurally vulnerable to having their residential arrange-
ments on farms terminated at any given moment”.
The research domain of water-based tourism offers numerous potential research
themes, for example whale-watching, shark-cage diving, swimming with dolphins,
sea-kayaking, white-river rafting, resort camping and caravanning, mineral hot
springs and spas and surfing trips to name a few. Marine-based tourism has the
potential to promote and increase conservation efforts of marine wildlife when
carried out in an appropriate manner (Wilson & Tisdell, 2003). Marine-based
tourism activities are known for their conservation efforts, but they can also benefit
areas economically, socially and mentally. Although marine-based tourism brings
economic benefits to coastal towns, there are also substantial costs involved in
attracting large numbers of tourists to such towns (Davenport & Davenport, 2006).
The costs associated with increased numbers of tourists in an area are both envi-
ronmental and socio-economic (Maharaj, Hara, & Pithers, 2003). In this regard, De
Witt (2014) calls for an understanding of the knowledge of tourists’ perceptions
regarding eco-efficient practices and further argues that these will provide tourism
managers with insights how environmental awareness can be created and tourists’
environmentally responsible behaviour can be promoted on the Vaal River, a major
recreational and tourist attraction flanked by numerous small towns. Dive tourism at
Sodwana Bay in Kwazulu-Natal (Mograbi & Rogerson, 2007) and Kleinbaai in the
Western Cape (Leatham, 2014) are examples of niche tourism in small town South
Africa. In Kleinbaai, more than 85% of overnight visitors in guesthouses mentioned
shark-cage diving trips as reason for the visits (Leatham, 2014). Whereas McKay’s
(2013) study of the economic impact of river rafting on the Ash River estimated that
then activity generates R1.6 million per annum directly for the local economy, a
proposed mini hydroelectric power station threatens to destroy the rapids, ending all
white-river rafting and slalom-canoeing tourism in the area. There are pro-poor
impacts from dive tourism developments, the most vital being the creation of wage
and employment opportunities for members of the local community (Leathem,
2014; Mograbi & Rogerson, 2007; Parhanse, 2007).
Regarding social and mental benefits, Saayman, Slabbert, and Van der Merwe
(2009) found that the travel behaviour of visitors to South African marine resorts is
the same as those identified in the international literature, namely resting and
relaxation, enriching and learning experiences, participation in recreational activi-
ties, personal values and social experience. Concerning thermal spring resorts in the
Western Cape, Boekstein (2013) found that only one of the eight in the province
has a focus on health and wellness, the others primarily functioning as family
leisure resorts. Potentially valuable natural resources, such as mineral-rich thermal
spring water, are thus not being optimally used as tourist attractions in the province.
The study of Tuwani (2011) applied tourism destination competitiveness as a proxy
indicator of successful development of the resorts in rural Limpopo.
The natural environment does not necessarily serve as the main motivational
factor for the adventure tourist as Giddy and Webb’s (2015) study revealed for
Tsitsikamma. Camping activity has a strong nature-based element but to date is an
underresearched theme. Typically, the most popular camping spots in the coastal
towns of Kwazulu-Natal (KZN), Eastern Cape and Western Cape are generally
filled to capacity during the Easter and summer seasons. Inland areas typically have
a water-based or wildlife theme such as the many resorts and game farms in
Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga. Van Heerden’s (2011) study, the only one
of its kind on this theme, found that Bela-Bela (formerly Warmbaths) in Limpopo
offered only two major camping sites in the 1980s, but subsequently numerous sites
have been developed within a 20-km radius from the town, some of which have
four- or five-star ratings from the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa
(TGCSA). In addition, Bela-Bela presents an excellent example of a
post-productivist landscape. In using Ferreira’s (1992) doctoral study as starting
2.4 On the Margins of Small Towns: Water, Nature and Agricultural Environments 21
Fig. 2.1 Location of tourism venues outside Bela-Bela (data for compiling the map courtesy of
Kevin Mearns) (Donaldson, 2017)
point, Donaldson (2017) explored the exponential growth in the tourism-related

offerings such as holiday towns, nature reserves, water-based resorts surrounding
the town. Where there were less than ten tourism-related venues by 1990 there were
by 2017 in excess of 100 tourism venues (Fig. 2.1) and agricultural practices have
in many cases been replaced by tourism-orientated practices.
2.5 LED and Tourism Development
It is noted in Donaldson (2007) that most research on small town tourism done prior
to 2006 in South Africa concentrated on LED issues. The state-of-the-art review of
LED in the country’s small towns by the mid-2000s by Atkinson and Zingle (2004)
(quoted in Human, Marais, & Botes, 2008) singled out the following trends:
• The role that the demise of rail transport played in the decline of small towns.
• The effect on rural towns of diminishing agricultural output, as well as a switch
to game farming, a change that caused a decline in the growth of the dependent
small towns.
• The growth of tourism towns.

• The growth of larger small towns.
• The link between welfare grants and the economies of small towns.
• The loss by small towns of their local government function after the amalga-
mated local government system came into effect in 2000.
The attention to LED tourism research has persisted over the past ten years
(Hoogendoorn & Nel, 2012; Nel, Hill, & Goodenough, 2007; Nel & Rogerson,
2007; Parhanse, 2007; Rogerson, 2014, 2010; Rogerson & Rogerson, 2012—also
see the review on LED by Nel (2001), (2005), Nel and Rogerson (2005), Rogerson
(2006)). Although Houghton, Dlamini, and Mthembu’s (2013) review on small
town LED studies does not focus on tourism per se, the paper does provide a
valuable background to “small town classification and the dynamics of change
within towns, the policy arena which affects small town development, and the
nature of Local Economic Development in small towns” (Houghton, Dlamini, &
Mthembu, 2013: 13). Nel’s (2001: 1015) earlier observation remains relevant,
namely that “beyond the four metropoles, most cities and large towns are investi-
gating LED options but little concrete progress has been made to date. Quite clearly
the lack of resources, the tenuous fiscal position of many smaller centres and the
shortage of skilled staff are all serious impediments to the successful pursuits of
LED”. Most small towns lacked capacity to set up functioning LED units and where
operational they focused on non-tourism-related developments (Nel, 2001). For
example, as is the case in many underresourced small town municipalities, the
tourism strategy of the //Khara Hais municipality explicitly stated that the com-
munity’s need for basic infrastructure, like water and roads, is often considered
greater than the need for tourism infrastructure (Donaldson, 2007). Consequently,
infrastructure projects which could enhance tourism development are often exclu-
ded from existing integrated development plans (IDPs) due to their lower priority.
Small towns also have no standing committees for tourism development. KZN has
encouraged the applications of a model of governance based on the principle of
cluster investment strategy, where geographical groups of small towns assist with
capacity constraints (www.kzn.org.za). In Gauteng (albeit a major conurbation), an
audit of all the IDPs of local authorities revealed that they do not “respond to the
needs of tourism sufficiently” (www.gauteng.net).
The decline in a small town’s economic sectors, such as mining, can have
positive spin-offs for tourism development (Najafi, Hamzeh, & Moqimi, 2014; Van
der Merwe & Rogerson, 2013; Booyens & Visser, 2010). Despite the historical
contexts of Kimberley as the town where the diamond rush started in the 1870s, the
town is still not considered a tourist destination per se (Van der Merwe & Rogerson,
2013). Instead, it is a stopover en route elsewhere. Notwithstanding many efforts to
put the Big Hole on the tourist map, “all policies and investments implemented by
De Beers in terms of developing tourism and increasing the rate of tourists in
Kimberley, have doomed to failure” (Najafi, Hamzeh, & Moqimi, 2014: 9).
Pilgrims Rust, a whole town declared a national heritage area, is an exceptional
example of tourism-led growth in a post-mining era that has sustained its tourist
2.5 LED and Tourism Development 23
numbers over the years. Adaptive reuse of specific historical facilities within this
small town exemplifies heritage tourism based on the use of abandoned mine
facilities so illustrating the advantage of tapping into local history (Nel, 2002).
Today, however, due to poor management of the Mpumalanga Provincial
Government (who owns most of the properties in the town), a mere handful of
tourism establishments are still operational.
Another area of attention is the potential for linking small towns or rural com-
munities in themed or branded routes for tourists (Department of Recreation and
Tourism, 2012; Lourens, 2007; Parhanse, 2007). The tourism potential of heritage
routes is often emphasised in LED strategies, where the routes are envisaged as
providers of revenue-generating opportunities for conserving heritage assets. In this
regard, the potential for economic development and heritage conservation of the
Liberation Heritage Route has been explored by Snowball and Courtney (2010).
Literary tourism routes based on stand-alone authors is another trail-themed area for
study and application (Stiebel, 2013). The study of Van der Merwe (2014) ques-
tioned the heritage status of battlefields tourism in Dundee.
Most tourism-related studies are conducted with the consumer (the tourist) in
mind. A notable exception is Prinsloo and Pelser’s (2015) case study of Mafikeng
(North West Province capital) which investigated the impact and potential of
tourism as perceived by the local population. They found a generally positive
attitude among residents toward tourism development. The issue of tourism-led
LED is synonymous with place-making as evident in the case study of Coffee Bay
(Eastern Cape), where place-making determinants and processes applicable to the
town entail “optimal use of resources that are unique to an area, for the economic
(increased investment in the area, rise in tourists coming in, improved environments
for fishing, establishment of a fully functional and beneficial fishing industry),
social (improved well-being of local residents), community (infrastructure and
livelihood within the town) and otherwise benefits” (Sitinga & Auroibindo, 2014, n.
p.n).
Halseth and Meiklejohn (2009) point out that small towns constantly search for
new activities to replace or supplement traditional economies. One of the most
common strategies is tourism which is widely recognised as an instrument of LED.
Until the 1980s, tourism-led LED was largely confined to the place-marketing
activities of the traditional sea, sun and sand resorts of North America and Western
Europe. The role of tourism SMMEs in the small town of Parys (Free State) has
shown that there are a number of challenges for such enterprises in the town and
these are probably not unique to this small town (Booysen & Visser, 2010). They
recommended that SMMEs focus on attractions in their development of tourism
products. Specific market segments, such budget tourists and the family market,
need to be explored. Nel (2005) argues that small towns must respond to job losses
and crises and take advantage of new growth opportunities by initiating LED.
Regarding SMME support from government, Nyawo and Mubangizi (2015) con-
tend that although rural small town arts and crafts enterprises have high growth
potential, this can only happen if municipalities, in collaboration with other
stakeholders, can effectively support this sector.
Notwithstanding national government’s acknowledgement of the essential role

of local governments in supporting tourism development, they have been forced to
introduce a number of supportive initiatives to capacitate these institutions (Gibb &
Nel, 2007; Van Niekerk & Marais, 2008; Rogerson C. M. 2013a, b; Ingle, 2014).
Despite policy implementation, there appears to be a lack of coordination of policy
to harness the potential of tourism as a LED agent. Van Niekerk and Marais (2008)
confirm one of the main obstacles to tourism LED in small towns, such in
Philippolis and neighbouring towns, namely the lack of skilled people to manage
some of the initiatives. Local policymakers are confronted by some fundamental
unresolved issues relating to urban tourism and inclusive development in South
Africa (Rogerson C. M. 2013a, b). These are:
First, is the extent to which local governments can be credited as drivers or responsible for
the growth of urban tourism. …Second, is the need for greater policy intervention to secure
more inclusive growth linked to tourism. On the existing record the most promising areas
for policy attention surround the strengthening the role of emerging black entrepreneurs in
tourism supply chains as well as expanding their involvement in the direct ownership of
new tourism products. Lastly, the expansion of urban tourism points to the need for
improving capacity within South African local governments in order to regulate or control
the tourism sector in responsible ways so as to at least preserve and potentially to improve
the environment for the development and growth of existing and future tourism businesses
(Rogerson C. M. 2013b: 198).
Rogerson C. M. (2013a: 21) points to the “need for widespread capacity building
for local governments in tourism planning which must include both those local
governments which are the leading destinations for tourism visits and those
localities which are tourism-dependent local economies”. Similarly, the advanta-
geous synergies between local authorities, value chains, private sector and donor
funding are needed to strengthen LED portfolios of local authorities (Ingle, 2014).
A case study of the redevelopment of the town of Alicedale has shown how the
town revived due to the formation of strong public–private partnerships that con-
centrated on tourism-based development in collaboration with the community
(Gibb & Nel, 2007). A key observation they made was that development is not just
about planning by business (private sector) and government officials, but there
needs to be a “significant amount of information transfer and much higher levels of
community engagement” in the process (Gibb & Nel, 2007: 83). Attention to
community participation in tourism development has been explored by
Ramukumba, Pietersen, Mmbengwa, and Coetzee (2011). Their case study of
towns and rural areas in the Garden Route found that interested groups’ partici-
pation depended on “power, objectives, and expectations from community partic-
ipation and these shape their attitudes towards forms of community participation”
(Ramukumba et al., 2011: n.p.n). They identified three levels in the process of
tourism development, namely “(1) community participation in the decision-making
process of tourism development in their areas, (2) community participation in the
management of actual operating tourism projects in their areas, and (3) community
participation in the actual development and marketing of tourism projects in their
areas” (Ramukumba et al., 2011: n.p.n).
Florida (2002) contends that the clustering of human capital is a decisive factor
in regional economic growth and it is key to the successful regeneration of cities
and small towns. The role played by the creative class of small enterprises in
fostering tourism-led developments is also well known, yet scantly researched
(Ingle, 2010; Irvine et al., 2016). Private-led tourism development initiatives in
Victoria West (Van Rooy & Marais, 2012) and Richmond (Donaldson &
Vermeulen, 2012) all appear to be operating within a fragile partnership between
the creative-class champions and the community. Some municipalities have seen
the introduction of economic development agencies (EDA) and the implementation
of small town regeneration models. The Aspire EDA in the Amathole municipal
area is in this regard an outstanding example (McKibbin, Binns, & Nel, 2012;
Xuza, 2012).
Some provincial governments have attempted to integrate the SDIs into their
existing and new regional planning strategies, such as the Tourism Master Plan of
the North West Province. They identified high-density (Hartbeespoortdam/
Rustenburg) and secondary nodes (e.g. Klerksdorp/Potchefstroom, Mafikeng/
Zeerust) to channel investment opportunities into tourism development. These areas
are said to tie into the Platinum SDI (Donaldson, 2007).
Rogerson’s (2007) analysis of tourism SMMEs in one of the poorer provinces in
the country, Mpumalanga, produced a set of key policy implications (Box 2.1)
possibly representative of issues experienced in other poorer provinces. In less
well-off regions, such as the Karoo region (spanning a number of provinces), a
custom-built spaceport would not be a far-fetched idea given the renewed status of
the region and that this would profoundly affect the development of tourism in the
arid interior (Ingle, 2011).
Box 2.1: Key policy implications for Mpumalanga

• The development of the tourism SMME economy is taking place within a
context of the differential roles and patterns of international versus
domestic tourism flows in the province.
• Long-haul international tourism is the leading driver of the provincial
tourism economy and furnishes a range of opportunities for SMME
development.
• The importance of opportunities for SMME development in relation to
patterns of domestic and regional tourism flows must not be overlooked.
• The tourism economy is dominated numerically by SMMEs, the majority
of which are owned by white entrepreneurs, a segment of whom would
fall into the categorisation of lifestyle entrepreneurs.
• In common with the growth of tourism in South Africa as a whole, since
1993, there has occurred a surge in the birth of new tourism SMMEs
across Mpumulanga, especially for accommodation provision.
• Among the new entrepreneurs in the Mpumulanga tourism economy are a

small group of black tourism entrepreneurs, many of whom are targets of
national and provincial government support programmes.
• Using indicators of occupancy and entrepreneurs’ own acknowledgement
of recent business performance, the tourism SMME economy is in a
relatively healthy condition.
• A critical policy issue for provincial tourism relates to the shortage of
labour with adequate skills in the tourism and hospitality sector.
• As a marketing-intensive sector, the improvement and enhanced market-
ing of the tourism products of Mpumalanga is essential.
Source: Rogerson (2007: 90)
The expansion and growth of enterprise development in small towns has been
extensively investigated by Toerien and Seaman (2010, 2012, 2014) as well as a
specific focus on tourism (Toerien, 2012). The ability to reap the benefits while
managing the risks associated with increased pressure placed on Clarens as major
tourism town is paramount in the town’s future (Marais, Venter, De Gouveia,
Campbell, & Myburgh, 2012). Overcommercialisation and its impacts on the
character of the town, its services and equality in development are exacerbated by
the introduction of three-storey Protea Hotel building which threatens the town with
the loss of its popularity among visitors as a tranquil and scenery-rich destination
(Marais et al., 2012). The uniqueness of attractions is well known to be a prime
motivation for visiting a small town (Ferreira, 2007). So, Ramukumba (2014)
investigated the potential economic and developmental impacts in cases, where
iconic unique attractions exist or disappear. The cessation of the Outeniqua Choo
Choo train service is a telling example of the latter (Ramukumba, 2014).
Regarding small tourism businesses (STBs) in George, Biljohn (2015: 1) found
that a “disconnect exists between some support programmes and interventions, and
the needs of STBs to access such opportunities” and the study furthermore “points
to the need for the development of a programme evaluation model for local gov-
ernment programmes”. In another case study of George, Lamont and Ferreira
(2015) discuss the challenges facing the management and development of tourism.
They hold that the way in which decision-makers conceptualise tourism as a driver
of economic development significantly affects management and ultimately policy
development and delivery. Generally, local authority officials have a low status of
understanding tourism and because of the “low budget allocation and the lack of
clarity about its nature and interests, [tourism] is currently labeled as the Cinderella
of service delivery” (Lamont & Ferreira, 2015: 1). It is evident that the duality of
the tourism space economy remains intact throughout the country. In the Eastern
Cape, for example, stark disparities exist between the relatively more developed but
localised and nodal formal, urban-industrial, first economy system, and the rela-
tively large but underdeveloped, poor, informal, rural, subsistence-based
agricultural economy of the province (Acheampong, 2016). This scenario applies to

all the provinces that contain vast areas of former homelands.
A number of papers published by J.M. Rogerson have given invaluable insights
into the neglected topic of tourism accommodation in small towns. Specifically, she
has observed a significant shift in the geographical distribution of hotels and hotel
capacities in South Africa (Rogerson J.M. 2013a, b, c). She found that an
increased spatial concentration of hotels within the category of the country’s metropolitan
centers and large cities as well as in the group of secondary cities and large towns. By
contrast, a decline is evident in the hotel sector across the category of small towns as a
whole. Between 1990 and 2010 in metropolitan areas and large cities, the net total of hotels
increased by 216 establishments, and the numbers of rooms more than doubled. Smaller
growth was recorded for the group of secondary cities and large towns, which show a net
increase of 30 hotels and an expansion of hotel capacity of 3,805 rooms. Although the
category of small towns reveals a net decline of 84 hotel establishments, an actual
expansion in room capacity is recorded with an additional 3,297 rooms (Rogerson J.M.
2013c: 430).
She has also noted a decline of the number of liquor-focused budget hotels in small
towns which have been replaced by other forms of accommodation. Two trends
were observed. One, hotels in small towns simply closed down as a consequence of
the broader economic decline of small town South Africa over the past two decades.
Two, in small towns undergoing economic revival based on tourism-led develop-
ment, the quality of local accommodation has been upgraded in the form of local
guesthouses and the bed and breakfast establishments. A longitudinal historical
study tracing hotel supply in the Free State identified three distinct eras with the
closure of hotels since the 1970s emerging as a particular feature in small towns of
the province. From the 1990s, the regional economy of accommodation has become
more “complex with the appearance of new small-scale forms of accommodation
which create new geographies of accommodation supply” (Rogerson J.M. 2013d: 430).
2.6 Connecting Small Towns Tourism Through Tourism

Routes
High unemployment, isolated geographical locations, lack of infrastructure, lack of

and/or the inability to exploit cultural and natural resources are some of the factors
hindering tourism development initiatives in small towns located outside the
weekend-trip zone of large urban nuclei. However, outlying areas can be integrated
successfully into regional tourism plans. Tourist routes have been depicted as a
sophisticated way of developing and promoting place-based cultural tourism. Smith
(2015: 229) defines a tourist route as:
A route, usually presented through a map and signage, links attractions of a single theme
that encourages a visitor to take in multiple sites in a relatively narrow geographic area. In
effect, routes cluster attractions and serve as a navigation aid for visitors…The promotion of
a route offers a more critical mass of attractions than the du jour model and features joint
promotion of participating businesses along the route. In some cases, the route may also
link cultural attractions with local accommodation and food services.
Tourists following themed routes is no new phenomenon in tourism. The European

Grand Tour, Route 66 and the Blue Ridge Parkway in the USA, the Silk Road
across Asia and the Birdsville track in Australia are examples of routes that facil-
itate this form of tourism (Hardy, Beeton, & Carter, 2005). In the USA, for
example, the California Highway 89 regional tourism model and the National Trust
for Historic Preservation’s project to preserve main-street heritage in three
Midwestern towns have shown that local economies can be revived though a single
strategy (Lapenas, 2002). Success depends largely on outside funding, getting
public involvement and marketing existing resources. Route tourism according to
Rogerson (2004) offers a promising potential vehicle for LED in many small towns
and rural areas in South Africa. The rationale behind route development is to group
products—such as arts and crafts, wine, built cultural heritage environments—to
provide a diversity of experiences, hence aiming to influence tourist travel patterns.
By nature, tourism routes are brands of the regions.
Most small towns in South Africa lost some level of autonomy during the
municipal demarcation process in 2000 when South Africa’s post-apartheid gov-
ernment embarked on a policy of rationalisation and re-demarcation of city
boundaries. At the time, there were 791 local authorities which were reduced to
231. In such cases, it may be that “the loss of authoritative, political, informational,
financial and organisational resources took away much of the discretionary power
of the local communities” (O’Toole, n/d: 4). In many cases, local development
groups have evolved to fill the void left by the former local government structures.
Small towns previously competing with neighbours to attract investments and
tourists must now capitalise on the strong cross-boundary effects—externalities—to
define whether relations between municipalities turn out to be competitive or
cooperative. Developing tourism routes to create a brand for a wider region is one
way of achieving cooperation.
Present-day South Africa has no shortage of tourism routes. As a national
industry in South Africa located outside metropolitan areas and playing a significant
role in regional development, wine tourism is a renowned way of building a brand
and selling a destination and experience (Ferreira & Hunter, 2017). Wine routes in
South Africa are geographically concentrated in small towns within a radius of
150 km from Cape Town, attracting in excess of 18,000 visitors per year. Most
routes are private enterprises resulting in a lack of cohesive marketing strategy for
the region as a whole. Route 62 in the Western Cape is perhaps the best example to
illustrate how the linking of various products across the province provides an
overall experience for tourists. Greyton and neighbouring Genadendal are one of
few towns which form part of a cultural historical route in the Western Cape. Small
towns abutting the Gauteng conurbation are also reaping the benefits of the
Provincial Blue IQ investment initiative, such as the Dinokeng Route that includes
the mining town of Cullinan. The town has become a favourite stopover for
2.6 Connecting Small Towns Tourism Through Tourism Routes 29
thousands of weekend motorcyclist on breakfast runs. Specifically designed

architecture, local history and small town tourism routes are used to attract tourists
to small towns located off main transport corridors. The Horizon Route in the
south-western Free State links five historical towns, and many communities into a
tourism experience that aims to change tourists’ travel patterns between Gauteng
and Cape Town. There is major tourism-development potential at Gariep Dam,
Philippolis, Bethulie and Fauresmith which form part of the Transgariep Tourism
route. However, according to Van Niekerk and Marais (2008), the integrated
development plan (IDP) provides no clear concrete plans as to what is to be done.
The effectiveness of cultural and heritage routes is often questioned, because
they are viewed as ‘high culture’ tourism resources and that generally do not attract
large numbers of tourists (Stoddart & Rogerson, 2009). An example of previously
disadvantaged communities being innovatively tied into a route is the Amakuze
tourism route in KwaZulu-Natal. The route combines railways, nature and culture
for tourists to experience the Amakuze tribal area’s history, culture and natural
heritage (Gardyne, Hill, & Nel, 2005). Another successful tourism route is the
Midlands Meander in KwaZulu-Natal (Lourens, 2007). The route evolved as an
unplanned LED initiative through the collaboration of a group of artists, potters and
weavers. The success of the route is attributed to its serving a niche market, namely
high-income day trippers and tour groups. The route has been criticised for being
exclusive and for not tapping into the cultural experiences of Zulu rural tradition-
alism. It is expected to transform into a broad-based LED initiative (Rogerson,
2004).
The contribution of the private sector is illustrated well by the role played by
Open Africa, an NGO aiming to optimise tourism, to create employment and to
conserve the continent. A project that is “arguably the fastest and most cost
effective development project in Africa” (Briedenhann & Wickens, 2004: 77), the
African Dream project had 34 routes in 2004 of which 12 were developed without,
and 22, with community participation and involving 44 towns. A major weakness in
this Web-based strategy is that Open Africa does not involve itself in any of the
internal politics of a specific route, especially if there is no collective will within a
community to successfully drive the initiative (Visser, 2003).
In a different context namely conservation, national policies have impacted on
tourist routes. A case in point is the Trout Triangle in Mpumalanga. The history of
trout fly-fishing in the Trout Triangle route comprising the five small towns of
Dullstroom, Belfast, Machadodorp, Lydenburg and Waterval Boven dates back to
the 1890s. Today, the trout-fishing industry is considered by the local authority to
be an important tourist attraction, where tourism forms the primary economic base
with commercial and recreational activities mainly centred around trout fishing
(Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2010a, b). A study of the trout fishing industry in Rhodes
determined that it directly generates about R5.7 million per annum and sustains a
minimum of 39 direct job opportunities in the community (Du Preez & Lee, 2010).
Dullstroom, as trout-fishing destination, attracts a variety of visitors not only who
pass through the town to other regions, but also who consider the town as their final
destination. Potential visitors are lured to the town by induced tourism images
based on trout fishing, the attractive natural environment and special events (Anna
Elizabeth De Jager, 2010). Managing invasive species as well as the issuing of
mining and/or prospecting rights are, however, posing serious challenges to the
tourism industry. According to Juniours Marire (2015), the management of alien
and invasive fish species such as rainbow trout and brown trout is the most con-
troversial aspect of present-day biodiversity conservation policy in South Africa.
The implementation of these new policies is said to be facing stiff opposition from
the trout industry, of which tourism is central. In addition to the biodiversity
policies is the issue of encroachment of mining into the triangle. Within the Trout
Triangle, the National Department of Mineral Resources continues to issue mining
and/or prospecting rights that contravene municipal land-use zoning regulations for
tourism and biodiversity conservation. It has been predicted that as mining spreads
into the Trout Triangle, much harm will be done to the level of fishing tourism as
mining destroys tangible as well as intangible (goodwill) capital (Marire, Snowball,
& Fraser, 2014).
2.7 Visiting Friends and Relatives
Apart from consultancy research reports, has there been surprising very little
research conducted on tourist travel patterns and trends. Visser (2003) made ref-
erence to a highly uneven tourism space economy that limits the impact of
investments in and involvement of previously disadvantaged individuals and
communities, and towns outside the core nodes of tourism development. He
laments South African Tourism’s marketing approach to increase tourist flows and
increase the length of stay, by arguing that “what needs to be addressed is how to
persuade tourists to go to those parts of the country that are ignored by current
visitation trends” (Visser, 2003: 287). So too has Cornelissen’s work (2005:163)
confirmed this lopsided picture in her study in the Western Cape showing that
tourism is geographically focused, with tourist activities concentrated in a few
locales and sub-regions—most notably Cape Town and other large urban centres.
While studies and surveys done to track visitor patterns are mainly done by industry
consultants, have such data informed academic scholarship (Maumbe & Donaldson,
2010) and debate, on the underresearched theme of one of the largest components
of tourism economies, namely Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR).
Rogerson and Hoogendoorn (2014: 17) were the first to investigate various
trends and impacts of VFR travel in South Africa. The VFR segment is “massively
dominated by ‘ordinary’ or working-class travellers with the black population
representing approximately 78% of national VFR travelers” (Rogerson, 2017: 469).
VFR according to Rogerson (2016) account for 50% of travel to small towns and
rural areas in South Africa. Rogerson’s (2015) VFR research has linked this market
to historical migration trends (forced through apartheid legislations). His research
argues that there is still duality in small town tourism trends in the country: “On the
2.7 Visiting Friends and Relatives 31
one hand are those small towns and rural areas which are located in the former
apartheid Homelands. On the other hand are those more prosperous small towns
and rural areas which formerly were constituted as part of so-termed space of
former ‘White’ South Africa. These areas have starkly different legacies and their
tourism trajectories still reflect the apartheid imprint” (Rogerson, 2016: 8). He
found that many of the district municipalities—and by implication therefore rural
homesteads, hamlets and rural small towns—in the provinces of Limpopo,
KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and North West (so-called distressed
areas) are important destinations for VFR travellers (due to being previously former
homeland areas) (Rogerson, 2015, 2016, 2017). The research of Donaldson (2013)
has in addition shown the importance of the VFR segment in the Western Cape
where up to 20% expatriates were identified to be visiting friends and family during
their stay in the province. VFR is therefore a vital component of the tourism
industry in South Africa, especially in small towns and rural contexts, and which is
often overlooked by marketing agencies in their tourism strategies.
2.8 Other Research Foci
There is a paucity of the ‘not so nice and not so sexy tourism’ research topics such
as those addressing and critically reflecting on socio-political and racial aspects of
social transformation processes in tourism. There are, however, a handful of debates
on the periphery of these topics. Josefsson (2014: 258) has critically examined how
game farms in Kwazulu-Natal’s Battlefields route safeguard and perpetuate a
colonial present “whilst obscuring opportunities for other ways of interpreting and
using the space of the farm”. In a case study of race and space in Prince Albert,
McEwen and Steyn (2013: 8) argue that while the town’s social problems are
reflected in local government documentation only, “the most prolific and audible
public discourse is present in texts promoting Prince Albert as a tourist destination”.
They further argue that:
Although whites are in the demographic minority in the town, the special access to dom-
inant discourses about Prince Albert is utilised by semigrant power elites to actively pro-
mote discourses which support both white identity and material interests…[and it has been]
shown how heritage and tourism serve white material interests in the town (McEwen 2013).
Here we are concerned with the particular ways of knowing employed by semigrant power
elites and how these ways of knowing, which construct Prince Albert as ‘charming’, ‘old
world’ and ‘peaceful’, can be understood through the lens of race and power in the context
of Transformation (McEwen & Steyn, 2013:8).
In Roebert’s (2014) rebuttal, “[T]he black magic of ‘whiteness studies’”, of

McEwen and Steyn’s (2013) paper, he insists that white ‘semigrant’ tourist oper-
ators portrayed as a hegemonic ‘power elite’ by McEwen and Steyn are misrep-
resented. He furthermore asserts why there are “no grounds for asserting that these
residents are using their tourist activities, under the banner of “heritage” and
“tourism”, as a means for establishing a segregated “apartheid-era” white control of

the town and its resources” (Roebert, 2014: 1).
One aspect of South Africa’s post-apartheid transformation that sits uneasily
with those driving development in the tourism industry, is place-name changes.
Unfortunately, the impact of rebranding has been underresearched in tourism
studies over the past decade. Contrasting outcomes (economic and sentimental)
between racial groups in the town of St Lucia were observed when in 2007 the
Greater St Lucia Wetland Park was re-branded as the iSimangaliso Wetland Park
(iSWP) to market it as an indigenous and local product (Chellan, Mtshali, & Khan,
2013). Box 2.2 captures the duality of tourism beneficiaries between whites and
blacks. However, it is not only place-name changes that evoke emotions. The world
heritage status will also impact on strong place identities of communities. For this
reason, Puren, Drewes, and Roos (2008) have called for an integration of intangible
aspects, such as the sense of place of an area, into spatial planning in South Africa.
They explored personal and symbolic meanings, as part of the sense of place of
local inhabitants in the Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site, especially in the
context of renewed pressure for development.
Box 2.2: Politics of rebranding Greater St Lucia Wetland Park

“…it is the established White tourism accommodation owners that provide
tourist’s packages to the area with international marketing links that have
benefited most. In the town center, long-established eating houses and tourist
sport, entertainment and recreational companies have felt a serious decline in
business since the rebranding of the area. The worst felt effect of rebranding is
on the local Black people of the area who felt excluded from the already
ailing economy of the town due to them being confined predominantly to
livelihood activities in the informal sector, seasonal and often contract forms
of employment in the tourism industry. One of the important contradictions is
the Park’s marginalisation of domestic tourism for nature conservation rea-
sons which prior to the rebranding process was reportedly known to have had
a positive impact on the town’s economy. Instead of maintaining a balance
between local tourism and nature conservation principles, the Park’s authority
chose to trade off the former in the interest of the latter by banning all forms
of recreational and sporting activities that affect the environment. In addition
an important political contradiction which the study highlights is the
rebranding of the Park to an indigenous name which many of the predomi-
nantly local White residents in the town do not identify with. The area
continues to be passionately marketed by its previous name and the town’s
business community feels that this name is the brand which most tourists look
for and identify with. In so far as embracing the new brand name, there
appeared very little support for this amongst the White town’s people.
However, whilst local Blacks welcomed the transformation taking place in
terms of rebranding the area with an indigenous name, they were sceptical
2.8 Other Research Foci 33
whether any miracles as the name iSimangaliso suggests will be experienced

in their lifetime as the global tourism focus of the Park for markets has not
made any positive impacts on their lives in this tourist town”.
Source: Chellan, Mtshali, and Khan (2013: 27)
Aspects of educational tourism at university towns such as Stellenbosch

(Hamilton & Ferreira, 2013) and volunteer tourism (individuals going on a working
holiday, volunteering their labour for worthy causes—see Stoddart & Rogerson,
2004) are becoming increasingly popular forms of travel and warrant further
investigation. A case study of volunteer tourists in Stilbay’s township,
Melkhoutfontein, volunteers observed social issues such as high unemployment
rates, drug dealing and abuse, violence, Aids, racism and the aspirations of South
African youths. The volunteers’ activities were questioned regarding how their
volunteering actually makes a difference to the people in Melkhoutfontein (Sin,
2009). Research foci on aspects pertaining to the negative impacts of volunteer
tourism include a “neglect of locals’ desires, a hindering of work progress and
completion of unsatisfactory work, a disruption of local economies, a reinforcement
of conceptualisations of the ‘other’ and rationalisations of poverty, and an insti-
gation of cultural changes” (Guttentag, 2009: 537). Moreover, Sin (2009) suggests
research on the perspectives of the aid recipients of volunteer tourism and the power
relations arising from volunteer tourism within host communities, and how different
stakeholders negotiate their power or lack of it in attaining their own agendas.
Educational tourism such as study-abroad programmes has introduced a complex
array of opportunities for host destinations and international visitors (Hamilton &
Ferreira, 2013; Donaldson & Gatzinsi, 2005).
Issues around green tourism and more specifically in the tourism accommodation
sector is also only emerging as a theme of late (Fitchett, Grant, & Hoogendoorn,
2016; Hoogendoorn, Grant, & Fitchett, 2016). Hoogendoorn, Grant, and Fitchett’s
(2016) investigation among Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal guest house owners in
some small towns demonstrated that the majority of owners are aware of their
impact on the environment and are interested in mitigating these harms.
One study has attempted to make a link between tourism development, the role
of entrepreneurs and the gentrification of the small town of Greyton (Donaldson,
2009). Chapter 6 in the book revisits this case study further.
The application of geographical information systems (GIS) in tourism research
in South Africa is surprisingly negligible despite GIS being offered at most uni-
versities in the country and its use at all levels in industry at all levels. Van der
Merwe (2013) applied spatial multiple criteria evaluation in a GIS to aid the
development of spatial policy and planning of cultural and food and wine tourism in
the Western Cape. Another study investigated how agritourism can be planned
spatially by means of GIS (Van der Merwe, Ferreira, & Van Niekerk, 2013). Gap
analysis has also been applied to the Western Cape in GIS to inform tourism
planning (Van der Merwe & Van Niekerk, 2013).
2.9 Conclusion
In the chapter on small town tourism in South Africa (Donaldson, 2007), I con-
cluded by outlining a research agenda for urban tourism in small town South Africa
which called for research concentrating on six themes: (1) monitor the outcomes of
LED tourism projects; (2) a multi-sectoral, in-depth study on national and
provincial non-tourism specific policies essential to identify certain linkages in
policy attempts; (3) the much neglected research area of the conservation of the
built environment calls for emphasis on the role and strategies that public institu-
tions should play in conserving the built heritage environment with the aim to create
a tourism-friendly heritage environment; (4) aspects of quality of life and the
cultural and social outcomes of hosting of festivals; (5) comparative exploration of
the success of tourism routes by looking at the nature, extent, impact (social,
economic and environmental) at inter- and intra-provincial levels; and (6) issues of
rural gentrification related to tourism development (Donaldson, 2007). Ten years on
from that review, as was seen in this chapter, the growth of academic debates on
issues of small town tourism has been remarkable.
While many studies have addressed these research themes, policy linkages and
heritage conservation have not received much attention. The geography of urban
conservation of the built environment and its importance to tourism development
remains a much neglected research theme in South African tourism studies. While
other disciplines have investigated aspects of small town heritage (Malcolm, 1998;
Kemp, 2000), these studies tend to ignore the link with tourism development.
Presenting a uniqueness, something that makes a town stand out from the rest such
as being a winner of a Town of the Year competition or the first and only slow city
or book town are ideal ways to brand and promote small town development. There
has in addition also been scant attention paid to the role of branding of small towns
and the interplay between the power elite and tourism development, and these
aspects will therefore form the fulcrum of the remaining chapters in the book.
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Chapter 3
In the Name of Tourism: Developing
an Image and Brand in the Book Town
of Richmond
Abstract As an inherent geographical concept, place branding is considered to

create added value and meaning to small towns and to promote both tangible and
intangible attributes to compete for a share of consumers, tourists, businesses,
investments and skilled workers. As a backcloth to the specific case of a book town
as an example of how branding impacts small town tourism development in South
Africa, this chapter first briefly reflects on the concept of place branding, place
imaging and identity and theme towns. As a place-based approach to small town
tourism development, the small town of Richmond, branded as Africa’s first book
town, is investigated using empirical evidence to illustrate how this particular brand
has put the town on the proverbial tourist map. A key factor for successful branding
of small town tourism is that of partnerships. In the chapter, it is seen that an
intriguing aspect of the Richmond story is that there appears to be scant synergy or
working relationship between the private initiators (the power elite) and the public
authorities.
Keywords Book town Richmond Branding Place identity Book festival

Northern Cape
3.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter, it was suggested that the building of an inclusive city-wide
development strategy is as challenging for metropolitan regions and large cities as it
is for smaller cities and towns. Such challenges include stark inequalities and
conflict-driven urban politics where divisions among interested groups in small
towns are deep and intractable (Robinson, 2006). Embarking on participatory
processes of city visioning is, therefore, a major challenge. As the experience
economy (after Pine & Gilmore, 1999) and culture gain importance, urban places
are constructing images and representations of their locations in accordance with
globalised trends (Kirillova, Lehto, & Cai, 2017). Urban branding has to do with
coining concepts and articulating differences and identity (Jensen, 2007). Seen in

46 3 In the Name of Tourism: Developing an Image and Brand in the …
this light, urban branding is evocative storytelling aimed at educating its audiences
to see the urban in a particular way. Or, as Pike (2009: 621) claims:
[S]patialities of brands and branding suggest their geographical entanglements may be
relational and territorial, bounded and unbounded, fluid and fixed, territorializing and
deterritorializing. It is argued that openness to the contingency of such contrary and
overlapping tendencies is helpful in empirical examination of the complex and unfolding
geographical entanglements and socio-spatial histories of particular brands and branding.
In view of this, this chapter provides insights into how the small South African
town of Richmond, branded as a book town, has been put on the tourist map. The
theme of branding is extended in Chap. 4 by reviewing towns that have won a
national town-of-the-year competition. In the present chapter, the concept of urban
branding within the context of a small town is discussed, so providing the literature
background for this chapter and Chap. 4.
3.2 Small Towns and Branding
What makes a small town a great place? Universal dimensions of successful places,
as shown in Fig. 3.1, help provide an answer. The four main pillars on which these
elements rest are sense of place, vitality, place sense and sense of connectedness.
Since branding is situated in and associated with spaces and places, it is an
inherently geographical concept (Andersson, 2014; Pike, 2009). Whereas it is more
natural for large cities to attract investments, managers of small towns often
encourage activities that draw attention to towns through tourism.
Regarding place branding, branding is considered to create added value and
meaning to a place (Andersson, 2014) and to promote both tangible and intangible
attributes to compete for a share of consumers, tourists, businesses, investments and
skilled workers (such as the creative class) (Gilboa, Jaffe, Vianelli, Pastore, &
Herstein, 2015; Vik & Villa, 2010; Jensen, 2007). According to Pike (2009: 620),
geographical differentiation “is integral to the different ways in which different
people in different places see, interpret and act in response to branded objects and
branding processes”.
To brand or image a place, a story must be told about the place. According to
Smith (2015: 227), there needs to be a coherent theme in the story that resonates
with visitors, but he warns that marketers should:
be wary of presenting too many stories. This is a risk for Destination Marketing
Organisations (DMOs) that do not know what their central story is. A common default of
destination marketers is to claim, ‘We have something for everyone’. Ironically, this has the
effect of positioning the destination as having nothing for anyone. A single message told
well is usually more effective than a claim of universal appeal.
It could be that some places, especially larger cities, have a few different stories, but
these need to be told independently.
3.2 Small Towns and Branding 47
Fig. 3.1 Dimensions of great places. Source http://www.placecollective.com.au/
Rather than branding a place, Anholt (2008: 2) quoted in McManus and Connell
(2014: 106), preferred to assert that “places have brand images”. McManus and
Connell (2014: 106) later summarised Anholt’s (2008) five innovative ideas about
place branding or competitive identity as:
• A need for clear and coordinated communications to influence public opinion;
• Recognition of the importance of brand image even though a brand is not under
the direct control of an ‘owner’;
• The importance of brand equity is a highly valuable asset that needs to be
managed;
• Recognition that brand purpose is critical and that brand management is an
internal project;
• Sustained and coherent innovation is more important than recalling past glories.
Place branding according to Anholt (2009) should encompass the richness and
complexity of places, from the tiniest village to large urban places and in so doing
will enable endeavours such as tourism promotion, economic development and the
luring of new migrants to settle there (McManus & Connell, 2014). Govers (2011:
229) quoted in McManus and Connell (2014: 106) believes that to think that “just a
destination branding programme (implying a tourism campaign) can change place
image is rather ambitious … not just because of the complexity of places but also
because people’s perceptions are influenced by many factors”. There is thus a clear
distinction between place branding and destination marketing. Place branding
concentrates on the image and the reputation of a place, whereas destination
marketing is aimed at attracting visitors, tourists and potential new residents.
Destination marketing “is likely to emphasise advertising (albeit not in isolation)
whereas place branding potentially covers all communications of a place’s identity”
(McManus & Connell, 2014: 107).
Andersson’s (2014) comprehensive literature review of place branding identifies
seven perspectives on place branding within a geographical context. First, place
branding is considered a “means to create, change, preserve or regain place iden-
tities and place images” or can be seen as a “window of opportunity” or as “a way
to generate and strengthen regional competitiveness” (Andersson, 2014: 143).
A second principle relates to a growing urban entrepreneurialism within public
administration and urban governance where the seminal work of Harvey (1989)
introduced the concept of the neoliberal turn. Local governments or public–private
partnerships are commonly the initiators of place branding, whereas the minority of
projects are mainly run by private agents (Andersson, 2014). Third, there is a
theoretical relationship between branding and geography, i.e. how the concept can
be understood in geographical terms. Fourth, there is the perspective of place
branding practices focussing on best and worst practice, policy recommendations
and strategic planning. Best cases generally refer to sport events and arranging
festivals. ‘Bad examples’ of place branding (place branding activities to be avoi-
ded) in the literature are, according to Andersson (2014), rare with a few cases of
branding strategies having caused lock-in effects in the local economy or not
generating the intended positive social and economic effects. Fifth, there is a lit-
erature on the promotion of social elites and systematic marginalisation of less
powerful groups in society. Social exclusion through gentrification is a case in
point. The role of the creative class and the creative industry in general is a sixth
perspective which draws especially on the seminal work of Florida (2002). Last,
place branding is also discussed in the “relationship between products and the
place-bound symbolic qualities of a geographic region where a product is pro-
duced” (Andersson, 2014: 143). In this regard, it is neither political organisations
nor local authorities, rather private companies that try to create positive place
images.
3.2.1 Place Imaging and Identity
The first step in branding is to determine an image. In addition to branding, a poor

image can be combated by means of accurate official information, positive word of
mouth from visitors and customers, and documented positive first-hand accounts of
experience (Lusby, 2014). The image of a destination is the sum of all perceptions
tourists and potential visitors hold of that destination (United Nations World
Tourism Organization, 2004), i.e. the mental picture people have of a place (Gilboa
et al., 2015). According to Qu, Kim, and Im (2011), destination branding is the idea
that a tourist or visitor has about a place, which is reflected by the association held
by a tourists’ memory and experiences. A destination image evolves over time and
depends on internal and external environmental factors (Dimanche, 2003). The
concept ‘place making’ is exemplified through place and sense of place, where
“space and landscape features are considered to become meaningful and made into
places as a result of individual human activity associated with them” (Perkins,
1989: 62). Sense of place has three interrelated elements: place identity, place
dependence and place attachment (McKercher, Wang, & Park, 2015).
Closely related to, but often confused with image, is identity. Identity is,
according to Gilboa et al. (2015: 50), “the way a city is experienced by its various
stakeholders, e.g. residents, tourists and investors. In other words, a city’s identity
may be different from its image as perceived by its audiences”. The six
P-dimensions best describe a city or small town’s image, namely:
• Presence—a city’s international standing;
• Place—the perceptions of the physical aspects of cities;
• Potential—economic and educational opportunities;
• Pulse—urban lifestyle;
• People—the relation of residents to outsiders;
• Prerequisites—the perception of the basic qualities of a city (Anholt, 2006).
City images, therefore, influence tourist traffic and have an impact on the growth or
decline of cities and places (Gilboa et al., 2015). The perceived image of a desti-
nation is an important concept in tourism development as it may influence desti-
nation choice—a negative image may influence a destination’s competitiveness in
the tourism industry. Negative images and perceptions of a destination are central
challenges in tourism marketing because to change the negative and stereotypical
perceptions potential visitors have is a very difficult task (Ritchie, Sanders, &
Mules, 2007). There is a host of reasons for negative images, among which are the
general decay of small towns, poverty and unemployment. Other patent negative
images are associated with towns that have embarked on processes such as rural
gentrification and theming of towns but done out of the local circumstances context.
Lobbying against undue change remains a key factor in creating identity for small
towns, especially where communities have to face unscrupulous developers, an
ineffective or corrupt local authority and under-resourced tourism organisation
(Fountain, 2005). All three factors exemplify the plight of many small towns in
South Africa.
For Aitken and Campelo (2011: 925), “the primary element for the construction
of identity and belonging is based on the reinforcement of ownership, traditions,
and values” and that the “four Rs—rights, roles, responsibilities, and relationships
—have emerged from the social capital or communal practices of the place that are
re- and co-created through community engagement”. They further proclaim that
where local practices emerge and are based on social capital, such practices “not
only co-create the brand meanings and brand image but also co-create managerial
behaviours (again translated into practices) that would determine the modus
operandi (structure and sustainability) of the brand/place community” (Aitken &

Campelo, 2011: 926). The small South African coastal town of Stilbaai has through
its hybrid approach in forming partnerships received acclaim for its tourism-based
development strategy. The formation of a strategic partnership between local
business, tourism authorities and the local authority (i.e. social capital processes)
was the key development catalyst for a town in decline. In the mid-1990s, a tourism
and economic forum was formed through which a number of actions resulted like
the establishment of a tourism bureau, the training of a tour guide and women in
crafts, the opening of a craft centre in the local township and the promotion of an
annual Strandloper Festival during the peak summer season (Binns & Nel, 2002).
What makes a place unique and different from other similar sized places?
Contemporary rural and small town image creation and rural branding “might be
seen as a matter of deliberate social construction by which local communities
compete, using various means and with different results, to be the most visible and
attractive in the global quest for attention” (Vik & Villa, 2010: 158). Despite
possessing the much needed resources and attractions to support tourism devel-
opment, local and national competition among small towns is strong. Many South
African small towns have not yet managed to make the shift from production space
to consumption space, that is, from service centres in agricultural areas to hospi-
tality centres with B&Bs establishments, the hosting of arts, locally themed festivals
and events, regional food and wine (Ferreira, 2007). When small towns as sites of
resource extraction are restructured as centres for consumption (visitors), they are
often ruined by the process. Restructuring may involve the “manipulation of the
physical environment as well as the development and marketing of desirable,
alluring images of place and people. In fact, remaking, re-imaging, and literally
re-presenting all sorts of landscapes have become a multibillion-dollar, worldwide
industry, with numerous specialized consulting firms competing to sell the next
new, consumable destination” (Frenkel & Walton, 2000: 559).
3.2.2 Place Branding, Culture and Tourism
Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2015) have distinguished four types of place branding
studies: one, managerial studies (examining the development of place brands as a
result of a managerial process); two, integrated studies (examining the place brand
in connection to wider processes and integrating these in the branding process);
three, critical studies (revealing implicit goals and agendas of place brands); and, of
late, a culturally informed approach to place as a fourth type. In this fourth
approach, culture is used in place branding because culture provides consumable
(and saleable) experiences; culture acts as a resource for economic activity; culture
attracts the creative class; culture attracts tourists; and culture expresses locality
(Ashworth & Kavaratzis, 2014; Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2015: 159).
Table 3.1 Promotion strategies of cultural tourism

Promoting strategy Characteristics
‘Du jour’ model Short-term event, exhibition, performance
Stand-alone model Promoting a single cultural attraction (such as a museum or gallery) in
isolation from other cultural attractions. The destination highlights the
attraction and then builds a campaign around the attraction
Smorgasbord model Offering a virtual table of attractions, some of which may be cultural,
others sport and recreation or accommodation
Tourist route Linking attractions of a single theme that encourages visitors to take in
multiple sites in a relatively confined geographic area. Themes may be
culinary, art, wine, books or others
Getaway model Emphasising a variety of attractions, activities and services (including
food and accommodation) to attract visitors, usually for a relatively
short period, such as a weekend
General tourism A whole menu of attractions and services is presented, sometimes with
campaign the message that the destination “has something for everyone”
Integrated themed This approach involves the strategic consideration of which story or
campaign message the destination wishes to promote. Rather than grouping
services and attractions together or tying the promotion to a specific
route, a theme is developed and communicated through a mix of media
Source Compiled from Smith (2015: 229–230)
Smith (2015) has called attention to seven models (Table 3.1) for promoting
cultural tourism, of which he considers the integrated themed campaign as “the
most effective for place-based cultural tourism marketing, but because of the work
involved to design the campaign and negotiate partner participation, it is the least
common” (Smith, 2015: 230).
3.2.3 Theme Towns and Branding
If a town does not have a unique tourism resource, it “enters the realm of generic
attractions and the intense competition to draw visitors” because what makes
communities “distinctive is their own geography and history” (Murphy and
Murphy, no date and no page number). Theme towns, as a commercial marketing
strategy, gained prominence in the 1980s. There are, however, fundamental dif-
ferences between historical towns, theme towns and historical-theme towns.
Historic towns were founded, planned and managed to preserve their original
characteristics (architecture, city planning, design and layout, social traditions and
customs). A theme town is a town that randomly adopted or created an architectural
style or cultural theme for solely economic and tourism purposes, without having
any actual ties to the theme’s culture or heritage. A historical-themed town retained
its predominantly historical character, but at
some point in time decided to adopt an architectural design theme in addition to its actual
cultural heritage. The main purpose of the adoption of such an architectural, or design
theme, is to underscore the actual existing heritage and to use it as a backdrop for special
events, festivals, and celebrations, and to make the town’s appearance more appealing to
visitors, and to increase tourist revenues (Lehmann, 2007: xii).
The revitalisation of small towns has assumed an important role in promoting local
economic and cultural development and in reviving a diminished sense of place.
Accordingly, such redevelopment efforts have given rise to consumption-orientated
theme towns (Paradis, 2002) whereby the “underlying motive of these initiatives,
which have branded the towns with specific identities, is to increase the attrac-
tiveness of the towns to tourists and day-trippers” (Macleod, 2009: 133). In cases
like Iowa small towns with limited attraction power and resources, promoters
capitalised on interstate travellers and local tourism by enticing them for a stopover
and time to spend some money. In doing so, towns developed a theme that res-
onates an existing rudimentary local theme, while others developed an image of a
foreign reality (Engler, 1994). An important implication of transforming a small
town into a tourist attraction involves the potential impact on the community’s
sense of place (Paradis, 2002). Rural (small town) image construction is, according
to Vik and Villa (2010: 157), “taking place between the need for broadness and
inclusiveness to mobilise locally, and the need for narrowness and exclusivity to
attract attention from the outside world”. They used processes of image construc-
tion in a case study of Fjærland Book Town, an area on the west coast of Norway,
to illustrate how depression can be turned into vitality.
Aspects of theme town development generally include slogans and logos, wel-
coming signs, festivals and special events, accommodation establishments,
remodelled or restored buildings, transplanting or replication of historical structures
(in towns where these may have been lost), historical museums, historical and/or
ethnic heritage villages giving tourists an experience of a foreign reality, central
attractions of the themed town, antiques and collectables, old transportation
modes (Engler, 1994). However, Engler (1994) advances ten arguments cautioning
small towns to consider embarking on a theme for their community. First, themes
can perpetuate conformity with a mass commercial identity that neglects local
identity and place-based experiences. Second, theme-based development usually
favours tourists and not residents because the restoration of buildings is beneficial
to the townscape as a whole, while touristic shops (e.g. bookshops, antiques shops
and galleries) displace residents’ daily-needs shops such as grocers. Third, a the-
matic town “precipitates standardization and homogeneities and inhibits diversity”
(Engler, 1994: 21) where they all start to look alike. Lehmann’s (2007) study has,
however, shown that although the Little Germanies themed small towns in the USA
have a common cultural theme and character, they are all very different regarding
their location, history and founding purpose, efforts in historical preservation,
community profiles and tourism programmes. Fourth, because tourism’s fashions
change over time, the creation of a homogeneous place identity and brand is risky.
Fifth, theme towns are highly dependent on their looks (visuals) and less on sub-
stance and meaning. The importing of foreign concepts, detached from a town’s
locality, is seen as fake. Sixth, in an effort to create a historical look, design quality
and materials are often compromised. Seventh, thematic development usually
results in the socio-spatial segregation of places: an exclusive tourist function area
and exclusive local function areas. Eighth, once successful, life in theme towns
becomes costly and the lifestyles residents were used to become incompatible
(gambling-based tourism is an example). Ninth, the atmosphere created by a
themed development may isolate certain segments from the community, so
estranging them from what they were used to. Tenth, highly attractive festivals may
develop into theme parks, thereby erasing the small town qualities that attracted
people to attend the festival in the first place.
Engler (1994) further suggests that small towns wanting to embark on a
theme-based development do so by considering both past and present themes and
not by creating a frozen-in-time setting. Thus, it is crucial to develop place-based
community themes and celebrations rather than tourist-fashioned themes.
Moreover, the promotion of themes based on local physical and cultural idiosyn-
crasies (e.g. the regional architecture and other distinctive man-made structures
such as a water tower, abandoned railways) strengthens community roots and
identity. The celebration of local and regional landscapes and agricultural practices
creates stronger ties between community and place. The introduction of themes
based on conservation and social needs, as opposed to themes of consumption, is
recommended. In this regard, alternative forms of energy as a theme have emerged
in South African small town landscapes (see Lombard, 2014, 2015; Lombard &
Ferreira, 2014).
Closely linked to branding are the consumption-orientated theme towns the
world over where they are heavily promoted through advertisements, articles and
websites (Frenkel & Walton, 2000). Tourism-development strategies in small towns
“often mean the commodification of its landscape, turning the place into something
to be consumed. An extreme example of this is the ethnic theme town, such as
‘Danish Solvang in California’ or ‘Swiss’ New Glarus in Wisconsin. Although the
theme is usually based on a resident ethnic population, in some cases, such as
Leavenworth, Washington, and Helen, Georgia (also Bavarian) it is completely
invented” (Frenkel & Walton, 2000: 559). Regarding themed small towns in South
Africa, the most obvious ones that spring to mind are those that have strong
historical antecedents. Matjiesfontein and Pilgrim’s Rest are uniquely preserved
towns depicting colonial-era living, the former as a military outpost for the British,
the latter a mining town established as the result of a gold rush in the 1870s. These
towns have not expanded, and the built environment has remained largely (almost
exclusively) intact. There are of course many place identities, images and brands
linked to hundreds of other small towns in the country, and they are generally
shaped through events and festivals. Mampoer (a strong alcoholic drink only
brewed in South Africa) reminds us of Groot Marico and so fly fishing (there are a
number of places but Dullstroom probably features at the top), oysters (Knysna),
cherries (Ficksburg), art festivals for the Afrikaans community (Oudsthoorn,
Potchefstroom, Stellenbosch), ostriches (Oudtshoorn) to name some.
For Jensen (2007: 214)

the presence of artists is the hallmark of vibrant urban sites, and the challenge to
policy-making and planning is to make places attractive to such artistic communities, with
their preference for dynamic networks, a climate of support for the arts and a good and
affordable quality of life…Many larger city centres might be able to offer these facilities,
but smaller urban communities would find it more challenging to make themselves
attractive in this way.
Therefore, theming towns as art towns are one way of thinking about the notion of
small town culture. In the case of creative and artistic hubs, interactions with art as a
commoditised product of consumption and the locations and spaces occupied by art
resources are factors which influence tourism development (Viljoen, 2015).
Branding towns around literary and book themes is well known internationally.
Herbert (1996) reminded us that places associated with writers and artists have two
main kinds of attractions for visitors. First, people with an intrinsic interest in the
personal life histories of writers or artists are attracted and such visits allow contact
with places closely associated with admired writers. Second, there is a merging of
the real and the imagined which gives such places a special meaning. The media has
the ability to shape or develop representations of certain perceptions and images
about destinations (Jensen, 2007). Images created by the media can be true or false,
but as soon as the image is projected to the potential tourist, the choice of desti-
nation depends on how the tourist handles the negative or positive information
(Ferreira & Donaldson, 2014).
Many small town tourism initiatives use a place-based approach emphasising
“cultural and nature-based tourism, which draws on local skills” (Gardyne, Hill, &
Nel, 2005: 128). One such approach is based on the concept of a book town.
3.3 Book Towns as a Brand
Small towns all over the world are generally at some stage in their evolution,
experiencing a phase of economic decline. As a result, they are facing deteriorating
local economies, declining employment opportunities, localised business failures
and in some cases dwindling populations. Because traditional functions are insuf-
ficient to sustain developmental growth in such towns, they are required to seek
alternative strategies to keep their economies afloat (Gibb & Nel, 2007). Some small
towns have been able to respond positively to the challenges by implementing novel
locality-based strategies to revive ailing economies and living conditions.
Internationally, and also on the South African local economic development scene,
small towns are turning to tourism as an economic building block facing deindus-
trialization and post-productivism (Halseth & Meiklejohn, 2009). A unique tourism
brand is that of book towns (see Box 3.1) which may potentially offer a viable
tourism-led strategy for sustainable growth in small towns (Seaton, 1996, 1999).
3.3 Book Towns as a Brand 55
Box 3.1: Book towns conceptualised

With the exception of a few studies (Seaton, 1996, 1999; Donaldson &
Vermeulen, 2012), very little research has focussed on book towns. Although
the idea of book towns is a fairly recent one, but some highly successful
attempt to boost tourism and the economies of small town communities have
been recorded (David, 2010). The coining of the concept can be traced to
1961 when Richard Booth bought an old cinema in Hay-On-Wey, Wales, and
converted it into a bookshop (Seaton, 1999). Within a short period, the
bookshop had become known as the biggest second-hand bookshop in the
world. Booth then began to purchase empty buildings in the town, including a
former fire station, an old warehouse, and in the 1970s, the ancient castle of
Hay-On-Wey—all of which he filled with old books (Seaton, 1999).
Although Hay-On-Wey was for many years just seen as an unconventional
book town and nothing more, the Scottish Tourism Research Unit found that
the growth of Hay-On-Wey as a book town had a surprising economic impact
on the region, and to some extent Wales as a whole (Seaton, 1999). As Seaton
(1999) has pointed out, in the wake of books came tourism. Hay-On-Wey is
now one of the most important tourist destinations in Wales and attracts over
a million visitors a year (Seaton, 1999).
The official definition of the International Organisation of Book Towns
(IOB) for a book town is “a small, preferably rural town or village, in which
second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated. A book town
makes large amounts of second-hand and antiquarian books available to
everyone, is one of the most successful new tourism developments and offers
an exemplary model of sustainable rural development and tourism.
Meanwhile, this concept is and has been followed in many countries on
several continents. The bookshops are often complemented by artisanal
enterprises, such as paper production, calligraphy, printing, book design,
book illustration and traditional bookbinding, as well as other crafts which are
not related to books” (Van Duin, 2015, personal email communication).
David (2010) has defined a book town as a small town or village with a
high concentration of booksellers specialising in second-hand, rare and out-
dated books. The bookshops often go hand in hand with coffee shops, Internet
cafes, cheese or wine shops and with artisanal enterprises such as paper
production, book design, book illustration and bookbinding. David (2010),
therefore, argues that the overall goal of a book town is to resurrect the
flagging economies of small towns, to revitalise a neglected region by
developing a local book-based economy with a definite tourist dimension.
Internationally, book towns are organised through the International Organisation

of Book Towns (IOB). According to Van Duin (2015, personal email communi-
cation), the former International Organisation of Book Towns, EEIG (European
Economic Interest Grouping), was founded in Redu on 1 April 2001, as a result of

the EU project UR 4001 European Book Town Network—a Telematics Application
based on a model for sustainable rural development based on cultural heritage, in
cooperation with Vestlandsforsking, Norway and Luton University, England. It was
registered at the Chamber of Commerce, Arnhem, The Netherlands, under no.
091220291. The General Assembly of this organisation decided on 11 September
2010 to change the legal identity of the IOB. According to this decision, a
“Vereniging met beperkte rechtsbevoegdheid” (Association with limited legal right)
was been founded and registered. The name of this society is, as before,
International Organisation of Book Towns (IOB).
There are five overarching aims of the organisation. First is to raise public
awareness of book towns and stimulate interest by giving information via Internet
and by organising an International Book Town Festival, approximately every two
years since 1998. Second is to enhance the quality of book towns by exchanging
knowledge, skills and know-how between the book towns and their individual
booksellers and other businesses. Third, it aims to strengthen the rural economy by
making propaganda for the existing book towns and by offering a medium
(e-commerce) to the booksellers by which they can offer their books to a universal
public also or specially in off-peak seasons. Fourth, the organisation undertakes
activities that serve the interests of book towns and strengthen independent busi-
nesses in book towns, e.g. by stimulating the use of information technology. Fifth,
the organisation helps to maintain regional and national cultural heritage and
stimulate the international public to get acquainted with it. However, unlike the
International Cittaslow Organisation (see Chap. 5), the IOB’s official website is
vague and contains no information on how to apply to become an accredited book
town. According to the IOB’s website, there were 18 members in 2015, of which
the majority (14) are located in Europe, and one each in Australia and South Korea
and two in Malaysia (see www.booktown.net/map.asp). To become a member, an
entrance fee is payable—for towns and municipalities, the fee is 1000 Euro (R15
000) and the annual subscription is 250 Euro (R3750). For South African entrants,
these amounts are exorbitant.
According to Seaton (1999), there are eight factors that determine whether a
town can be called a book town, namely the existing book expertise of the town; the
town’s scenic appeal; the historical and cultural attractions of the town; the property
market, particularly the availability of low-cost property; the town’s tourism
infrastructure; the economic importance of the book town to the region; town
leadership; and organisation and speed of implementation. In his study of book
towns in Europe, Seaton (1999) found that they shared seven characteristics. First,
all of the towns were in declining rural areas. Second, they all had small popula-
tions. Third, most of the towns were geographically peripheral. Fourth, they were
all far from core urban centres. Fifth, many had experienced and were continuing to
experience retail losses. Sixth, no new job opportunities were being created prior to
the towns’ development as book towns, and none of them initially had a better
tourism base than comparable rural towns of the same size. Seven, property was
inexpensive and rent was low in most of the towns.
3.3 Book Towns as a Brand 57
Seaton’s (1996, 1999) findings pointed to book towns providing excellent

models of sustainable small town tourism development. He substantiated this with a
number of reasons.
• Book towns use existing resources to achieve new economic growth. For
example, a fire station in Hay-On-Wey was converted into a bookshop.
• They are small scale and involve only refurbishment, rather than infrastructural
developments that may damage the environment or change the character of the
town. Actually, the character is changed into a particular brand.
• The start-up costs and risks are minimal when compared to those involved in
many other tourism developments.
• They create immediate direct employment within the book trade.
• Book towns may result in considerable multiplier effects, generating new
industries such as hotels, restaurants, binders, printers, crafts shops and antiques
shops.
• Unlike most tourism developments, book towns are less dependent on weather
or seasons.
• They attract international tourists and overnight stays instead of just day
trippers.
• They attract educated tourists in upper-income, higher occupational groups.
• Book towns overcome one of the most common problems of attraction man-
agement by giving visitors reasons for a repeat visit.
• They raise the profile, not only the town or village, but also that of the region
and in some cases the country.
But exactly how successful is this model in a non-IOB declared book town in a
developing world context? The next section will provide insights into Richmond, as
case study of South Africa’s only book town.
3.4 Case Study of Richmond Book Town
The small town of Richmond, located roughly in the middle of South Africa in the
Northern Cape Province, was proclaimed as Africa’s first and only book town in
2007 (Fig. 3.2). It was declared as such by the initiators and has not been endorsed
by the IOB. Driven by a handful of individuals (most of them not permanently
residing in Richmond), the initiative has resulted in an exponential growth in the
number of bookshops in the town, the hosting of the Boekbedonnerd Fees
(book-damned festival) since 2008 as well as some other events and a renewed
interest in property investment in the town. As with most small towns in South
Africa, Richmond was founded to meet the religious needs of a growing farming
community, but unlike most other similar towns, the church is not the village’s
focal point (the centrepiece is the village square). The town once served a pros-
perous farming community with an excellent school and a well-equipped hospital.
Like most other Karoo towns, Richmond’s population has grown, due mainly to
inmigration of unemployed and unskilled migrants from the former Transkei

region. The public sector is the main employer, notably the prison. The business
sector in Richmond is very small, with a petrol station, a handful of basic shops, an
ubiquitous China Shop and a number of guest houses. These establishments
comprise the total private-sector economic base of the town. The town’s poverty
level is high due to high unemployment—in 2011, 29.1% of employable residents
were unemployed.
Wealth or the lack thereof is the dichotomy juxtaposed in the two major trends
identified in Richmond today. First, there is a growing dependence on social grants.
In a town with no more than 1000 households, there were 345 beneficiaries of child
support grants, 150 recipients of old age grants and 108 beneficiaries of disability
grants in 2010. Second, and to the contrary, significant capital investments have
been made by the private individuals who have driven the book town initiative,
mainly regarding the purchase of properties and subsequent renovations into
homes, guest houses and bookshops (Donaldson & Vermeulen, 2012). To turn the
dire socio-economic situation around, the drivers of the book town initiative and the
Richmond Community Development Foundation (RCDF) are addressing poverty
through adult education, skills training (needlework, carpentry, crafts, pottery,
bookbinding and restoration) and entrepreneurial development over a three-year
period (http://www.richmondnc.co.za). The RCDF is non-profit organisation
established to alleviate the extreme poverty of the community. The town acts
mainly as a central point for the surrounding sheep farms, with the local population
largely unskilled. In addition to Richmond being a book town, the RCDF also
wants to turn it into a cottage industry town (www.richmondnc.co.za). Another
initiative mentioned by Wessels, Van der Molen, and Weideman (2010) involved
officials from the National Library in Cape Town presenting classes in book
restoration during the book festival. A total of 22 people attended these workshops
over the four days, and the library officials judged that three of the participants were
skilled enough to operate on their own after a further six months of training.
A small service industry nucleus in Richmond is now envisaged.
By the mid-2000s, the situation in Richmond exemplified several major shifts
taking place in central Karoo towns since 1970 (Nel, Hill, & Taylor, 2007):
• Large numbers of black people have settled in Karoo towns following the
abolition of influx control.
• The system of social grants has been extended and improved, resulting in a large
proportion of the poor population receiving grants. This system acts as a dis-
incentive to migrate to larger centres where there are more employment
opportunities, and it only marginally improves people’s survival prospects and
generates low-level economic turnover in towns.
• Periodic droughts have led to a decrease in the number of farms, a reduced rural
population and a change in the type and volume of goods required by farmers.
• Mobility has increased with the growth of the minibus taxi industry, and more
people now have access to private transport.
3.4 Case Study of Richmond Book Town 59
Fig. 3.2 Street scene in

Richmond, Africa’s first book
town. Photograph author,
(2014)
• Government education policies have changed dramatically. With the racial

integration of schools, the schools where white learners were in the minority
have gradually lost white learners to larger centres. This has resulted in a great
deal of middle-class spending power being lost to larger centres.
• Controls over liquor provision have been abolished with the result that legal and
illegal liquor outlets have generally been allowed to flourish. This may be
detrimental to other types of shops and services because greater amounts of
capital and purchasing power are devoted to liquor outlets.
• HIV/Aids is taking its toll on young adults and small children.
• A significant amount of “reverse migration” is taking place. City investors are
seeking country homes as residences, art galleries, guest houses, curio shops and
coffee shops.
• Rail transport has declined dramatically because the special protection for the
rail sector under the previous government has disappeared. There has been a
spectacular concomitant rise in the transport of goods by road.
In 2004, Richmond was struggling for survival and was indeed where travellers did
not want to stop over. Donaldson (2006: n.p.) found that residents “are worried that
the town would die”. Business premises were empty and in a state of decay. Some
respondents made statements such as “die dorp is verwaarloos” (the town is
neglected) and “gerestoureerde huise gestroop en verkoop word” (restored houses
are stripped and sold), while others stated that “enough is done by outside people”
and the “local community can do more but they do not know the historical value of
the houses”. Donaldson and Vermeulen (2012) remarked that many houses were
abandoned, stripped and vandalised, and banks had redlined the town. On the other
hand, there were some rudimentary attempts to create opportunities for tourists. The
local authorities were patently unaware of the town’s tourism potential and of the
fact that entrepreneurs and lone gentrifiers had started to move into the town.
Ineffectiveness and a lack of capacity among officials are key barriers to the
development of small towns in general. Richmond is no exception. Located in the
Ubuntu municipal area, the general response by officials is that decisions are taken
in Victoria West (the seat of the head office of the local municipality). Grant
Marshall (2012) has summarised the town’s state in 2004 as: “Before Richmond
became a Book Town, it was a sad town with little going for it” (http://www.bdlive.
co.za/life/travel/2012/11/23/from-sad-nothing-town-to-book-town). Since then, in a
relatively short space of time, Richmond has been given a new lease of life.
Considering the dire socio-economic and spatial realities of Richmond in the
mid-2000s, one wonders why Darryl David, a Lecturer of Afrikaans at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, pioneered the book town initiative and brand in
Richmond. Guided by criteria of the IOB for selecting a book town, David (2010)
narrowed his search down to the country’s provinces that had the least tourism
development: Free State, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape. As a lover of the Karoo,
he eventually identified four Karoo towns: Philipstown, Richmond, Hanover and
Aberdeen. After weighing the towns against one another while bearing the criteria
for selecting a book town in mind, Richmond seemed to fit the description best.
Richmond already had a well-established bookshop owned by John Donaldson, and
a few other people interested in books had purchased homes in the town. The
town’s major strength is its position directly on the national road (N1) linking Cape
Town and Johannesburg. The idea of a book town emerged, and the three initiators
have subsequently driven the process through marketing, promotion of the town
through the media and organising festivals. Their concerted efforts, initiatives and
leadership have given the town an edge. But, they have experienced the antipathy of
local inhabitants who are unsupportive of the initiatives of people whom they
consider as entrepreneurial outsiders, despite their investment in and improvements
to the town (Wessels et al., 2010).
Small towns need local economic development (LED) (Van Rooy & Marais,
2012). There are key drivers in these developments, and without these LED cannot
succeed. There is a need for strong leadership or governance if there is to be any
success (Nussbaum, 1997). Characteristically, in small towns, leaders are often
highly respected people in their community. These are church elders, pastors and
community representatives. Community members need to support their leaders in
community development processes, ensure that social cohesion is evident between
all parties and work to improve this cohesion through development. A principal role
player in community development in small towns is the private sector, the so-called
power elite. This sector contributes funding and knowledge during the development
process. The municipality is also a key stakeholder, and a good private–public
partnership of the private sector and municipality (public sector) is necessary for
positive growth and development. Collaboration between the public and private
sectors is crucial in destination marketing because there is usually an agreement of
objectives between the two sectors—attracting more tourists to a destination
benefits not only the narrow financial objectives of tourism operators, but also the
diverse social objectives of the public sector (Gibb & Nel, 2007; Bejou & Palmer,
1995). The tourism industry, which is quite fragmented in nature, requires a con-
siderable degree of collaboration and coordination among a variety of players in
destination marketing. Tourism organisations operating at different levels are
commonly involved in marketing a destination (Fesenmaier & Wang, 2007). Due to
collaboration within the tourism industry, the major marketing tasks are coordinated
by DMOs or similar entities which are responsible for developing images that
position locales in the market place as viable destinations for visitors and tourists
(Fesenmaier & Wang, 2007).
An intriguing aspect of the Richmond story is that there appears to be no synergy
or working relationship between the private initiators (the power elite) and the
public authorities. The book town revitalisation plan was totally unrelated to any
official initiative. It was put into practice by dedicated and inspired private leaders
who had the necessary insights and knowledge of how to implement the plan.
Although Richmond brands itself primarily as a book town—its main tourism
attractions are the bookshops and the book festival—the book town initiative does
not feature at all in the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) or in the Tourism
Strategy of the Ubuntu Local Municipality (Donaldson & Vermeulen, 2012). As
municipal websites are useful for deliberately communicating the content of the
brand identity (Florek, Insch, & Gnoth, 2006), one would expect to see the book
town brand on the Ubuntu Local Municipality website but this is not the case.
Furthermore, in the Ubuntu Local Municipality’s ten-year plan for tourism (2010–
2020), there is neither mention of the book town concept nor the Boekbedonnerd
Fees. Similarly, in the 2014–2015 IDP, there is no reference to this initiative and
the municipality’s official website is silent on the book town. While there has been a
surge in bookshops and bibliophiles visiting the town, hardly any interest has been
shown by the disadvantaged communities in town. The initiators came up with a
good initiative to bring (white) tourists to the town to support local (white)-owned
businesses. They invited the disadvantaged community to be part of the book
festival but were surprised when no one showed up. Whereas tourism research often
pays attention to conflicts between those who support and those who oppose
tourism development in small towns, Davis and Morais (2004) have raised the
question about conflicts between groups that all appear to support tourism. So, in
Richmond there are tensions among the power elites. Baker is quoted in Wessels
et al. (2010: 68) as having said that the “small town mentality is a major issue to
cope with”. Baker pointed out the following issues: “The white Afrikaans com-
munity is sometimes negative about the new initiatives and their impact. They
organised in 2010 an Afrikaans festival to coincide with the Boekbedonnerd Fees.
Why could they not organise that on another weekend?” (Wessels et al., 2010: 68).
Wessels et al. (2010) found that the concept of a book town has already resulted
in substantial improvement to and investment in the town’s economy with B&Bs,
coffee shops and bookshops operating. More travellers on the N1 now make a
determined stop in Richmond, with many of them staying overnight too. All
available accommodation is occupied during the Boekbedonnerd Fees. There is a
saying in the property investment arena that when one sees a Pam Golding estate
agency advertisement in a town, the area has already begun to experience its
property boom and it is therefore difficult to find bargains. Property prices in
Richmond increased dramatically from 2005 to 2010 despite the housing-market
slump (see Donaldson & Vermeulen, 2012) for statistics on house prices and sales
figures. The Pam Golding Properties Karoo area manager (SA Property News,
2010) maintains that the promotion of the Karoo lifestyle has resulted in the town
being a popular area to buy property. He commented that since Richmond was
‘proclaimed’ a book town, many of the older buildings, hopelessly bereft of human
activity for decades, have come to life again as thriving bookshops. In this way, the
initiative is contributing to the conservation of the town’s architectural heritage
(Fig. 3.3 is a photograph showing a typical historical house, now a bookshop, in
Richmond). However, Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2015: 167) warn that the “con-
tribution of culture to place branding, however, is minimised if it is over-simplified
in order to provide content for superficial promotional activities or meaningless and
unsubstantiated identity claims, which in actual effect, disconnect the place brand
from local culture”. On the contrary, the fact that this theme town was intentionally
developed through the creation of interest groups and the organisation of book town
events “means an increase in co-operation among groups of people, and the
establishment of recognised networks, formal and informal: this is a form of social
Fig. 3.3 One of the bookshops in a historical Karoo-styled house in Richmond. Photograph
author, (2014)
capital and recognised as being of great value for a community wishing to develop
successfully” (Macleod, 2009: 143).
Although they are worlds apart, there are striking similarities between the
Fjærland Book Town in Norway and Richmond. Fjærland is an unlikely setting due
to its awkward location (like Richmond) and minor size (300 residents). In both
cases, there was no obvious comparative advantage and their localities and size
presented severe challenges to starting a book town. Thus, every advantage had to
be engineered (Vik & Villa, 2010). The rural development aspect in Fjærland—the
internal mobilisation—was part of the rationale for establishing the book town, and
the originators did not expect a high level of popular support for it because of its
narrow audience. Vik and Villa (2010) posed the question whether the locals really
believed that the selling of books would be a way of rescuing their community?
Three themes emerged in the responses. One, residents were very interested in
books and reading. Two, the idea of book town was so odd that it simply had to be
supported. Three, “even though some people did not really care too much for the
book town concept as such it was considered to be a good thing as it attracted
people and activities to the place” (Vik & Villa, 2010: 165).
Currently (2016), Richmond has fourteen bookshops, each with its own char-
acter and book specialty, namely sports books, history books, novels and Africana.
For most of the year, only a few bookshops are open on a daily basis because it is
not economically viable to employ staff when, at most, two or three people visit a
bookshop in a week. Similarly, when wanting to visit the other main attraction in
the town, the horse saddle museum, one must phone the relevant authorities to open
it. Spatially, the town is too remote to become a booming book town like those in
Europe. Baker is quoted in Wessels et al. (2010: 67) as contending that the major
problem of book town Richmond is its remote setting: “We have good occupancy
rates during the holiday seasons and Richmond is becoming the preferred overnight
destination for more and more travellers between Gauteng and the Western Cape.
And people are willing to drive 500–600 km to attend the Book Fair, but it is
problematic to lure people in substantial numbers to come just for a weekend”.
Raising a town’s national (and international) profile and attracting visitors seems
to have become the raison d’être of city festivals. This is, according to Quinn
(2005), not surprising because many cities have considered festivals as a ‘quick fix’
to their image problems. To attract people, the book town drivers organised a novel
festival called Boekbedonnerd Fees, held annually in October. Since becoming a
book town in 2007, Richmond has annually hosted very successful book festivals
assisted by small scale sponsorship by several publishers. In the survey of
Donaldson and Vermeulen (2012), respondents agreed that all the festivals have
been successful and that the organisers tried their best to involve the whole com-
munity in the planning and hosting of the festival. Some of the respondents did,
however, indicate that the town is a bit overcrowded during the festival because
there are not enough B&Bs and restaurants to accommodate everyone. Yet this was
also perceived positively, one respondent stating: “Yes, the town is crowded during
festival time, but we enjoy it, they bring some action to Richmond”. Another
initiative also launched in May 2011 the first JM Coetzee/Athol Fugard1. Literary
Festival took place so that the town offers two different festivals annually. Local
festivals such as Boekbedonnerd fest are thus held to “strengthen local appreciation
of the place’s cultural past or to showcase the place’s potential for cultural creativity
and contemporary cultural production” (Kavaratzis and Ashworth, 2015: 158).
Richmond can be seen as an ‘outsider’ (literally and figuratively) literary tourism
place. The annual festivals are not supported by big sponsor, and glitzy events and
celebrities sipping wine are absent. The festivals are robust, down to earth, filled
with people searching for something different and unique. In a quite unassuming
way, literary tourism has become Richmond’s brand. The posting on http://
notnowdarling.co.za/bookbedonnerd/ by Dawn Garisch after she had attended the
Boekbedonnerd Fees aptly describes the town and its festival (see Box 3.2).
Box 3.2: A description of Richmond as book town

Book town Richmond has been going for eight years, against all odds.
Although it is fairly central, it is also a whole day’s journey to get there from
most major cities. The location is attractive, nestling as the town does
between hills, but much of the town needs maintenance and the river is
canalised. To address the run-down aspects of the town, Darryl has come up
with the idea of a picture book town and has persuaded several artists to travel
to the town to paint impressive murals which lend a further quirky edge to the
experience of visiting. The Bookbedonnerd festival itself is unlike any other
festival I have been to. It is not supported by publishers. There are no parallel
sessions, and the printed programme is very rudimentary, with little infor-
mation about either the speakers, or what they are going to talk about. Set
menu, rather than à la carte. Only about 50–70 people are packed into an
air-conditioned library venue for each talk. Yet I met visitors who had been
coming back to the festival every year because they enjoy it so much. Despite
its location and small size, the festival has attracted some big names: Patrick
Mynhardt, Ahmed Kathrada, David Kramer, Deon Meyer, Antjie Krog,
Etienne van Heerden, Mongane Wally Serote, Albie Sachs, Eben Venter,
Jonty Driver.
I arrived thinking that I would skip many items on the agenda, yet found
myself staying for most, intrigued and stimulated by the diversity. One of the
things that impressed me was that several of the speakers had gone the
independent publishing route, because mainstream publishers had rejected
their manuscripts on the grounds that the subject matter was too niche. As
Darryl himself has co-authored two important volumes on the churches of SA
with Philippe Menache, he is not snobbish about self-publishing. He hunts
out authors who have put their passions down onto the page, and we are the
1
JM Coetzee is a South African Nobel Prize winner for the literature now living in Australia. Athol
Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor and director who writes in English
richer for this. I listened to talks as diverse as the stone bridges of the Eastern
Cape, memoirs of a vet, the letters of Olive Schreiner, motivational texts on
how to live more generously and less fearfully, and poetry of exile, and of
belonging. Art exhibitions were running concurrently, which included works
by prominent SA artists, and there was a musical event each evening. I sold
my own books and bought a pile of both new publications from my fellow
speakers and second-hand books from the six shops on main road for my
already overloaded shelves back home. I met the most interesting and
eccentric people on the stoep of the local restaurant and pub, and participated
in an experiment that has proved its staying power as a destination for bib-
liophiles. If you are travelling on the N1, I highly recommend stopping off at
Richmond to browse through the well-stocked second-hand bookshops.
I found volumes there that I have not been able to locate in Cape Town. Even
better, treat yourself to one of SA’s richest offerings for literary tourists, and
book yourself into Richmond for one of the festivals.
Source: http://notnowdarling.co.za/bookbedonnerd/
In the Wigtown Book Town in Scotland, the town has experienced an

influx of new people bringing financial and cultural capital into the town and region. They
are proactive in its development and through the economic multiplier effect with direct,
indirect and induced spending on local services and produce, help to sustain regional
businesses as well as the property market…Moreover, the presence of more people and
capital improves the chances of local public services surviving—from schools to health
centres. It is reported by inhabitants that morale has been raised by the apparent economic
success of the new businesses. However, there have been some dissenting voices sug-
gesting that the only winners are newcomers to the village opening their shops and busi-
nesses (Macleod, 2009: 137).
Locally, Donaldson and Vermeulen (2012) found that in Richmond only 40% of the
respondents interviewed agreed that the book town and its various ramifications
contribute directly to the creation of employment opportunities, whereas 55%
agreed that the town had been put on the national “tourism map” because of the
book town concept. Wang, Pfister, and Morais (2006) have pointed out that the
more personal benefits residents expect from tourism, the more likely they are to
favour tourism development and the more likely they are to attribute the
improvement in quality of life to tourism development. Questioned about the
positive spin-off effects of the Richmond book town initiative, most respondents did
not see how the initiative was benefiting them. A mere 32% indicated that they had
directly benefited from increased employment (in most cases, it was temporary and
only over the festival period), and only 19% indicated that the developments had
improved their households’ living standards. In an initiative such as a book town,
one might expect skills development, but according to the survey of Donaldson and
Vermeulen (2012) only 23% of the respondents agreed that this had occurred. With
only 28% of the respondents stating that the initiatives had improved quality of life
in the Richmond community, it is clear that the perceived objectives of the private
initiative and the expected benefits of the community do not match. Ironically,
research on book towns has shown that tourism businesses often reap more benefits
than the bookshops themselves (Macleod, 2009).
In Donaldson and Vermeulen’s study (2012), respondents unanimously agreed
that no negative spin-off effects were generated by the book town initiative. Rather,
they perceived the tourists visiting for short stays as something positive in the sense
that they support the local guest houses, restaurants and bookshops, thus con-
tributing to the town’s income. Furthermore, the tourists who did visit Richmond
are those Seaton (1996, 1999) refer to as “quality tourists”. Stated differently, these
are educated people in upper-income groups. According to Wessels et al. (2010),
visitors to Richmond are discerning individuals with a keen awareness of the need
to preserve village life in South Africa. The bibliophiles search for top-quality
accommodation and other attractions on offer, and they patronise the local cafes and
restaurants. Some have even decided to become property owners in the town.
3.5 Conclusion
Place branding differentiates one tourism spot from similar tourism experiences in
other locales. Moreover, it promotes cultural distinctiveness and uniqueness of
experience. The book town as a “concept and image is narrow enough to be
presented as a common image and identity among people. Yet, it is flexible enough
to tolerate and incorporate different attitudes and people” (Vik & Villa, 2010: 165).
“Arts and cultural activities are not the answer to all the issues of rural communities
—there are no simple solutions to addressing the complex situation of sustaining
rural communities into the future—but culture can play important roles in the
process of community adaptation, development and, sometimes, reinvention”
(Duxburry & Campbell, 2011: 118). Although book town Richmond is still in an
early developmental stage, research of Donaldson and Vermeulen (2012) has
shown that this novel form of tourism can be applied effectively to the town. The
book festival has proven to be very successful and attracts a large number of tourists
to the town every year. Local residents are generally quite optimistic about the book
town initiative, and although there is still a long way to go, there are already
positive spin-off effects being experienced by the community.
There are a number of notable challenges facing the town and the book town
concept. The empirical findings and personal direct observations in Richmond
reveal that the town has a weak tourism product when viewed in terms of a
combination of resources and services. Regarding locality development, the town
falls short due to a failure to establish viable public–private partnerships and sus-
tainable local training institutions that provide skills for employment in tourism and
cottage industries. A critical unanswered question is whether the town’s location is
suitable to become a successful book town. When the criteria for a book town are
3.5 Conclusion 67
reviewed in hindsight, it is evident that some criteria have been met, such as the
scenic appeal of the town, the historical and cultural attractions of the town and the
property market (the availability of low-cost property). However, the town under-
performs by other criteria, such as the existing book expertise of the town (only a
few people have an interest), the town’s tourism infrastructure (the facilities cannot
cope with the influx of visitors during the festival periods, and there is no long-term
tourism product), the economic importance of the book town to the region (the vast
distances between towns inhibit spillover effects) and the weak leadership in the
town. In addition, the initiators of the book town revival of Richmond are not
permanent residents of the town. Reviving a declining town through an innovative
idea such as the book town concept will only succeed if the initiators are permanent
residents and if all role players enter into the partnership. Perhaps, a five-year
review period is too soon to really judge the success of the town. Should signs of
loss of momentum become evident, it may have detrimental consequences for the
town as a whole.
The story of the book town told in this chapter points to a success story of small
town revival. Rogerson (2005) has suggested that the majority of successful tourism
spaces in South Africa owe their development to entrepreneurs or private devel-
opers who saw opportunities for profitable investment, in other words the power
elite. The latter is true for Richmond, but the question remains how successful the
book town initiative has been and will it continue? Whereas this chapter investi-
gated how culture was emphasised within a place-based approach to small town
tourism initiatives, the next chapter will again see how drawing on local skills of
elite groups in two small town communities contributed to successes in the place
branding and destination marketing of the towns of Fouriesburg and De Rust.
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Chapter 4
Some More Branding: ‘Town of the Year’
as Stimulus for Tourism Growth
Abstract The theme of branding (as discussed in Chap. 3) is extended in this

chapter by reviewing two towns that have won a national competition and hence
being branded as a national town of the year. The different processes and strategies
initiated by the two winning towns of De Rust and Fouriesburg to take part in the
completion are outlined, followed by discussing the perceived impacts of attaining a
new brand identity for the towns. The empirical findings also reveal how certain
community members have taken initiative in driving the branding strategies. After
all, it is the aim of growth elites (power elites who are initiators and drivers of ideas)
to make small towns attractive for outside capital (via tourists visiting the towns or
buying second home properties or starting a business). The two case studies reveal
that by winning the competition, they seemingly succeeded in having momentarily
successes in branding their towns.

Keywords De Rust Fouriesburg Kwêla Town of the Year (KToY) competition

Regionalism Free State Western Cape Community cooperation Initiators
4.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter, it was claimed that place branding differentiates one
tourism spot from similar tourism experiences in other locales and promotes cul-
tural distinctiveness and uniqueness of experience. Creating a new brand identity—
such as a winner of the town of the year winner award—is more likely to be
successful if it is tailored to fit the existing identity or shape of the product to be
revitalised and if attention is paid to how place identities are affected, represented
and/or contested. An understanding of such developments warrants a move beyond
an economic analysis to a more
inclusive understanding of what development may mean at the local scale. How residents
identify with a project is influenced by the relationship between the project and the place,
which flows when there is a successful integration of initiatives and place meanings. In
addition to upgrading the built environment, true integration would reflect what is important to
locals, both in their values and concretely in increased jobs and services (Macleod, 2009: 143).

72 4 Some More Branding: ‘Town of the Year’ as Stimulus …
Working towards branding a town, as has been the case in the Kwêla Town of the
Year (KToY) competitions in South Africa, calls for a concerted commitment from
the competitive community as a whole. Warburton (1998: 18) (quoted in Lee &
Chok, 2005: 44) recommended a new view of community, where it’s seen as “an
aspiration … not a thing [but] a dynamic process in which a shared commitment
creates and recreates community through action by people who are aware of and
committed to the principle of working together for a better life and world”. This
focus is important because it singles out the notion of commitment—community
interest is never inherent but has to be instigated, motivated and sustained. It also
highlights the truth that without commitment, any community-based project is
doomed to failure.
It is in this context that this chapter is divided into two sections. The first part is
devoted to an empirical analysis of the KToY winner—De Rust in 2011—and the
second part a focus on the 2013 winner Fouriesburg. The KToY brand has been
endorsed as a means of promoting tourism development in small towns in South
Africa. It is not the intention here to provide a detailed analysis of the branding and
marketing of the towns. Instead, the emphasis is on empirical evidence obtained
through surveys and engagement with key stakeholders on their perceptions about
how the KToY Town of the Year competition may have benefited their towns
regarding tourism development.
4.2 Background to Kwêla Town of the Year (KToY)
The original proposal for a competition among small towns to be voted town of the
year was made in 2008 and initially aimed at towns in the Western Cape Province.
The competition had two main ideas: to promote tourism and to give the com-
munity a sense of pride in their town. With the implementation of the competition
and its subsequent popularity, Kwêla1 was approached by Rapport (a national
Afrikaans Sunday newspaper and one of the first sponsors) to form a partnership in
sponsoring the competition. The national Kwêla Town of the Year competition was
officially established in 2010 by Hetta Saunderson.
The KToY competition is presented in three phases: the nomination phase; the
phase in which the regional (on a provincial level) finalists are announced; and the
final phase in which the winner of the KToY competition is announced. The main
criterion for nomination for the competition is a town with population of less than
500,000. The competition was expanded in its third year to include towns in
Namibia in order to include Afrikaans-speaking viewers and communities in that
country.
1
A programme on kykNET, a DStv channel exclusively dedicated to an Afrikaans-speaking
audience.
4.2 Background to Kwêla Town of the Year (KToY) 73
There are substantial branding and marketing benefits for winning towns. They
exercise some autonomy in the advertising of their town with R1 million marketing
prize from Rapport and kykNET, the hosting of a makietie (a festival celebrating
win) and the benefit of keeping the profits that accrue from the festival. The national
competition has been held every year since 2010 except in 2014 when Rapport
withdrew their sponsorship (the print media was, and remains, under immense
financial pressure, and as a result they were unable to continue supporting the
competition). The sponsors have also changed over the years. kykNet has continued
to be an anchor stakeholder because they consider the competition to be too big and
influential to be stopped completely. The intended outcome of the competition was
to create a sense of pride within towns and to help put these towns on the map as
tourist destinations. An additional intention was to create the opportunity for South
Africans to discover small towns that were somewhat obscure to the South African
public: towns that did not have opportunities to be marketed and branded as tourist
destinations and attractions to visitors and tourists.
To date (2016), there have been five South African winners (Fig. 4.1) and
Henties Bay in Namibia won the competition in 2016. All the winning towns are
small with less than 90,000 residents, the majority of the towns’ residents are in the
low-income category, Afrikaans is the main language in at least three of the five
towns and towns in Mpumalanga Province have won the competition twice. The
ways the winning of the competition have impacted on tourism growth and the
Fig. 4.1 Kwêla Town of the Year winners and selected demographic data (based on Census 2011)
development of the towns are reviewed next by considering the 2011 (De Rust) and
2013 (Fouriesburg) winners in case studies.
4.3 De Rust—2011 Kwêla Town of the Year
4.3.1 Background to De Rust
De Rust is located in the Klein Karoo in the Western Cape at the base of the
Swartberg between Oudtshoorn and Beaufort West. Farming and agriculture-related
activities are the main economic pursuits around or in the town. The diversity of
agricultural production of—ranging from ostrich commodities, tobacco and various
fruits to lucerne, livestock and wine—contributes to the town’s competitive
advantage. The town is particularly popular for its dessert wines, brandy and fruit as
well as a place of retreat for artists. The surrounding geography of the area provides
superb photographic opportunities, such as the Swartberg Pass which is over
100 years old and Meiringspoort, a gorge of towering sandstone cliffs which feature
some stunning rock formations. In 2011 De Rust had a total population of just over
3500, most whom resided in the Blomnek township. The two main population
groups are coloureds (87%) and whites (9%). Unlike other small towns in the
region, black representation is very small (2% of total population). The dominant
language spoken is Afrikaans (94%).
4.3.2 Organising the Win
In order to get a better understanding of why and how it was decided to enter the
competition, a number of key stakeholders were interviewed.2 The Greater
Oudtshoorn municipality’s management, under which De Rust falls, did not con-
sider the competition useful and hence made minimal contribution3 to advancing
2
kykNET television channel, Rapport newspaper and Leopards’ Leap wine estate; the organiser
and representative of kykNET and Rapport, Hetta Saunderson who founded the Kwêla Town of
the Year competition in 2010; key community members who rallied the residents and businesses of
De Rust, Anton and Susan Schoeman; and the CEO of the Greater Oudtshoorn Tourism Bureau,
Joan Shaw. Interviews were conducted with Hetta Saunderson, Anton and Susan Schoeman, Joan
Shaw and Karin Burger from Rapport. The marketing manager of Leopard’s Leap Marius Koetzee
responded via email.
3
Shaw (2014) indicated that they provided a cash donation to the community to assist in collecting
votes. This was confirmed by Schoeman and Schoeman (2014) who stated that after repeated
attempts to garner support from the municipality had failed. Anton contacted an acquaintance in
the municipality who coordinated assistance from within the municipality—a small cash donation
received only two days before the end of the competition.
4.3 De Rust—2011 Kwêla Town of the Year 75
Fig. 4.2 A competition-won

advertising billboard at the
entrance to De Rust. Photo
Author (2012)
the course of competing. They also showed no interest in participating in the

research reported here.
The town won R1 million worth of marketing value from kykNET and Rapport,
two billboards, one at either entrance to the town (Fig. 4.2), 50 waiter training
courses from Leopard’s Leap Wines worth R100,000 and a makietie as a cele-
bratory event in the town.
According to Saunderson (2014) community, participation was crucial for the
town to win the event as the community members had to vote in the competition
and encourage others to vote too. The Rapport’s journalist who covered all the
competition events stated that the winning towns all reported that they had observed
definite positive impacts of winning the competition (Burger, 2014). This is par-
ticularly true of De Rust where previously travellers drove through the town but
after the town’s win they began to telephone in advance and book for a night’s stay.
People were and are still interested to see why and how De Rust won the com-
petition. A vital observation by Burger (2014) is that the competition has engen-
dered cooperation in the communities that have participated. Specifically, towns
could not just count on viewers of kykNET and readers of Rapport to vote—the
organisers had to recruit supporters and collect votes. Two years prior to entering
the competition De Rust had hosted a cycle race, the profits from which were used
to market the town and support the activities of competing for the prize. De Rust
hosted voting evenings, braais (barbeques), church bazaars and piggy banks were
placed in all the businesses in De Rust to collect money. The money was used to
buy airtime for garnering votes. The De Rust community gathered at the church
where the men hold a braai and the women SMSed votes to the competition line.
Cooperation within the De Rust community was also evident in the way residents
formed numerous teams; for example, one team rallied sponsors for the competition
and others kept the town clean and presentable. All the teams were organised and
coordinated effectively.
The leaders and main stakeholders of the KToY competition in the
community—they helped to organise and ensure cooperation within the
community—were Anton and Susan Schoeman. They canvassed support by placing
posters at the school, in the streets of the town and in the main residential areas.
They mobilised the police station and schools to assist in spreading the word about
voting in the competition. They estimated the number of votes needed for the town
to win the competition, and the whole community was encouraged to work towards
that goal. Regarding the participation by and support from all the residents—
meaning those in the township and the main town area—the Schoemans realised
that not everyone was financially able to contribute to voting. Moreover, some who
had the financial means did not believe that the town could win nor that winning
would have any positive spin-offs for them. The Schoemans reported that they did
gain support from the township community, but they had to finance this support by
loading airtime on township residents’ cellphones for them to vote via SMS. They
estimated that each individual phone number could send a maximum of 50 SMSs to
the competition number. The Schoeman’s then acquired everyone’s ID number to
RICA SIM cards and then used the SIM cards to send SMSs. To get the required
financial support for the town, the Schoemans established a committee of ten
members to help organise and coordinate the various ways of collecting money.
Financial support was forthcoming from numerous sponsors, including businesses
in De Rust and Oudtshoorn, local residents, farmers in the surrounding areas and
the tourism office of Oudtshoorn. According to the Schoemans community par-
ticipation was poor and limited at the outset, but as the marketing strategies in the
town, for example the posters, took effect community members began to participate
more and more and they became excited about the possibility of De Rust winning
the competition.
When a new competition series starts, publicity for and attention to the winning
town of the previous year tends to taper off. Burger’s (2014) advice for a winning
town is to use the winner’s status they had for a year and keep running with the
publicity and brand for two to three years after winning the competition. Burger
(2014) cites the example of the winning town in 2010—Graaff-Reinet—that still
distributes flyers to the public boasting that they were previous winners of the
competition.
As participants in the competition, De Rust residents had high expectations of
benefits that would result from winning the competition. For example, they antic-
ipated a boost in tourism, they banked on the competition bringing greater number
of visitors to De Rust, and they bargained on new marketing possibilities.
Schoeman and Schoeman (2014) contend that these expectations were met.
Rapport’s featuring of De Rust every second week attributed to exciting an
interest among the wider public to visit the town. By all accounts, visitors did come
to De Rust with clippings of newspaper articles they consulted while walking
through the town and then ticking off the places they visited. The organisers also
used the victory as a marketing opportunity to showcase the De Rust region:
With the competition’s marketing we tried to show everything that De Rust has to offer, it
wasn’t only the town itself we wanted to market, but the whole region. People that followed
the marketing advertisements were surprised by what was offered and what was going on in
the De Rust region (personal interview with the Schoemans in 2014).
Although there is no quantitative evidence of the impact on the town, the qualitative
impact is justified in comments such as: “You have visitors still coming to De Rust
as a result of the status the town has as the Town of the Year in 2011, saying that
they noted De Rust as one of the places that they wanted to visit one day” (Shaw,
2014). Shaw (2014) believes that although the competition did not markedly
increase the number of visitors to the town it has created greater awareness of De
Rust throughout South Africa. She affirms that the hosting of the De Rust Eco
festival (which took place for the third time in 2014), the Western Cape
Photographic Conference and various other small events is directly attributable to
the KToY status. It has also been claimed that established events, such as the
Meiringspoort Marathon, now experiences greater interest and demand.
Regarding the closure of the De Rust tourism office, Shaw (2014) reported that
after De Rust had become part of the Greater Oudtshoorn municipal area there was
insufficient funding for a second tourism office in the municipal area. Because De
Rust tourism office had become ineffectual and a drain on financial resources, a deal
was signed with an estate agent in De Rust to run the tourism information centre in
their office, but managed by the tourism office in Oudtshoorn. The Greater
Oudtshoorn Tourism Bureau did, however, assist during the voting stage of the
competition by creating awareness about De Rust’s nomination for the title of
KToY on Facebook and encouraging people to vote for the town. Shaw (2014)
maintains that the businesses that were featured on the Kwêla television pro-
gramme, such as the Village Trading Post and Die Gat, benefited more than others
in the town, as visitors to De Rust make a point of visiting these establishments.
According to Shaw (2014), residents of town appeared to be more willing to
participate in community events subsequent to the triumph in 2011.
The opinions of the key stakeholders are consistently favourable. They all agree
that the community united in endeavours to win the competition and that the town’s
nomination and the success of winning engendered a sense of pride among the
town’s communities. Overall, the key stakeholders agree that the competition has
had positive socio-economic effects on De Rust. But what do the residents feel and
say about their town’s status as 2011 KToY?
4.3.3 Residents’ Opinions of the Process
There is no doubt that great efforts were made in campaigning and marketing the
image of De Rust as town of the year to local residents. Donaldson (2014) study
that differentiated between township and non-township areas revealed that
more than 80% of the township community and main town residents were aware of
the competition at the time. However, just over 60% of township residents surveyed
were not actively involved in the planning, campaigning and marketing processes
for the competition. Many of them believed that they were excluded from this
process as they are generally seen as the ‘other’. In the main town there appeared to
have been some friction between the Afrikaans- and English-speaking residents.
The sentiment among township residents was essentially that exposure to the
competition was directed to the main town residents and not to them.
One would have assumed that De Rust’s status as the town of the year would
propel the development process and capitalise on this status. It is noteworthy that a
perception existed in the town that local government’s involvement after the
competition return to the previous state of poor service delivery and underdevel-
opment of the town. Many of the survey participants felt the competition did not
benefit the town generally, as it predominately gave the town free publicity and
local businesses free marketing. To the townsfolk, the town’s poor infrastructure
including potholes in the roads, old dilapidated buildings and many properties in the
market are testimony to a failed attempt to really capitalise on winning the com-
petition. The majority of respondents expressed their frustrations with the munic-
ipality as there have been no changes, for example, improved services in their
community. Their discontent was fuelled by the municipality’s failure to refurbish
the roads in the main town and in the residential areas, as well as the residents’
subjection to irregular collection of garbage. It must, however, be noted that the
issues about service delivery in the town existed before the town won the KToY
competition. It is patently evident that service delivery has not improved as a result
of the town-of-the-year status, some residents even claiming that service delivery is
actually worsening. Only one-third of the respondents expressed that there has been
an increase in visitor numbers and they noted a concomitant increase in restaurant
prices. The competition is, not surprisingly, being viewed as a ‘quick fix’ event that
gave people hope that their communities would benefit and living standards would
improve. These hopes were dashed. In the case of De Rust tourism, marketing has
not been viewed as an appropriate vehicle for development as it was not beneficial
to the poorer communities.
4.3.4 Business Owners’ Opinions and Experiences
Donaldson (2014) reported a strong correlation between business respondents’

perception of tourist increases and business revenue in the year following the
winning of the competition. Overwhelmingly, business respondents believe that
after the competition the image of De Rust had become more positive than before,
with only 6% stating that it had not. One-third of the business-owner interviewees
stated that their business has been more successful since the competition: the
majority (47%) indicated an annual increase in turnover of up to 20%, 20% reported
increases between 21% and 40% and 26% even had increases of more than 40%.
About 80% of the interviewees did not consider it necessary to change their mar-
keting strategies because their business turnovers are adequate and considering that
the town is populated mostly by older people there is no need to alter the marketing
focus to include other target groups. The 20% that did find it necessary to refocus
their marketing efforts did so to include more tourists. Some business people
reported decreasing annual incomes as a result of the sheen of the KToY status
wearing off. However, this was mostly the sentiment expressed by owners of the
smaller B&Bs.
4.4 Fouriesburg—2012 Kwela Town of the Year
The small town of Fouriesburg (Fig. 4.3) won the KToY competition in 2013,
becoming the first Free State Province winner.
4.4.1 Background to the Town
Fouriesburg is located about 35 km south-west of Clarens (an iconic tourism small

town destination) in the eastern highlands of the Free State Province. Fouriesburg is
close to the famous and magnificent Golden Gate and within a stone’s throw of
Lesotho. A main drawcard in the area is Meiringskloof, a beautiful ravine sur-
rounded by sandstone cliffs with open caves, indigenous bush and abundant bird
life. Visitors often stay at Meiringskloof and take a day trip in winter to Lesotho’s
AfriSki 95 km away to ski and snowboard, or to the Katse Dam 100 km away, high
in the Maloti Mountains of Lesotho. The area has a rich history with several of the
Anglo-Boer War battlefield sites open to visitors. The town’s function as an agri-
cultural supply centre has been declining, a role taken over by the nearby service
Fig. 4.3 Main street Fouriesburg. Photo Ruth Massey (2016)

town of Bethlehem (Halseth & Meiklejohn, 2009). Fouriesburg is generally well

kept but much of the infrastructure is old and degraded (particularly the road
surfaces).
The town centre has a couple of mainstream retailers such as Pep Stores, but a
few of the ubiquitous Chinese-run general dealers have made their appearance. Like
most small towns that show some form of creativity in tourism development,
Fouriesburg boasts an Asparagus Festival which showcases the growing, planting
and cuisine of this tasty vegetable. The cultural and art hub of the town is the
Doherty Centre which houses an art gallery, coffee shop, deli, general gift shops
and a restaurant. An arts and crafts market is held on Saturdays. During a Saturday
visit (over on a long weekend) most of the vehicles have Free State registration
plates, although it is also reported that many visitors hail from Gauteng and
KwaZulu-Natal. The town has numerous B&B establishments, while the
Fouriesburg Country Inn caters for those preferring a hotel experience. There are
also several guest farms in the surrounding areas as well as popular wedding
venues. Fouriesburg is well known for its houses built with locally hewn sandstone.
The town’s population is markedly segregated racially. Most of the black popula-
tion visit the town for their basic shopping but remain in the township area on the
town’s outskirts. Tourism and farming are the two main economic drivers of the
town.
Seen nationally and building upon economic analyses based on existing gross
value added (GVA) calculations conducted in the National Spatial Development
Perspective (NSDP) (Republic of South Africa 2007), Fouriesburg has “limited/no
economic potential relative to other economically stronger places in the main cores
of the country” (Halseth & Meiklejohn, 2009: 312). According to an application of
Butler’s life-cycle model,4 in 2007 the town was at the transition between explo-
ration and involvement and probably poised for development (Halseth &
Meiklejohn, 2009). During this stage, a major role is played by pioneer tourism
visitors—those seeking a new or unique experience in a locale not overrun or
overcommercialised (such as the town’s neighbour Clarens). Since 2007 a number
of tourist accommodations have been established within and immediately sur-
rounding the town suggesting that entrepreneurs have noted this explorative and
involvement trend and are moving to capture some of the economic benefits of local
tourism. Halseth and Meiklejohn (2009) have drawn attention to the link between
rural commodification and urban gentrification where in both cases investments are
made through local housing markets. Although the property market in Fouriesburg
has changed over the recent past, the town still lacks successes in tourism devel-
opment comparable to those experienced in neighbouring Clarens (Marais, 2004;
Marais et al., 2012). For example, a typical historic stone house in Fouriesburg is
priced at just over R1 million opposed to R3 million in Clarens in 2016.
4
The model postulates that a locality starts with very little overt tourism-industry activity and then
progresses through a cycle of stages. Model stages are exploration, involvement, development,
consolidation, stagnation and rejuvenation/decline.
4.4 Fouriesburg—2012 Kwela Town of the Year 81
4.4.2 A Different Approach to Organising
Unlike De Rust, Fouriesburg’s KToY campaign was not a planned initiative by the
community or an organised group because no one knew that the town had been
nominated in the first phase of the process. When they won the Free State round of
the year round the initiators of the Fouriesburg campaign decided to ‘go big or go
home’. Initially, the campaign was a private initiative run by private businesses and
the Fouriesburg Forum (formed prior to the competition). Weideman (2015), a
Fouriesburg Forum member responsible for driving the town-of-the-year process,
explained that: “The Forum was formed before the competition process started. We
felt that we can all say the town is bad and dirty but if we don’t do something then it
is going to stay that way. As the process grew, the municipality also got involved”
(Roos, 2015). Ahead of the national competition, the forum members organised a
4 4 day and a family fun day. To secure regional support for their campaign they
collaborated with the two provincial newspapers in which articles about the town
were featured on a weekly basis.
The strategy of the voting campaign was slightly different to that followed in De
Rust:
A prize was donated to us to the value of R10,000 by one of the members of the
Fouriesburg community. This prize was raffled off. We sold tickets for R20 each. We raised
a lot of money and we then went to the municipality for their assistance. The municipality
matched the amount we raised. With this money we went out and canvassed votes. We
started with a marketing campaign. We met with everyone in town, the community and all
the establishments. We got everyone’s databases and put together a uniform advert which
we then SMSed to everyone on the databases. We asked them in the advert to send their
votes via SMS for “Fouriesburg Town of the Year”. With the money we had raised and got
from the municipality we bought SIM cards. Each SIM card number could vote 30 times.
We bought R45 SIM cards and went to three schools in the township areas and approached
the principal. He allowed the children to bring their cellphones to school for one day. We
put the SIM cards in their cellphones and they all voted as many times as they could. We
beat Paarl by 60,000 votes! (Craig, 2015).
The philosophy was simple: “We started to clean up and neaten up the town and
encourage people to keep the town clean” (Craig, 2015). The Fouriesburg Forum’s
campaign is described as follows:
It was a marketing exercise. We used Facebook and I emailed everyone on my mailing list
and said to people, ‘if you had a good experience in Fouriesberg, please vote’. Also the
guesthouses had large databases which we used to send SMSs to get people to vote. We
have three large wedding venues and they emailed all the people on their databases. Half of
the Saturdays in the year, there is a wedding. They sent SMSs to their database to say
—‘vote for us’ and the response was overwhelming. The people really joined in. Because
we are a small town, a plus point is that we have a very personal relationship with our
guests/visitors and people remember that and really appreciate that. The time on TV also
allowed us to show all the things that are going on here (Weideman, 2015).
4.4.3 What Winning Meant for the Town
The win has influenced tourism in Fouriesburg in a number of ways. The town
celebrated its 120th existence in 2013. They arranged a Maloti Makiti party and
combined this with the Kwêla celebrations. The R1 million Kwêla marketing and
television coverage significantly boosted the image and brand of the town and
resulted in many visitors to the town. More accommodation establishments were
opened as well as other new businesses. Consequently, the town has been marketed
as the ‘Activity Mecca’ of the Eastern Free State and a base for discovering the
region and Lesotho. The region boasts 4 4 routes, hiking, fishing, historical sites,
San paintings and mountain bike trails. The town employs two dedicated cleaners to
keep litter off the streets and ensure the town is clean. Winning the competition
served as a catalyst for improvements in the town: the municipal manager arranged
for the town hall’s roof to be painted ahead of the television coverage and people
cleaned up the town and their homes in anticipation of the visit by the television
crews (Craig, 2015).
The increased publicity, a new togetherness of residents, the establishment of
some new businesses, the improvement in litter collection and residents’ fixing up
their homes were seen by the interviewees as positive spin-offs of the win. Some
enterprises experienced slightly better business than in the past. Stakeholders
agreed about how much winning meant to the community as a whole: “It really
brought the community together” (Weideman, 2015). The tourism and tour man-
ager at a large accommodation establishment claimed that there has been “a slight
increase in tourism” but that he is not sure if it has to do with being branded KToY.
The owners of accommodation establishments concurred that winning was bene-
ficial to their businesses. One stated that “[W]e saw a slight increase in bookings
right after the competition. I think people were curious” (Guesthouse owner,
interview, 2015). At other business establishments the same sentiment has been
shared: “We have definitely seen an increase in business here. We have found that
people have found that a small town can be a destination just as much as a larger
town or big city” (Weideman, 2015). The impact on the property market has not
been dramatic. According to a local estate agent, there has been an upsurge in
people buying houses to start a B&B or other business. She further said: “I think a
lot of people were expecting to make a lot of money from their properties when the
town won the competition but this did not happen”. According to her some people
were buying second homes here and homes for renovation, but not many. Another
estate agent claimed that owners raised the price of their property ahead of winning
the KToY competition, expecting a boom in real estate but this did not happen.
When people did not get what they expected in terms of sales, the prices stabilised.
However, some interviewees felt that it was like “they bought the win”. One
interviewee stated: “We won because we got the most SMSs not because we are the
best town”. Another opined that there was “an expectation by visitors that the town
was something that maybe it was not. Some people, when visiting, weren’t sure
4.4 Fouriesburg—2012 Kwela Town of the Year 83
why it was voted town of the year”. Not all guest house owners are all too excited
about what winning the title meant to them. One commented: “No, not really. We
saw a slight increase in bookings right after the competition. I think people were
curious”.
4.5 Conclusion: What are the Key Lessons of the Two

Case Studies?
The purpose of the surveys of the two KToY competition winners, De Rust and
Fouriesburg, was to investigate the impact the winning status may have had on the
towns. The qualitative findings reflect how people organised their efforts for the
town to become winners, who the organisers were, what their intentions and
aspirations were as well as the synergies these actions produced at community level.
Six main lessons can be learnt from the case studies.
One, it is clear in both cases that dedicated leaders were involved in the process,
albeit from the announcement of the competition in the De Rust case but in the
Fouriesburg case only when the town had made it to the second round of the
competition. In the broader developmental discourse on the local economic
development of small towns, it is argued that there is a need for strong leadership or
governance if any success is to be obtained (Nussbaum, 1997). The argument runs
that “[L]eaders are the life-blood of small towns and rural communities. The suc-
cess or failure of community development efforts often rests with the degree of
leadership local citizens are willing to provide” (http://www.cfra.org/resources/
leaders). The case studies illustrated that in organising a campaign to enter and win
a KToY competition, dedicated leadership by local citizens was the crucial factor
for success in light of the public sector’s minimal participation. The experiences
revealed in the two case studies resonate with those reported in international case
studies that “people (as opposed to money or other resources) are the one absolutely
necessary ingredient to successful development. A committed group of local resi-
dents who are willing to work hard for their community’s interests can change the
fate of an otherwise hopeless community” (Lambe, 2008: 4).
Two, in De Rust there was an absence of essential buy-in by key role players in
the public sector, whereas in Fouriesburg there was more success in involving local
government. The Fouriesburg’s Municipal Council pledged support for the event
and viewed it as a valuable supplementary marketing tool (Dihlabeng Local
Municipality, 2012). The participative role of the public and private sectors in the
town was even lauded in parliament where it was stated that “despite water chal-
lenges, Fouriesburg did well by winning the award as a result of a collective effort”
(NCOP, 2013: n.p.n.). (The 2012 winner of the competition, Sabie, was mentioned
in the official SA Tourism Handbook of the Year in 2012/13.)
Three, the towns reaped maximum benefits from the media exposure during their
respective terms as town of the year, but they failed to build on the successes in
succeeding years. Opportunities were missed to sustain the exposure and interest in
the towns beyond the winning year. In De Rust, the process was not driven by an
already organised community forum of some sort as done in Fouriesburg. In the
post-winning years, the town should ideally have identified and built on existing
assets such as the regional exposure of the competition and the networks that were
established through the community engagements and mobilisations.
Four, because the title of KToY is for one year only the planning attempts to add
value to the towns’ tourism products were dealt with in piecemeal fashion (more so
in De Rust in the absence of municipal support). The elevation of the revitalisation
of the towns within the constraints of mandates to do so and budgets, such as the
cleaning of the main streets (employing staff to clean the streets), painting and
refurbishments, can be considered just as window dressing, but these endeavours
could easily have become the starting points for revitalisation programmes and
projects which would yield results over the longer term.
Five, regionalism, whereby opportunities and partnerships were identified
beyond the town boundaries, is a dimension that could have been harnessed more.
The expanded marketing drive during the winning year should ideally have
incorporated the wider region. Both towns’ stakeholders have emphasised the value
of outdoor and nature tourism in their respective regions. The establishing and
promoting of regional offerings in collaboration with nearby hamlets and small
towns would certainly be beneficial to the regions as a whole. Because these towns
are outside the pleasure peripheries of the nearest metropolitan areas, by capitalising
on short-stay visitors and spreading them to the broader region the individual towns
which have limited offerings would all stand to benefit. When small towns pool
their resources in a regional context they can share costs and revenues associated
with a wider range of developmental and marketing activities.
Last, it is believed that “[C]ooperation to achieve jointly established priorities
helps leverage the assets that each party can bring to the table to make the most of
the region’s resources” (EPA, 2015: i). There was little outside funding available to
both towns, but the little that was accessible was applied strategically to help
increase local interest and commitment in the area and, in the process, hopefully
stimulated private investment. It was evident in both towns that investment growth,
such as increased tourist numbers, property prices and new business did not take
place.
To conclude, in the context of urban growth machine thesis it is argued that the
ultimate aim of growth elites (power elites who are initiators and drivers of ideas) is
to make small towns attractive for outside capital (via tourists visiting the towns or
buying second home properties or starting a business). The KToY winners seem-
ingly succeeded in having momentarily successes in branding their towns. But how
successful and authentic are the using of international philosophies such as the slow
city and slow food movements to brand and market their towns as tourist desti-
nations is a question to be explored in the next chapter that focusses on Sedgefield
as case study of a cittaslow.
References 85
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country tours.
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Donaldson, R. (2014). Research report on De Rust as Kwêla town of the year. Unpublished research
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campaign and owner of the Windmill Pub and Grill.
Saunderson, H. (2014). Personal communications. Interview on 20 February about organisation of
Naspers, Cape Town. Interview on 21 Feb about organisation of Kwêla Town of the Year
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Schoeman, A., & Schoeman, S. (2014). Personal communications. Interview on 24 Feb about De
Rust community participation and Kwêla Town of the Year competition.
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the local butchery.
Chapter 5
Cittaslow: Going Nowhere Slowly?
Slow urbanisation mainly focuses on originality, diversity,

heterogeneity, sense of belonging and appropriation instead of
homogeneity, monotony and uniformity. In this way, it serves
for the re-exploration of local values, which have been
forgotten or disregarded for a long time, and uses these values
as a tool in economic development (Dogrusoy & Dalgakiran,
2011: 141).
Abstract The slow movement with all of its attributing factors has proven to be a
significant tool for small town development if the conditions are right. The slow
movement and more particularly, the slow city movement is built on various uto-
pian ideologies of which the core is to ensure a sustainable future for all. They aim
to achieve this by educating people in small towns on how to be self-sufficient and
not needy of outside assistance. This chapter firstly reviews the literature on slow
cities, and then describes how the slow movement has been implemented in
Sedgefield, a small coastal town located in the Garden Route of the Western Cape
Province. The accreditation of Sedgefield made it the slow town headquarters of
Africa and potentially therefore serves as a powerful marketing tool. In addition, the
new brand also created opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation in order to
create LED, poverty reduction programmes and economic welfare. In terms of
LED, a good leader is extremely important to the success of small towns and
Sedgefield is a case in point where number of dedicated individuals work together
to make a success of the movement. A general criticism of slow cities is that it can
be seen as exclusionary as it only takes into account the interests of the small group
of power elites in small towns. The empirical evidence however leaves us with the
question as to whether these aims will remain part of an exclusive club or not?

Keywords Sedgefield Slow city Slow food Slow travel Slow tourism

Slow food charter Autochthonous production South Africa (Western Cape)

88 5 Cittaslow: Going Nowhere Slowly?
5.1 Introducing the Slow City Concept Slowly
One of the major obstacles to attaining sustainability is the concept of ‘speed’

which is a key phenomenon in the shaping of industrial cities. Industrialisation and
mechanisation accelerated speed, as it were. Fast moving resulted in urban envi-
ronments becoming disintegrated, and such disruption of the relationship between
individuals and place caused rapid transformation of environmental and cultural
values that once prominently characterised a particular place (Dogrusoy &
Dalgakiran, 2011; Hatipoglu, 2015). It is reasoned that slowing down is important if
sustainability is to be achieved and if the relationship between individuals and
urban environments is to be protected and regained (Dogrusoy & Dalgakiran,
2011). The fast world is a product of globalisation and a product of the “expansion
of capitalism on a global scale” (Knox, 2005: 3). In the world we live in today, time
and money are closely linked. Moving faster than everyone else will earn one more
money so accelerating the pace of life. The fast world connects about “800 million
people through global networks of communication and knowledge, production and
consumption” (Knox, 2005: 3). In order to live a slower “and relaxed pace of life”
(Semmens & Freeman, 2012: 357), so-called Cittaslow towns are being
encouraged.
Founded in Italy in 1986, the slow food movement has grown into an interna-
tional association with local chapters worldwide. Inspired by this movement, the
Cittaslow (which literally means slow city) movement was formed in 1999, also in
Italy. The two movements and concepts are so interlinked that to achieve the status
of slow city; a city must agree to accept the guidelines of slow food and work to
improve conviviality and conserve the local environment (Hatipoglu, 2015).
Cittaslow is an international network of small towns (Miele, 2008) which has
“transformed into a unique global organisation of towns” (Semmens & Freeman,
2012: 357). The concept of a slow city is “slowness” and one of the goals of any
slow city is to “create borders against the spread of the fast life” (Miele, 2008: 135).
A slow city strives towards keeping the traditional culture of the city alive and
producing “a version of slowness” (Miele, 2008: 135). Requirements to become a
Cittaslow include infrastructural policies, environmental policies, technologies and
facilities for urban quality safeguarding autochthonous production, awareness and
hospitality (Ekinci, 2013). The Cittaslow manifesto states that these are “Towns
where men are still curious of the old times, towns rich of theatres, squares, cafes,
workshops, restaurants and spiritual places, towns with untouched landscapes and
charming craftsmen where people are still able to recognise the slow course of the
seasons and their genuine products respecting tastes, health and spontaneous cus-
toms” (Miele, 2008: 137). The idea of slow cities is simple since its goal is to
enhance the concept of good living as well as the quality of the environment and
collective well-being.
This chapter reviews the literature on slow cities and briefly reflects on the
numerous ramifications of slowness such as the sub-slow movement’s themes of
slow tourism, slow fashion, slow design, slow travel, slow science, slow art and
5.1 Introducing the Slow City Concept Slowly 89
slow housing. The one sub-slow movement that aligns most prominently with slow
cities is the slow food movement. There has been recently a slowly unintended
growing body of international literature on slow cities and slow food, but nothing
has been written in an African context. This chapter describes how the slow
movement was implemented in, somewhat oddly, Sedgefield, a small coastal town
in the Garden Route of the Western Cape Province, recently accredited as Africa’s
first slow city. An overview of the literature relating to and concepts interlinked
with Cittaslow—slow tourism, slow travel, slow housing and slow food—is fol-
lowed by a discussion of Sedgefield as Cittaslow in the context of the aims of the
slow city charter.
5.2 Slowness in the Urban, Food, Housing and Tourism

Realms
5.2.1 Cittaslow
The logo of Cittaslow is appropriately a snail with a Manhattan of low-rise

buildings on the shell. The concept of Cittaslow deliberately restricts applicants to
towns with a population of less than 50,000 and functions on a membership
organisational basis. To become eligible for membership, a town must normally
score at least 50% in a self-assessment process against the set of Cittaslow goals
and then apply for admission to the appropriate Cittaslow national network. An
annual membership fee is payable by towns. To qualify, a town must apply through
its municipal representative (either the mayor or councillor) and undertake a
self-evaluation process to determine how well the town meets the criteria. Should
the town score 70% or above, the town representative may apply for membership
by submitting the completed application forms and the relevant details of the town
as required. The town is then visited by the committee to assess and to gain a
first-hand impression whether the town fits in with the philosophy of Cittaslow
(Mayer & Knox, 2006). Cittaslow International in Italy will thereafter decide if the
town will be accredited. Cities that join are committed to implementing a charter
and adhering to a 54-point criteria list. There are eight broad categories: environ-
mental policies; infrastructure policies; facilities and technologies for urban quality;
ways of safeguarding autochthonous production; hospitality features; awareness
policies; extraordinary requirements; and support to slow food activities and pro-
jects. The criteria represent a unique community quality-of-life indicator system
that addresses issues of environmental protection and sustainable urban develop-
ment, urban design and form, the support of local products and educational
awareness. The slow city charter forms the philosophical basis for a set of
action-orientated indicators in the broader tourism field where member towns are
obliged to pursue local projects that protect local traditions and cultures, contribute
to a relaxed pace of life, create conviviality and hospitality and promote a unique
sense of place and local distinctiveness (http://www.slowtown.co.za/category/

membership-sedgefield-slow-town-southern-cape-south-africa). Slow cities are
meant to conserve local cultural events; develop local markets in the city’s inter-
esting and prestigious places; the development of organic agriculture; institute
programmes to increase local food traditions; and launch initiatives to encourage
the protection of products and handicrafts of the local area. The sustainability
agendas are primarily motivated by use of local resources and local consumption.
Slow food and slow towns use local products as mediators of local economic,
social and cultural distinctiveness and sustainability, with resources and environ-
mental quality (www.cittaslow.org). They must comply with the International
Standards Organization (ISO) 14000 and ISO 9001 as well as participate in Agenda
21 projects. In addition, slow cities must be committed to the conservation of the
distinctive character of their built environment and must pledge to, among many
other features plant trees; create more green space; increase cycle paths and
pedestrianised streets; keep public squares and piazzas free of billboards and neon
lights; ban car alarms; reduce noise pollution, light pollution and air pollution;
foster the use of alternative sources of energy; improve public transport; and pro-
mote eco-friendly architecture in any new developments (Knox, 2005).
But according to Pink (2007, 2008), Cittaslow goes beyond urban design and
ideologies. Pink (2007: 66) asserts that Cittaslow also “involves emplaced indi-
viduals and the constitution of place through their subjective sensory practices,
experience and projects.” Pink (2007: 66) advances that Cittaslow is a process
which “advocates the engagement of the sense in the social construction of place”
as well as in urban design. It is thus an urban process. In a political sense, it is the
“creation of alternative urban “sensescapes”” that deliver critique in a more implicit
manner on the “visual olfactory, gustatory, sonic and haptic experiences” that are
connected and linked to global consumer capitalism” (Pink, 2007: 66).
In considering the relationship between the way people live and work, Knox
(2005) posits that people gradually impose themselves on their environment thereby
modifying and adjusting it to suit their needs and to express their values. Over the
past few decades, people and the places they live in have been confronted with
transformation at an unprecedented scale and extraordinary rate (Knox, 2005). Both
economic and cultural globalisations have resulted in a network society dominated
by flows of capital, ideas and people. Globalisation has brought about extensive
changes which have generated a fast-paced world, where the changes occurring in
these places transform all the places to look similar and hence affects one’s sense of
place. The fast world is very much a product of the expansion of capitalism on a
global scale. In the global economic system, time costs money and the inevitable
result is a steady acceleration in the pace of life. Developers have created theme
parks, shopping malls, festival marketplaces, renovated historical districts and
neighbourhoods in response to the increase in consumer culture (Knox, 2005).
Meanwhile, globalisation has prompted communities in many parts of the world to
become more conscious of the ways in which they are perceived by tourists,
businesses, media firms and consumers.
5.2 Slowness in the Urban, Food, Housing and Tourism Realms 91
Parkins and Craig (2006) explain Cittaslow from a cultural studies perspective
by looking into the social spaces and the human relations that exist in slow cities.
They see Cittaslow addressing the marginalised ways of life in urban contexts.
Slow living is directed at a “more deliberate, sustainable and pleasurable existence”
(Parkins & Craig, 2006: 305). Their argument is that slow living/slowness is a
means of “signalling an alternate set of practices for everyday living within the
global everyday” (Parkins & Craig, 2006: 305). Slowness is not a static concept or a
concept used in opposition to speed. Rather, slowness is used in a way of “recu-
perating alternated visions of the ethics of time” (Parkins & Craig 2006: 305). Each
slow city has a distinct flavour, each pursues a variety of goals and each considers
what unites what they have in common so creating a desire to protect the unique
and distinctive aspects of its communities. Slow cities are characterised by a way of
life that supports people to live slow (Beatley, 2004). Traditions and traditional
ways of doing things are valued. These cities endure against the fast lane, homo-
genised world so often observed in other cities throughout the world. Slow cities
have less traffic, less noise and fewer crowds (Cittaslow, 2005).
There has been a recent emphasis on other sub-slow movements, including slow
fashion, slow design, slow travel, slow science and slow art (Lindner & Meissner,
2015; Heinonen, Halonen, & Daldoss, 2006; Orsi, 2011; Steele, 2012). These all
play vital roles in resisting the accelerated pace of society. The goals of these
movements are to connect people with their community and promote sustainability,
belonging, justice and quality (Lindner & Meissner, 2015). Slow art can be used,
for example, to strategically weaken and reduce the acceleration of urbanism caused
by globalisation (Lindner & Meissner, 2015: 20). But, slowness can also be used to
create new spaces to examine concerns and problems of belonging, community and
place identity (Lindner & Meissner, 2015: 20). Of the more commonly discussed
slow movements are slow food, slow tourism and slow housing. The essence of
each is distilled next.
5.2.2 Slow Food
Food tourism is, according to Hall (2003: xxiii), increasingly being “recognised as
part of the local culture, consumed by tourists; an element of regional tourism
promotion; a component of local agricultural and economic development; a key
element to competitive destination marketing; an indicator of globalisation and
localisation; and a product and service consumed by tourists with definite prefer-
ences and consumption patterns”, whereas the slow city movement provides an
explicit agenda of local distinctiveness and urban development, the slow food
movement “programmes address the notion of place through the concept of “ter-
ritory”” (Mayer & Knox, 2006: 327). Post-industrial societies are characteristically
fast-paced, with mega urban projects, smokestack chasing and a mass-consumptive
society (Mayer & Knox, 2006, 2009). A signal example of soft growth in response
to mass-consumptive society is the slow food movement (Leitch, 2003; Van
Bommel & Spicer, 2011; Timms & Conway, 2012). The movement specifically
targeted the fast-food industry. Indeed, the movement stemmed from a protest
against a McDonald’s opening in Rome in 1986 (Petrini, 2001). The slow food
movement is now active in more than 150 countries. Carlo Petrini founded the slow
food movement to promote the use of fresh local foods, grown with sustainable
farming techniques, prepared with love and consumed in a leisurely manner in the
company of good friends and family. The movement’s development philosophy
rests on three principles: good (commitment to quality food); clean (naturalness in
the way in which food is produced where the de-industrialisation of agriculture is
advocated); and fair (food produced in ways that respect working conditions, i.e. a
commitment to social justice) (Knox, 2005). Therefore, the slow movement is not
limited to registered slow towns, rather it is a means for restaurants to ensure
satisfaction, enrichment and fulfilment to patrons after encountering a slow food
restaurant (Oliveti, 2011). The concept of slow food supports the importance of all
our senses (eyes, ears/hearing, nose/smell, touch and taste) as a way to distinguish
and support the good things in life. By using our senses, we will ensure pleasure
and safety: “The education of taste is the slow way to resist McDonaldisation”
(Miele, 2008: 135). Gastronomy is closely linked to slow food in such a way that
slow food “calls itself an ecological and gastronomic movement” (Nilsson et al.,
2011: 374). When producing slow food you are producing food that is not only
clean and good, but also fair (Miele, 2008). The slow food movement not only
constitutes a way of eating, but a way of living that is said to be beneficial to the
local economy by supporting the farmers (Volpe, 2012: 29). The movement sup-
ports the establishment of community gardens and the alleviation of food insecurity.
The slow food movement aims to achieve the spreading and gaining of
knowledge on the local traditional cultures, as well as helping and preserving
agriculture against environmental degradation and “promoting the simple pleasures
of gastronomy and conviviality” (Steele, 2012: 181). The emergence of farmers’
markets is an expression of contemporary trends in geographies of production and
consumption where there is an increased awareness among certain groups of
consumers of the health, ethical and political dimensions of food purchase and
consumption. Knox (2005) has pointed out that slow food is intrinsically linked
with the slow city movement. Although the aims of the two movements are dif-
ferent, they are complementary. Both are in favour of local, traditional cultures, a
relaxed pace of life and conviviality (Knox, 2005). Slow food and slow city
movements are both hostile to big business and globalisation, though their driving
motivation is not so much political as ecological and humanistic. The philosophy of
the movement is that typical products and regional cuisines are important features
of cultural distinctiveness (Miele & Murdoch, 2002). These products and cuisines
need to be cultivated and protected, not for nostalgic reasons nor because they are
the latest fashion in high-class restaurants, rather because they represent a rich
cultural heritage (Lotti, 2010). In the fascinating book Au revoir to all that. Food,
wine and the end of France, Steinberger (2009) examines how the French have
withered away their once world famous culinary tradition, and how this is
impacting on the psyche of a nation which once had a proud tradition in the way
food was prepared. As in the case in Italy, “consumption was no longer restricted to
local produce or local dishes” and
…advanced techniques of preservation, including deep freezing (for centuries the options
had been smoking, salting, and drying) made it possible to find ‘fresh’ products anywhere,
at any time of the year, independently of where they were grown or raised and what the
season was. The food distribution system ramified. The cooking styles of the different
territories were suddenly in peril, crowded out by some sort of alimentary syncretism. So
was family conviviality, which died in the US with the advent of the TV dinner and later the
microwave, as precooked and reheated dinners were eaten in silence before the blue glow of
the television screen (Petrini, 2001: 68–69).
The emergence of slow food can be understood in light of this increasing sense of
unease over the system of food production (Pietrykowski, 2004, Du Rand & Heath,
2006). According to Pietrykowski (2004), the movement evolved to encompass
three primary objectives: education of taste; defending the right to material pleasure
and conviviality; and preserving the survival of endangered agricultural products
and practices through the Ark of Taste. A formal manifestation of the slow food
commitment to education of taste was the creation of a university dedicated to
developing the academic field of ecogastronomy. The University of Gastronomic
Sciences was established in Italy in autumn 2004. The university came into being
after primary schools initiated taste education programmes (Leitch, 2003). The
education of taste was also programmed to operate in less formal ways, such as
local Cittaslow chapter meetings, guest speakers, socialisation between members
and conducting the business of the slow food movement (Pietrykowski, 2004).
5.2.3 Slow Tourism and Slow Travel
Originating from the slow city and slow food movements, slow tourism and slow
travel also have an Italian genesis. Surprisingly, there has been little research to date
on the evolving concepts of slow tourism and slow travel.1 Slow tourism promotes
sustainability, sense of place, hospitality and recuperation (Conway & Timms,
2010) and concept now under discussion from perspectives such as sustainable
tourism, marketing and consumer behaviour (Heitmann, Robinson, & Povey,
2011). The pillars that Matos (2004) outlined as the philosophy of slow tourism
incorporates sustainable development involving aspects of economic, sociocultural
and environmental sustainability. The intention of slow tourism and slow travel to
reduce the carbon footprint while respecting local culture and nature (Soininen,
2011) is indeed noble. This is especially so in the context of renewed interest in
tourism studies to find alternatives to the perceived environmental, social and
economic harms of mass tourism with its large ecological footprint (Hall, 2012).
Therefore, the principle of slow tourism is the notion that it is the antithesis of mass
1
For a discussion of the debate over slow travel and slow tourism, see Conway and Timms (2012).
tourism (Timms & Conway 2012; Yurtseven & Kaya, 2011), but (international)
travellers have to reach their destinations somehow compromise. Conway and
Timms (2012: 74) suggest that “slow travel advocates to allow flying to a distant
destination and then undertake, or adopt, slow travel principles and practices on
arrival” but this compromise of principles unfortunately “would seem to undermine
the ecological, sustainability argument that slow travel’s footprint is reduced suf-
ficiently. Rather, it stands out as the construct’s ‘Achilles heel’”. They add that
“destinations for slow travel are mostly limited to wealthier regions of the world
due to its emphasis on avoiding long-distance air and auto travel. It therefore has
limited potential to offer as an alternative genre for tourism destinations further
afield, i.e. the Caribbean, Latin America, Oceania, Asia and Africa” (Conway &
Timms, 2012: 74). Slow travel is often less than popular given that many holiday
destinations often include flights with their tour packages for people not wanting to
travel long hours to reach destinations (Dickinson et al., 2011).
Slow tourism reaffirms tourism as a vital component of people’s weaving
awareness of a globalised world in their efforts to live comfortably on holiday
(Moore, 2012). For Dickinson, Lumsdon, and Robins (2011: 282), slow travel
relates to “the three pillars of the slow movement, doing things at the right speed,
changing attitudes towards time and the use of it and seeking quality over quantity.”
Lumsdon and McGrath (2011) create a framework in which they use the concept of
slow travel as an integral part of the tourism experience and not simply just a means
of reaching a destination. They view the three main characteristics of slow travel as
slowness, the travel experience and the environmental consciousness of the travel
experience. Walking and cycling unhurriedly while travelling through the landscape
and doing so in order to not consume much energy are characteristics of slow travel
which may include cycling holidays and coach trips to different countries (Dickson,
2009). Figure 5.1 is an example of how slow tourism is promoted in the
Haspengouw region of Belgium through the picking of a card to do touristic things
at a slow pace in the town of Wellen. The Lumsdon and McGrath framework can be
inextricably linked to the duality in the urban development agendas proposed by
Mayer and Knox (2006). Figure 5.2 combines these frameworks. The features of
Fig. 5.1 Slow tourism

playing cards in Belgium.
Photo Author (2016)
Travel
Characteristics
Urban Development Agenda
Mode of Travel Slowness Travel Environmental Sense
Experience Consciousness of Place
High Intrinsic Slow Travel Experience Attachment Alternative Urban Development Agenda
Running/walking Unhurried Travelling through the Low Energy Sense Slow; idiosyncratic/ asset specific; multiple imperatives;
Landscapes Consumption of Place equitable; craft; customized; grassroots; sustainable;
authentic; high quality; asset specific; sensitive to local
history, culture
Fast; homogenized; single imperative; inequitable;
industrial; standardized; corporate; unsustainable; copied;
low quality; replicable; insensitive to local history, culture

High-Speed Train Hurried Travel Corridor High Energy Minimal Cultural Contact
Consumption
Low Intrinsic Fast Travel Experience Detachment Corporate Centered Urban Agenda
Fig. 5.2 Framework combining the agendas of slow travel and slow urban development. Source
Adapted from Lumsdon and McGrath (2015: 276) and Mayer and Knox (2006: 325)
both alternative urban development and slow travel experiences are evident: the
propagation of slowness; sensitivity to local cultures and history; experience of a
stronger sense of place where attachment to place is embedded in cultural
exchanges with the local community; craft industries that value local products and
promote localism (e.g. boutique beer, slow food); a strong focus on quality as
opposed to quantity; and so on.
Geography plays a role in slow tourism because it exists in places overlooked as
prime locations for tourism development (Conway & Timms, 2010). Timms and
Conway’s (2012) study of slow tourism in the Caribbean, where diversity and
authenticity still persist, is conceptually rooted in the slow food movement and
theoretically rooted in Herman Daly’s idea of ‘soft growth’ development. They
propose slow tourism as a “viable soft growth model that is a more culturally
sensitive and sustainable genre of alternative tourism. This new model and its
locational appropriateness appears eminently suitable since it diversifies and revi-
talises mature tourism offerings, redirects tourism away from “hard growth” max-
ims, and thereby contributes to more sustainable tourism ensembles” (Timms &
Conway, 2012: 396). The second principle is the modification of time relationships,
specifically with a different perception of nature, its inhabitants and the culture
(Yurtseven & Kaya, 2011). Being part of a local culture drives visitors in slow
tourism to engage in local life, thus empowering them to explore the location in no
hurry (Soininen, 2011). Conway and Timms (2012: 74) state that slow travel and
slow tourism
appeal to mature and seasoned visitors’ perspectives because they both emphasize ‘quality
of life’ considerations such as leisure and enjoyment of the simple delicacies and profound
moments of communal contact. While they both address the positives accrued to local
destinations, slow tourism more explicitly expects there to be sincere societal involvement
with the locals they meet and learn from, including the involvement and participation of
local stakeholders, who bring their maturity and experience to the provision of quality,
culturally-rich services.
Slow tourists find out more about the natural and built heritage, local cuisine and
traditions so having a more authentic experience compared to those who rush
through and tick off all the must-see places on their list (Caffyn, 2012). Slow
tourism reconfigures tourist destinations as destinations where the tourists are the
creative actors in the community and engage in behaviours which benefit the local
communities (Wearings, Wearings, & McDonald, 2012). However, for local
communities to safeguard themselves against the global market they need to rely on
the community’s own labour forces and resources to create sustainable tourist
products (Wearings et al., 2012).
According to Yurtseven and Kaya (2011), slow tourism and slow travel derive
from an interest in locality, the place and strands of green travel. Slow tourism
identifies with sustainable, eco-friendly tourism products that are less alienated
experiences for the visitors and citizens of a city (Conway & Timms, 2010). Slow
ecotourism is an alternative option that protects the environment and promotes
sustainable economic growth (Wearings et al., 2012). It is distinguished from
commoditised tourism in that the experience of slow ecotourism is about other
cultures, relationships, nature and environmental landscapes (Wearings et al.,
2012). According to Heitmann et al. (2011), there are four perspectives from which
to consider slow tourism, namely that tourism activity is transport and travel to the
place; the second is that slow tourism shares the same philosophy with sustainable
tourism; third is that the slow tourism product has the word “slow” attached to the
product or service; and fourth is the establishing of who the slow tourist is and how
these ideas about slow fit into consumer behaviour of slow tourism. Quality
overcomes quantity, and this is emphasised to generate further experiences
(Soininen, 2011). People who experience fast-paced lives seek slow tourism as they
enjoy relaxation and a getaway from complex everyday life.
Slow tourism attracts new visitors to an area (Matos, 2004), stresses the
importance of motivating and incorporating all the concerned, and it also encap-
sulates a range of different practices connected to social movements like slow food
and slow city (Yurtseven & Kaya, 2011). In order to promote slow tourism, Matos
(2004) stresses the importance of motivating and incorporating all the concerned
stakeholders and organisations. For example, all farmers must be given consider-
ation as they will face lifestyle changes and hotel and restaurant managers must be
involved as they are pivotal to the local tourism industry (Matos, 2004).
A particular criticism of the Cittaslow movement is that it can all too easily
produce enervated, backward-looking, isolationist communities (Knox, 2005). It is
important for regions seeking to invest in slow tourism to understand that slowness
does not mean ‘backwardness’, rather slow tourism combines time for living,
slowness and quality of life with modernity (Matos, 2004). Indeed, according the
Howard (1996), slow travellers have a need to experience alternative experiences.
Therefore, slow encourages and promotes consumers to think about the local and
foreign population in a given area (Dickson, Lumsdon, & Robbins, 2011). Slow
travellers signify deceleration as well as distance from modern life (Howard, 1996).
Travelling slowly means that tourists chose their mode of transport while negoti-
ating with place, identity, the environment and expressing certain values (Dickson
et al., 2011).
5.2.4 Slow Housing
Slow home is an important movement founded in 2006 as a critical response to the

sudden growth in development and housing. The main aim of a slow housing
initiative is to provide homes designed to be more socially and environmentally
sensitive, so improving the quality of life of the community and individuals.
According to the founders of the movement, slow housing is an initiative created in
response to the community-blind, cookie-cutter designed fast housing (Steele,
2012). The twenty-first century notion that by being faster in society will “make life
better, by making life easier” (Steele, 2012: 182) is therefore based on false prin-
ciples. Fast-paced housing development has resulted in culturally homogenous
neighbourhoods and environmentally unstable housing (Steele, 2012). At the heart
of slow housing is having good housing designs propagating “co-housing com-
munities and eco-villages as well as the design of individual dwellings that adhere
to community-orientated design principles”, and the ideal is to “create spaces that
are shared, co-owned as well as community owned” (Orsi, 2011: 182). Slow
housing is intended to create spaces that are healthy, secure, comfortable, sus-
tainable, shared, accessible and beautiful; to “re-think city planning, zoning and
legal structures” (Steele, 2012: 182). Slow towns are therefore ideally situated to
encourage the promotion of slow housing principles, especially in the tourism
industry.
5.3 Africa’s First Cittaslow
Since its coining the term slow city has mainly grown as a concept of slow
urbanism (Dogrusoy & Dalgakiran, 2011). In 2014, there were 183 Cittaslow
communities located in 28 countries around the world (Fig. 5.3). Most member
towns are in Europe (87%) followed by countries in the East (8%). Not surprisingly,
Italy has the most Cittaslow’s (39%). There is no representation in South America,
and there is a handful in the North America’s, and Africa has only one Cittaslow.
Sedgefield in the Garden Route region of the Southern Cape of South Africa had
been accredited as the first slow town in Africa in October 2010. This status also
implied the town becoming Africa’s headquarters of the movement. Sedgefield’s
name itself resonates the foreignisation of culture in that it was named after a village
Fig. 5.3 Distribution [Europe (Total—159): Austria (3); Belgium (5); Denmark (2); Finland (1);
France (9); Germany (11); Great Britain (6); Hungary (1); Iceland (1); Ireland (1); Italy (72);
Netherlands (5); Norway (3); Poland (15); Portugal (6); Spain (6); Sweden (1); Switzerland (1);
Turkey (9); North Cyprus (1). East (Total—14): China (2); Japan (1); South Korea (11). North
Americas (Total—5): USA (3); Canada (2). Australasia (Total 4): Australia (3); New Zealand
(1). Africa (Total 1): South Africa (1)] of Cittaslow in the world, 2014. Source Compiled from
www.cittaslow.org
in England. Unlike Cittaslows in Europe, the town does not have a very long
cultural history as it was founded less than a century ago in 1929. Located in an
area with a temperate climate that boosts a strong outdoors tourism industry, the
town is primarily a seasonal town experiencing its busiest months during the
summer season (November to March). It is characteristically a retirement and
second home town. The town’s main economic activity revolves around tourism,
with secondary activities centred on serving the needs of local residents and
regional farmers. The town is home to talented artists, crafters and artisans while the
multi-award-winning Wild Oats Community Farmers Market and Scarab Craft
Market have established the town as a favourite weekend destination for residents
in the Garden Route region. Sedgefield incorporates a sense of place of a relaxed
rustic village atmosphere and is reflected in the town’s motto of being a place where
“The tortoise sets the pace”. A tortoise has been the town’s emblem for more than
fifty years. Sedgefield has never had any major form of industry because the
geography of its location has not allowed it. Built on an island in a marshy
floodplain, the Swartvlei River estuary and the lake itself to the west of the town,
limits the town’s growth spatially. The spatial growth of the town is restricted by
water and sanitation services as well as the lack of vacant land. The available
infrastructure does not allow for any new zoning. Residential plots occupy most of
5.3 Africa’s First Cittaslow 99
the habitable area, where 70% of the allocated residential plots have been developed
into formal housing. The backpackers accommodation establishment was rated the
best in the country by Afro-Vibe Hospitality Services, and the beach bar was voted
the best by the Sunday Times magazine (Bilbrough, 2012, Pers com).
5.4 Sedgefield: Meeting the Criteria?
To come to grips as to why and how the town managed to be accredited this status,
in-depth interviews were conducted in October 2012 with twenty key stakeholders
in the town. These were the drivers behind the project to get the town accredited as
a slow town, a local councillor, local business people, restaurant owners, chefs,
municipal officials, an estate agent and a tourism officer. In this qualitative account,
the Cittaslow charter is used as a guideline for analysing selected themes of the
charter as applied to Sedgefield.
The Cittaslow Sedgefield pledge (Fig. 5.4) on a mosaic plaque in the central part
of the town appropriately summarises the town’s commitment to the overarching
policy goals of the international Cittaslow charter. But is the town really practicing
what it preaches? It is stated by the stakeholders that the town held above 50 per
cent of the charter’s 54 principles. Interviewees’ responses to the charter’s
Fig. 5.4 Sedgefield’s slow

town pledge. Photo Author
(2015)
Environmental policies criteria were overwhelmingly positive. Concerning the

policy goal to verify air, water and soil quality in accordance with law, the town
takes great care through the local municipality, National Parks Board, Cape Nature
Conservation and private conservation bodies to continuously monitor and protect
the environment of the town and surroundings from the effects of pollution of any
sort. Insofar as the promotion and dissemination of advice on both differentiated
refuse collection and industrial domestic composting is concerned, it was stated that
rubbish and refuse waste is separated into categories such as disposable,
non-disposable and recyclable. All non-disposable and recyclable material is
removed and transported to the nearby secondary cities of Mossel Bay and George
to be effectively processed as Sedgefield does not have such a facility. The dis-
semination and promotion of industrial and domestic composting is dealt with
through the municipality’s formal garden disposal site and a separate building
rubble disposal site where such materials are processed. The town has a
well-managed municipal sewerage plant. The municipality has a comprehensive
plan for the saving of water, electricity and for the alternative use of energy. The
largest desalination plant in South Africa is located here and is monitored by
professional environmentalists to ensure that no damage is done. There are also
plans in place for using solar energy.
There are strict municipal regulations governing signage and any obtrusive
advertising that could have negative visual effects on the town. This has been
actively managed, and heavy fines may be imposed for transgressions. Regarding
systems and programmes for controlling light pollution, to avoid polluting the
inhabited areas, interference caused by power liners, telecommunication lines, radio
transceivers and antennas is prevented by placing these away from residential areas
or underground or in protective castings. The town has only a few overhead power
lines and telecommunication lines. Sedgefield is, and has always been, a quiet town
with no heavy industry and no noise pollution. The only noise pollution other than
the noise of traffic on the national road that skirts the town.
It could not be established if there is a ban on the use of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. It was stated that the farmers in the area are very
environmentally active regarding the control of harmful pesticides and poisons, and
there is a strong move towards organic produce. The well-known Farmers Market
every Saturday actively promotes organic produce. The controlling of noise, pro-
moting recycling, verifying natural resource qualities, banning of GMOs and so
forth are criteria not unique to Cittaslows but are concerns of most urban areas in
the modern world.
Although no specific aspect in the policies features uniquely in Sedgefield, the
broad policy goals of Infrastructure policies and Facilities and technologies for
urban quality are equally well catered for in the town. Cittaslows that meet the
criteria are likely to be “forward looking in stressing policies that add new tech-
nologies to towns, such as optic fibre cables, while the desire to promote
5.4 Sedgefield: Meeting the Criteria? 101
bio-architecture2 creates another link with green ideas” (Ball, 2015: 572). Several
commentators on slow cities remark only on the fine and positive aspects, principles
and initiatives of the movement. This tendency to praise is perhaps best captured by
Miele’s (2008: 137) assessment that the movement is “an example of a network of
towns that critiques consumer culture and promotes a form of sustainable devel-
opment”, whereas Ball (2015) concurs that there are overlaps of Cittaslow with
Transition Towns and Ecocities movements, she highlights the distinctiveness of
maintaining traditions (in local urban heritage and morphology and not imported
from elsewhere), as well as the autochthonous developments in a town and its
region as distinct. The exclusive features she refers to are directly linked to tourism
development, namely quality, hospitality and the promotion of the ideas of slow
living. At the heart of the approach is the “distinctive focus on food and taste” (Ball,
2015: 571). Because local-specific food and the way it is prepared is an integral
component of region/town and its people, it is widely considered to be an attraction
and has many possibilities to be used as a marketing tool.
It is reasonable to claim that among the eight broad policy-goal categories
Hospitality features, the Ways of safeguarding autochthonous production,
Awareness policies, and Support to slow food activities and projects are the four
strands of criteria that really differentiate between an ordinary town (towns that are
expected to meet all the other broad criteria) and an extraordinary town (towns that
meet all the criteria, especially the above four strands), such as genuine Cittaslows.
In most of these categories, the experience of food (or food-related themes) affirms
the importance of Lee, Scott and Packer’s (2014: 210) observation that “there is a
significant relationship between the food image of a place and intention to visit, as
well as the increasing importance of food in the promotion of local destinations”.
They also point out that a common theme in tourism literature is that “tourists are
motivated to travel to escape from ordinariness. This may lead to the assumption
that the activities tourists choose to undertake in a region are motivated by the same
desire for the extraordinary” (Lee et al., 2014: 207).
It is evident that many towns that perform well in the environmental, infras-
tructure and facilities criteria do not necessarily have to score high in the categories
that are truly at the heart of the Cittaslow movement, to be awarded Cittaslow
status. It follows that although Sedgefield meets the minimum criteria, it does not
necessarily deserve to be given Cittaslow status. Table 5.1 summarises the
responses by the stakeholders about all the policy goals for the category Ways of
safeguarding autochthonous production and Table 5.2 the same is done for
Hospitality and awareness. For the broad policy goal Support to slow food activ-
ities and projects, all the policy activities relate to the slow food movement which
are not prevalent in Sedgefield.
2
Bio-architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and spaces, which create, support
and enhance life and living systems. The premise behind bio-architecture is that all life responds
well to design that is in accordance with nature and avoids harmful materials and sharp corners
(http://www.bioarchitecture.ie/what-bioarchitecture).
Table 5.1 Sedgefield’s response to policy goals of ways of safeguarding autochthonous

production
Ways of safeguarding autochthonous production
Cittaslow criteria Interpretation of Sedgefield stakeholders’
responses
Develop organic farming In and around the town, there are many organic
farmers. The local farmers market promotes
organic products. There is an organic herb farm
and shops have specific organic sections
Certify artisan products and artisan crafts Most of the local artisans are accredited
through their relevant affiliation bodies and
such certification is displayed on the products
when sold at the markets
Create programmes to safeguarding of artisan Not aware of any facing extinction
and artistic craft products facing extinction
Safeguard traditional work methods and Not aware of any facing extinction
professions at risk of extinction
Use organic and local products: preserve old The local farmers and local markets are well
traditions in restaurants, schools, etc established and provide fresh local produce to
the local market and at very competitive prices.
In many instances, there is no need to bring in
locally produced products from outside.
Preservation of old traditions is not visible
Create nutrition and taste education To date, they have not actively included Slow
programmes in cooperation with Slow Food Food programmes
ideas
Favour local wine and food species as well as They are not yet affiliated to any Slow Food
preparations facing extinction, via Slow Food convivium
Presidia
Develop a census of the territory’s products; The town continuously promotes and markets
support their commercialisation and its locally produced products and creates
marketing marketing awareness for the supply of these
products to other markets. There is no sign of a
census done
Promote and preserve local cultural events The town promotes and markets local cultural
events on an ongoing basis. They town hosts
an annual water festival, a slow festival, a
music festival, an art exhibition, an annual bass
fishing tournament and many sporting events
Carry out audits of trees in the city noting age Many of the trees and species are protected by
and size law and the town strives not only to protect the
existing large species, but also to nurture and
grow additional plants to sustain the species.
There are a number of historical trees (giant
milkwood and yellowwoods) that are promoted
as tourist attractions. There is no sign of a
census
(continued)
5.4 Sedgefield: Meeting the Criteria? 103
Table 5.1 (continued)

Ways of safeguarding autochthonous production
responses
Promote local and traditional cultures in urban They have a number of indigenous gardens,
and school gardens tree-planting projects, environmental
protection areas that grow specific indigenous
plants, and the schools are involved in
beautifying the public areas
Table 5.2 Sedgefield’s response to policy goals of hospitality features

Hospitality and awareness criteria
responses
Training courses for tourist information and The town’s tourism office trains a person to
quality hospitality provide tourist information and the office has
an ongoing policy of educating the town’s
business and accommodation providers to
provide quality hospitality and services
Using international signs in the tourist signs International tourist signage is in place, and
of the historical centres with guided tourist these are guided tourist itineraries
itineraries
Reception policies and plans to facilitate the All these policies are in place, and they are
approach of the visitors to the city and access controlled, managed and monitored through
to information and services (parking, the Tourist Centre. Grading programmes exist
extension/elasticity of opening hours of and scheduled events are provided with the
public offices, etc.) with particular regards to relevant information for the general public
scheduled events
Preparation of slow itineraries of the city Sedgefield has a slow festival and provides
(brochures, websites, home pages, etc.) itineraries for various programmes associated
with the slow town movement. These include
the tortoise race, the various programmes
associated with the slow festival, and a slow
food cooking competition
Making the tourist operators and storekeepers Policies are in place to ensure transparency of
aware of the need for a transparency of prices prices in certain shops, and all rates for
and the exhibition of rates outside the accommodation establishments are displayed
business establishments as part of the tourism policy
It is in these categories (Tables 5.1 and 5.2) that Sedgefield particularly falls
short of meeting the ideals of Cittaslow. According to Ball (2015: 575), “one of the
crucial features of the official recognition of Cittaslow status is the impetus it gives
to a town’s alternative development strategies”. As a homogenous movement,
Cittaslow encourages, in a rather fluid manner, each member town to develop its
own strategies that are place-specific, and, by the process, ending with unity in such
heterogeneity. Two ways lead to this end (Ball, 2015). First, each town protects its
unique quality; and second, each uses a variety of mechanisms and strategies to
protect its uniqueness and distinctiveness. Ball (2015: 573) concludes that “the use
of a range of alternative development strategies by each of the Cittaslow members
may also be considered—somewhat paradoxically—as a unifying theme”.
However, as towns are expected to adopt Cittaslow philosophy before becoming
accredited, towns are expected to continuously aim to achieve many of the goals
after official recognition through “those policies, projects, activities and events
which have been formally stated in the charter and assessment exercise” (Ball,
2015: 572). Members are re-evaluated every four years, to ensure that “member
towns do not become members of the movement for short-term marketing benefits”
(Ball, 2015: 572).
5.5 A Club of Exclusivity?
In small towns, the role of a tough, passionate and dedicated local leader is par-
ticularly important for successful LED (Rogerson, 2009). Although there was one
main driver in Sedgefield, a number of the town’s dedicated individuals worked
together to ensure a result. Cittaslow has been perceived worldwide by case-study
towns, planners and community members as a superfluous brand that imposes
additional, even unnecessary regulations and as an approach that lacks general
community support (Semmens & Freeman, 2012). In reviewing the work of Pink
(2009) and Knox (2005), Ball (2015: 583) noted that the residents of Cittaslow
towns are “often largely unaware of the movement, let alone committed to its
goals”, and that many of the agendas “do not seem to have obtained grassroots
citizen support”. These reviewers consider the organisational structures to be
top-down, formed by middle class, yet committed activists. The stakeholder dis-
cussions in Sedgefield confirmed the international finding that most argue that the
slow town movement is a one-person idea. Also, most of the stakeholders
acknowledged that the status gained as a slow town did not enjoy the consensus of
the entire community. Community members made it clear that they wanted to be
involved in the decisions that affect the town’s local economy, culture and heritage.
As one stakeholder put it: “People need to understand that slow town incorporates
an alternative lifestyle, and it means development which is alternative to the
mainstream society. Many of the locals feel that it is unnecessary for them to follow
this European concept, when in actual fact they have been “living this type lifestyle
for many years without any European brand been put on the town” (Stakeholder
interview, 2012). The whole slow town movement creates a sense of elitism within
the community and is clearly not a market for everyone residing in the town. Many
feel that it is for the privileged upper class only and therefore does not include
everyone. The movement can create a deep divide within the town; on the one hand,
there are those supporting the movement and on the other hand those opposed to it.
Some claim that the slow town movement limits the development of other indus-
tries in the town. The town is now strictly geared towards the development of
Sedgefield as a slow town, therefore giving up opportunities to develop in other
5.5 A Club of Exclusivity? 105
ways that could have generated income too. There was a strong feeling that the
level of involvement by people in the underprivileged areas in the town should be
drastically improved.
5.6 Slow City Accreditation as Strategy for Tourism

Development and Marketing
The concept of the slow festival came about when friends, Jean Wright and Di
Young; both passionate about Sedgefield; invited Amanda and Mark Dixon and key
ward councillors and marketing people from Sedgefield to brainstorm the idea of an
event to put Sedgefield on the map and showcase the natural beauty of the town
(http://slowfestival.co.za/2014.html).
Sedgefield essentially uses the slow town brand to attract new tourists. Slow
travellers typically have a need to experience alternative experiences. Conway and
Timms (2012) note that slow tourism promotes recuperation and sense of place.
According to the main driver of Cittaslow Sedgefield, the town and its rural sur-
roundings are the adventure epicentre of the Garden Route with many leisure
activities within a hundred-kilometre radius where people are able to participate in a
diversity of adventure activities (Gouché, 2012, personal communication).
Sedgefield has established a wide range of activities for tourists to enjoy, from
various adrenaline-producing activities (which ironically is contrary to slowness) to
mosaic classes, slow markets, township tour routes and an assortment of other
amenities for tourist entertainment. The mayor has endorsed the town as a tourist
town meaning that the slow town essentially revolves around tourism and
tourism-related aspects to attract the new tourists to the area and to embrace the
slow philosophy movement (Gouché, 2012, personal communication). Sedgefield
tourism therefore embodies two out of the four perspectives outlined by Heitmenn,
Robinson and Povey (2011): first, tourism activities in Sedgefield promote sus-
tainable tourism through outdoor activities; and second, Sedgefield has identified
who the slow tourist is and how their ideas fit in with consumer behaviour. The
targeted visitors are those seeking recuperation and wanting to get away from their
everyday complex lives.
The Sedgefield stakeholders do not view slow movements as cultural, rather as
economic drivers which is unusual because the economic driving force is in the
culture of being a slow town. The local residents are responsible for creating the
driving force. One stakeholder declared: “Those slow venture things, driving forces,
adventure associations drive tourists, promote slow town, this is what we offer you”
(Stakeholder 2012, personal communication). Sedgefield is being marketed as a
town under the umbrella organisation of the slow food and slow town movements.
One cannot simply use the slow town movement as a means to attract tourists,
rather ‘show it off’ as a lifestyle that others would wish to be a part of.
Gouché (2012, personal communication) holds that Sedgefield was once an

underused area in the region. It had great potential as a tourist destination but was
always seen as a “poor little cousin down the road from Knysna where people come to
retire”. Gouché (2012, personal communication) wanted the area to have a brand so
that the town could feature on the tourist map, thereby creating more economic
opportunities which, in turn, would create social equity. Sedgefield residents are
making use of the slow town and slow food movement for personal benefit, and the
movement has enabled them to “start doing things under the slow town umbrella”
(Gouché 2012, personal communication). Gouché (2012, personal communication)
listed slow wine, slow water and slow chilli sauce as items which can be purchased by
visitors. Interactive activities like the slow town tourist route and a slow town venture
route have been created to increase awareness of the slow town and slow food
movement, but also as innovative entrepreneurship opportunities. Use of the slow
town title has strengthened economic welfare and contributed to marketing efforts.
Sedgefield’s tourism manager, Rose Bilbrough (2012, personal communication),
explained how the town’s people are using the economic downturn as a means of
going back to sustainable ways of economic empowerment like microbreweries and
small organic farms. Sedgefield makes use of local organic products to increase
economic welfare by hosting local markets such as the Wild Oats market and the
annual slow festival (Fig. 5.5).
Fig. 5.5 The market in Sedgefield attracts hundreds of visitors from the region. Photo Author
(2016)
5.6 Slow City Accreditation as Strategy for Tourism Development and Marketing 107
Sedgefield has adapted and implemented the three E’s framework into the
structure of their town plan. There are various economic opportunities that have
been successfully launched within the community. This has been created by
intelligent entrepreneurship, marketing strategies and by drawing attention to the
natural beauty Sedgefield has to offer as a tourist destination. The slow town creates
a sustainable environment by creating these economic opportunities without
inhibiting environmental conditions and by also creating social equity through job
creation for residents of the informal area as well as for pensioners.
The consumption of slow food is the experience of eating out, not for fast-paced
eating. Slow food is dedicated to preserve a world of unique flavours, local cus-
toms, food and wine. The convivium movement aims to promote the slow food
movement in all restaurants by teaching people to cook in the way of the slow
movement and to encourage quality over quantity. Restaurants should share ideas
and create networks, share recipes and improve quality of food. Programmes to
increase the local gastronomic tradition through the convivium are run by Chef
Colin Capon.
Its status as a slow town has given a certain impetus to Sedgefield to develop
alternative development strategies. According to Ball (2015), this might, in the
early stages, bring a welcome increase in tourism, but over time may contribute to
rural gentrification. Similar concerns were raised in a New York Times article that
reports that Sonoma, the United States’ first Cittaslow
has walled itself off as an enclave for the rich… The danger here is that such a town will
end up only benefiting the rich and elite. Since, Italy has a stagnant economy and a very
low birth rate; one would have a fairly good lifestyle if you have the money. It might be a
lifestyle worth living now, but what will become of the future generations? Another
problem which is raised in this article is that much of the workforce in nearby cities has to
commute into the town every day, since they cannot afford to live in the town itself. But this
criticism is minor as to what Sonoma have produced and reached to become the official
designation as a slow city (Weintraub, 2010).
The organiser of Sedgefield’s slow festival—driven independently by the slow

town initiator—wanted to create the correct image from the start. She did not want
to upset the retired cohort of residents and also did not want the festival to foster the
wrong idea of slow people or people thinking slowly. She was more intent on
reclaiming time and slowing down life as a whole. The market features as a mar-
keting strategy for the town as a whole because according to participants it is a town
where tourists simply drive through to somewhere else. Giving the town a dis-
tinctive identity and by hosting the slow festival, visitors would be enticed to see
the entire town, rivers, fishing spots and so on. Unfortunately, the commerciali-
sation of the annual slow festival is also a contentious issue for some stakeholders.
Stallholders are charged exorbitant prices (later reduced) and the organisers allowed
out-of-towners to set up stalls at the festival, so defeating the aim of promoting
localism. A large group of locals boycotted the festival because it became associ-
ated with a commercialised image not as beneficial to the local community as
initially believed, and it started to become a race for profit.
A town’s sense of place is closely linked to the identity which is also linked to
the town’s uniqueness. Sedgefield is recognised as being the first town in Africa to
be classified as a slow town and has the distinction of people leading an easy, no
stress lifestyle. The town’s branding relies on it being marketed as Africa’s first
slow town. Following the official endorsement of Sedgefield as a tourist town by the
Knysna Municipal Council in February 2012, a group of the town’s stakeholders
formulated a five-year tourism development plan. In the one-page website plan they
bullet five development ideas, eleven new activities and eight new events to be
introduced. It is very clear from the development plan that all these new activities
and ideas primarily stem from Sedgefield being registered as the first Cittaslow in
Africa. Under the prominent section ‘marketing focus’, it is claimed that since
becoming a Cittaslow the town has been featured on 15 radio programmes
including television coverage on KykNet, Pasella, SABC News and 50/50 and as
well as in a number of magazine articles. Other activities that are gaining in
momentum are the slow food convivium, the slow festival, the slow town fun run
and slow town soccer team. Sedgefield’s five-year development plan was discussed
with municipality officials and with interested and affected parties. They persist in
their plan and what they wish to see happen. Consequently, “residents should
partake and be responsible and contribute from their side in making it friendly for
investors to come to Sedgefield” (Stakeholder interview, 2012).
5.7 Is Sedgefield as Cittaslow Going Nowhere Slowly?
The town is still relatively new to the slow city movement which raises questions
whether there are some local (developing world) realities that raise doubts about
where the brand and town are going regarding upholding the international status.
How, for example, do the demographic contrasts of the town impact the brand? Are
certain developmental pressures creating tensions between the slow movements’
ideals and the targets of growth and progress? Do the contradictions of slow- and
fast-food values and product development in the town nullify the philosophy and
values ascribed to the movement?
5.7.1 Sedgefield’s “Sea Change” Effect
It is noteworthy that Sedgefield has not escaped the so-called ‘sea change’ effect
that is the movement of people by choice from agglomerated cities to coastal small
towns where life is calmer, rather laid back and cheaper, and where it is relatively
easier to sustain a living than in the city (Burnley & Murphy, 2004). One quarter of
5.7 Is Sedgefield as Cittaslow Going Nowhere Slowly? 109
Sedgefield main Smutsville

1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
Fig. 5.6 Age distribution in Sedgefield and Smutsville. Compiled from Supercross, Census
(2012)
Sedgefield’s population is older than 55, many whom have left the cities for a more
relaxed life in Sedgefield when they can enjoy their retirement. One stakeholder
interviewee mentioned that the older people comprise the largest proportion of the
population, and the younger generation now entering, moreover, wants local jobs.
This could jeopardise the slow town image. Figure 5.6 illustrates the dual nature of
the age distribution of Sedgefield’s population between those in the previously
disadvantaged area (Smutsville) created for blacks and coloureds during apartheid
and the predominantly white-inhabited part of town The age bars in the white areas
overwhelmingly show retirement age categories, whereas in the former non-white
areas only part (Smutsville) the incidence of children and young adults is striking.
The inhabitants of Sedgefield had mixed opinions about their town being labelled a
slow town. Inhabitants of the formal affluent areas were not well informed about the
concept of a slow town, often assuming that being labelled a “slow” town was
derogatory. Younger inhabitants from Smutsville were pessimistic about the con-
cept and felt that the town needs to develop into a more commercialised tourist
centre. Older inhabitants, who are supportive of the concept, were primarily proud
of the label. Inhabitants of the town’s informal settlement inhabitants were not sure
about the concept of a slow town as they associated it with the slow festival that has
been active in Sedgefield five years prior to the slow town accreditation.
5.7.2 Developmental Pressures
Theoretically, the slow town concept is an efficient and innovative notion for
controlling growth in a town. Concerning new developments in Sedgefield, the
local municipality has indicated that any new major developments are constrained
by lack of water and sanitation infrastructure as well as by limitations on available
space. The interviews with local stakeholders unearthed the contradictory views and
issues pertaining to the novel status of the town. A striving towards some ideals
easily meets with resistance and counter-arguments. For example, one respondent
reiterated objections to a three-storey building proposed to be built along the main
road which is advertised as a slow town avenue. Consent for such a construction
would defeat the purpose of natural integrity and environmental conservation.
Another person made reference to the large (double- and triple-storeyed) houses
(mainly second houses) close to the sea. Surely, she lamented this does not fit the
image a slow town should have.
5.7.3 Clashing of Fast and Slow Food Values
Candidate Cittaslow member towns must be committed both to supporting tradi-

tional local arts and crafts and modern industries with products that lend distinc-
tiveness and identity to the region (Knox, 2005). Slow cities represent a movement
that “in the wake of modernisation and globalisation asks itself how to transfer
cities in a globalised world without making them lose their soul in that journey”
(Miele, 2008: 136). Thus, urban homesteading fuses the slow city philosophy of
simple living, permaculture design and the slow movement, to create a
do-it-yourself lifestyle. Ekinci (2013) reminds us of the prediction that one day the
world will become similar, or one, as a result of globalisation. All differences and
local particularities in the world will not exist any more, and the world will become
a “global village with a single structure” (Ekinci, 2013: 181). Slow cities are
conceived to retain and enforce a local identity and particularity and not be part of
“homogeneous locations” (Ekinci, 2013: 181) because homogeneous communities
have no sense of the “local values, landscape, history and culture”, and thus cause
“over consumption” of not only local communities but ecosystems too” (Dogrusoy
& Dalgakiran, 2011: 127). These global influences are unmistakable on a drive
through Sedgefield. For example, multinational brands such as the Steers fast-food
outlet, SPAR supermarket and shops branding products and innovations from other
countries such as “American shutters” and imported German foods (Figs. 5.7, 5.8,
and 5.9) and a misplaced restaurant named Vienna Café! What is it that signifies
Sedgefield as being unique and insulated from global brands?
Fast food is a concept deeply repugnant to the slow movements. On the issue of
allowing fast-food outlets to operate in Sedgefield some interviewees reasoned that
the town needed some sort of competition and having fast food outlets was a way of
Fig. 5.7 Global identities in

Sedgefield. Photo Author
(2012)
Fig. 5.8 Global identities

and fast food in Sedgefield.
Photo Author (2012)
Fig. 5.9 Global identities in

Sedgefield. Photo Author
(2012)
reviving the town. Contradictory, another stakeholder was opposed to the idea of
non-slow-food shops like globalised brands of SPAR and Steers (Fig. 5.7), because
in her opinion Sedgefield has already been commercialised over the two decades
she has been living there. One shopowner is unsure if the town will remain a slow
town in the next ten years in view of too much envisaged development. The owner
of Venus Ear also deems the town to be commercialised already. The owner is a
strong supporter of local organic produce and sources products from local farmers
while being a firm supporter of the slow food principles and local economic
development. The owner is not pleased about the established non-slow-food
enterprises in the town. Another restaurant owner approves of non-slow-food
enterprises because their presence attracts more people and keeps people in the
town where in many situations they would have gone instead to Knysna or George
to do shopping. A third restaurant owner feels no hostility towards the non-slow and
commercialised enterprises in town, because they do not in any way adversely
affect the traditional slow food or slow town enterprises. On the contrary, the
town’s people need options since they cannot completely rely on the slow move-
ment and its products to satisfy all their needs. The stance is that one cannot be
wholly opposed to the modern world and there is a need to adapt.
Chef Capon (2012, personal communication), a slow food administrator in
Sedgefield, has an ambition to position food as a key constituent in the development
and maintenance of the community. Capon (2012, personal communication) is not
hostile to the town’s fast-food joints and non-slow-food enterprises, a position that
contradicts Knox’s (2005) view that slow food is hostile to big business and
globalisation. There is one restauranteur who supports the production and use of
local organic products and who prefers to preserve the local history and heritage, so
guarding Sedgefield’s original identity. This echoes Pietrykowski’s (2004) senti-
ment that the movement attempts to create a social economy around the preser-
vation of food as both a bearer of cultural heritage and an embodiment of material
pleasure. The spokesperson for a very popular restaurant in Sedgefield asserted that
there will always be a place for ‘fast-world’ businesses as people have needs which
small town establishments cannot always satisfy. The restauranteur uses as much
fresh produce as possible which is usually cheaper if produced locally versus
products bought out of town. This contradicts the situation of the other restaurant
owners who estimate that they purchase 30% of their supplies locally and 70% from
non-local large wholesalers.
The slow food movement in Italy was born as a guard against fast food, such as
the likes that of McDonald’s and other purveyors of quick, cheap consumables
(Pietrykowski, 2004). Some claim that the need by residents for a variety of
fast-food outlets in their town shows a lack of understanding of what slow food
town represents. Slow food is about eating healthily, enjoyably and sustainably
although not necessarily about organically. Slow food originated as an international
organisation dedicated to preserving a world of unique flavours, local food customs
and quality food and wine (Pietrykowski, 2004). On the cited evidence, Sedgefield
appears to fall short on this dedication. It is through the “education of the senses”
that people achieved “embodied sensorial appreciation of local produce (as opposed
to mass-produced homogenised supermarket foods” (Pink, 2008: 98). Through taste
education wine and food culture is strengthened and enhanced by the local markets
and by produce that is traditional to that place (Semmens & Freeman, 2012). The
slow food movement maintains that taste is a sensation that can be developed
(Pietrykowski, 2004). The movement’s main aim is to educate taste through
exposure to local and regional foodstuffs and to foster an appreciation of the linkage
between food choices and biodiversity. Local culinary distinctiveness is a means to
promote a community’s sense of place. Promotion of the production of local foods
as a counter to global brands and franchised entities is not restricted to the slow
food and Cittaslow movements, but it’s “part of a broader push to ‘relocalise’ food
that includes initiatives such as farmers’ markets and community-supported agri-

culture” (Broadway, 2015: 231).
Cittaslow towns are expected to support local farmers by creating a market for
their produce. Lack of gastronomic traditions in local restaurants essentially
counters arguments for claiming places to be authentic slow towns. Sedgefield
upholds some of the stipulated slow town principles like the provision of culinary
education that includes organising training and practical activities such as cooking
and cleaning mainly at guest houses in the town. According to Mayer and Knox
(2006), slow food is locally grounded through its goal of maintaining the viability
of locally owned businesses such as restaurants and farms. Although the interviews
revealed that the town does produce its own food, the produce seldom meets the
requirement of the Cittaslow charter which stipulates that the food should be 100%
organic and locally produced. The respondents pointed out that their resource base
is not sound enough to sustain their market demand forcing them to import about
50% of their food from surrounding towns. Capon (2012, personal communication)
advocates that the restaurants should alter and develop their menus by introducing
new and exciting dishes given that many of the restaurants have maintained the
same menu for a number of years. The education of taste should take place more
informally through local chapter meetings with guest speakers, more socialising and
by conducting the business of the movement. He also proposed the establishment of
networking of restaurants in Sedgefield to help foster new ideas for menus and
promote good competition among the establishments.
5.7.4 Dedicated and Interested Slow Tourists or Accidental

Slow Tourists?
In a study differentiating between dedicated and interested slow tourists, Yurtseven

and Kaya (2011: 91) found that “interested slow tourists have moderate to high
interest in slowness, slow food, and Cittaslow”, whereas “accidental slow tourists
generally relate with mass tourism components seeing slowness as a tourist
attraction of the town”. The consumer’s interest is a distinguishing point in slow
food, Cittaslows and consequently slow tourism. Slow tourism is the possible
segmentation of market-quality products and services aimed at the (environmentally
or culturally) conscious consumer. Moreover, the close link between Cittaslow and
slow food influences slow tourism and potential marketing activities through a
common brand identity that benefits slow products and services (Heitmann et al.,
2011). Just as the slow food and Cittaslow movements oppose fast food and
globalisation, slow tourism is an antidote to mass tourism and the commodification
of local culture to cater for mass tourists. This does not mean that slow tourism be
considered as niche tourism. Instead, it is suggested that ‘slow’ be applied to
“destination management, business operations and consumer behaviour to create a
change of the status quo to oppose existing tourism ontologies” (Yurtseven & Kaya,
2011: 91). Nilsson et al. (2011) examination of three Cittaslow towns in northern
Italy has revealed contradictions between the commercial side of tourism and the
non-commercial ethos of the Cittaslow movement.
The studied towns were involved in various efforts in the field of sustainable planning,
thereby also improving destination specific resources and local identity. One example is
their focus on ‘slow’ events, mainly based on local gastronomy. Tourism marketing was,
however, only of secondary importance; which mirrors some scepticism towards mass
tourism and commercialisation, and even against marketing as such. Despite this, the
Cittaslow concept may have an indirect potential for tourism development by improving
product development and increased visibility. The risks involved concern gentrification and
overexploitation (Nilsson et al., 2011: 373).
No survey was conducted among tourists in Sedgefield, but in view of the reported
findings of the interviews in Sedgefield, a case can be made that slow tourism is
primarily used as a marketing tool to draw mass tourism to the town.
5.8 Conclusion
A general criticism of slow cities is that it can be seen as exclusionary as it only

takes into account the interests of the small group of power elites in small towns.
Furthermore, the notion of becoming competitive as a tourist town can actually
counteract the original values and practices of a Cittaslow, and also so can the idea
of meeting a global set of standards to comply create a sameness in offering (Pink,
2009; Knox, 2005; Dogrusay & Dalgakiran, 2011). Becoming a slow city does not
mean that a town, city or society should not strive towards globalisation and
innovation, rather that the pace of moving forward should be reduced and/or
weakened to ensure that people do not forget and abandon their traditions, cultures
and heritage. The attributes of the slow movement have made it a proven tool for
small town development where the conditions are right. The slow movement, more
particularly the slow city movement, is built on various utopian ideologies, the core
of which is to ensure a sustainable future for all (Cittaslow, 2012).
Concerning slowness of life, Sedgefield met most of the requirements of a slow
town long before the notion of a slow town had come to the fore. In South Africa,
with much of the country still largely underdeveloped and underused, it is difficult
to enforce the agendas of the Cittaslow movement because they do not cater for
primary needs like housing, food and job security. Consequently, slow towns will
most likely only take off in areas where towns are relatively well developed and
inhabited by a predominantly affluent population. Sedgefield, like many coastal
towns in South Africa, relies heavily on tourism to support its local businesses.
Because Sedgefield’s tourism is primarily seasonal, the town’s promoters aimed to
create an identity that would attract tourists throughout the year. One objective of
the Sedgefield survey was to determine whether or not the accreditation of
Sedgefield as a slow city has helped to increase tourism in the area. The study did
5.8 Conclusion 115
find that slow city accreditation has evoked a curiousness which leads to an
eagerness to explore the town. Another benefit of accreditation is Sedgefield’s as
the only slow city in the country it assists in attracting more tourists to the town
who would usually have visited the larger tourist destinations in the area such as
Knysna, Plettenberg Bay or George. There are various small holiday and retirement
towns that could easily adopt the practice of being a slow town. Seeing that
Sedgefield is the first slow town in the continent, a niche market has emerged for
the marketing of the movement, along with the promotion of production of local
produce within the scope of the slow food movement.
The accreditation of Sedgefield made it the slow town headquarters of Africa
which serves as a powerful marketing tool and also created vast opportunities for
entrepreneurial innovation in order to create LED, poverty reduction programmes
and economic welfare. Whether these aims will remain part of an exclusive club
remains to be seen. Concentrations of exclusive ‘clubs’ in small towns, if grown out
of proportion, can lead to displacement of lower-class residents through the process
of gentrification. In the next chapter, the case study of Greyton is explored to
illustrate how tourism-led gentrification transformed the once agricultural hamlet
into a major tourism small town.
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Chapter 6
Rural (Small Town) Tourism-Led
Gentrification
Abstract South Africa is experiencing an increase in second-home ownership, the

gentrification of small towns and their development as tourist destinations. The
investigation presented in this chapter, with particular reference to the historic small
town of Greyton in Western Cape Province, is one of very few pieces of research
into the geographical aspects of these trends. The findings of a survey conducted
among urban–rural migrant entrepreneurs are described here with particular refer-
ence to the economic reordering of property values, socio-demographic changes,
place preference and the economic impact of gentrifiers. It was found that the
accumulation of wealth in Greyton is based on an economic triad of gentrification,
tourism and retirement. Over the last decade and a half, the tourism and hospitality
industries have dramatically impacted on the way the town marries financial and
social capital. The lone gentrifier has been replaced by tourism entrepreneur gen-
trifiers, second-home owners and a younger group settling with families as evi-
denced by the nature of the financial investment in the town and residents’
engagement in social, economic, developmental, environmental and heritage
endeavours.

Keywords Greyton Semigration Heritage conservation Rural gentrification

Tourism gentrifiers Capital accumulation
6.1 Introduction
Following the demise of apartheid in the 1990s, the settlement landscape in South
Africa has undergone far-reaching socio-spatial, political and economic changes.
While the metropolitan areas are increasingly positioning themselves to become
globally competitive, many small towns are competing for survival. However, some
small towns are thriving having successfully become prosperous tourist destina-
An earlier version of this chapter was published in Geography. Thanks are due to the
Geographical Association and Dorcas Brown, senior production editor for permitting the
reproduction of some sections of the journal paper published as Donaldson (2009).

120 6 Rural (Small Town) Tourism-Led Gentrification
tions. The motives for counterurbanisation—moves from the city to smaller towns
of less urban character—can be production-led (e.g. labour or entrepreneurial
migration), consumption-led (e.g. amenity and lifestyle migration) or a combination
of both (Ingle, 2013; Eimermann, Lundmark, & Müller, 2012).
Since democracy, large numbers of professionals have emigrated.1 However,
short of emigration “there are local responses which reflect a similar desire to shift
the boundaries of one’s comfort zone” (Ballard, 2005: 3) Thus, a new trend has
emerged whereby city dwellers, becoming despondent about urban living, either
“check out” or “semigrate” (Hamann, 2000: 18) or as Ballard (2005: 3) explains an
“alternative path to full emigration…semigration can be used to understand with-
drawal from democratic South Africa, to achieve some of the effects of emigration
without actually leaving the borders of the country. Spatial practices such as gated
communities and enclosed neighbourhoods are examples of this”. McEwen and
Steyn (2013) have case studied the tourism-gentrified town of Prince Albert in the
Western Cape where “white South Africans can regain ‘peace of mind’…and, in
order to ensure that the town, as a new comfort zone, is protected, semigrants
mobilise representations of Prince Albert through heritage and tourism that will
legitimate the authoritative status of whites as the appropriate guardians of the
town”. Figure 6.1 shows a typical serene scene of Karoo-styled property in Prince
Albert. However, Roebert (2014: 1) rebukes the arguments in McEwen and Steyn’s
(2013) study claiming it is a misrepresentation that the white ‘semigrant’ tourist
operators act as a hegemonic power elite. His critique insists that there are no
grounds “for asserting that these residents are using their tourist activities, under the
banner of ‘heritage’ and ‘tourism’, as a means for establishing a segregated
‘apartheid-era’ white control of the town and its resources” (Roebert, 2014: 1).
Of course, it can be speculated that semigrators, professionals especially in the
creative industries, retirees and others are also those urban dwellers who dream of
packing up and moving to a stress-free country lifestyle in a small town, leaving
behind well-paid jobs and all the luxuries of the urban lifestyle, but cannot com-
pletely let go of these privileges. They choose to settle in small towns not too
distant from major urban core areas so that they can, within an hour or so, drive to a
city to enjoy and benefit from its higher-order services. In many cases, they con-
tinue to work in a home-based teleworking fashion. These urban–rural migrants
often have significant business skills and, most importantly, capital to invest. In the
rural settlements to which they migrate, the cost of living is lower than in the city,
they can be self-employed and experience a changed lifestyle (Paniagua, 2002a).
The restructuring of rural areas (including small countryside towns) has been
associated with the process of counterurbanisation, whereby members of the new
service class or self-employed professionals are increasingly migrating to small
towns (Paniagua, 2002b).
1
Statistics South Africa no longer keeps record of emigration data. Kaplan et al. (no date) data on
South African immigrants recorded by the five major recipient countries who collectively account
for three-quarters of South African emigration—the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada and New
Zealand—record that a total of 233 609 South Africans emigrated in the period 1989–97.
6.1 Introduction 121
Fig. 6.1 Typical housing scene in Prince Albert. Photograph Author (2015)
Muller (2004: 393) has argued that second-home development can be perceived
as a form of rural gentrification that implies an “encounter between traditional rural
lifestyles and urban imaginations of the rural”. Similarly, retirement hot spots such
as coastal resorts are worthy of consideration as cases of gentrification (Paris,
2009). Leisure-consumption-led migration in the form of second-home develop-
ment has been a focus of intense research in urban tourism in South Africa over the
past decade (Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2010a, b, 2011a, b, 2015; Rogerson & Visser,
2014; Hay & Visser, 2014; Hoogendoorn, Marais, & Visser, 2009: Visser 2006).
Yet the relationship between second homes and rural gentrification has not been
studied in-depth, nor have the impacts associated with second-home developments,
such as employment creation and social exclusion as a consequence of rising
property prices.
Visser (2002) has proposed a focus on rural gentrification as one of the five
gentrification research agendas for South Africa. Within the category of rural
gentrification, he identified three aspects that demand investigation: the potential or
actual displacement of traditional rural townsfolk by in-migrant and upwardly
mobile persons from the city; whether or not these gentrifiers and the economic
impacts they have on the economies of these towns are contributing to the liveli-
hoods of the disadvantaged communities; and what impact gentrifiers have on the
development of tourism in small towns. As a contribution to these research lacunae,
this chapter reviews the interplay between small business entrepreneurs in tourism,
gentrification and tourism development in the small town of Greyton in the Western
Cape Province of South Africa, approximately 150 km east of Cape Town. Phillips
(2002) has contended that rural gentrification should be viewed as a capital-led
process; hence, the emphasis in the chapter on the role played by small
tourism-business entrepreneurs in the gentrification of Greyton. Aspects considered
are the economic reordering of property values, the transformation of the built
environment, socio-demographic changes, place preference and the economic
impact of the gentrifiers. A review of the growing body of the literature on rural
gentrification is given first as a backdrop for the Greyton case study.
6.2 Conceptualising Small Town Gentrification
Gentrification is a universal phenomenon, yet academic debate about it has so far

been biased towards urban settings. Generally described, urban gentrification is a
process of displacement of residents in a low-income neighbourhood by relatively
affluent incomers. This displacement of low-income communities is often justified
on the grounds that it is part of a so-called revitalisation process (Pacione, 2001:
200). The succinct description of urban gentrification by Warde (1991: 75) is useful
in understanding the process of gentrification: “(1) It is a process of resettlement
and social concentration, a process of displacement2 of one group of residents with
2
Depending on which phase of gentrification a place may be in, replacement as opposed to
displacement, can be the focal point of discussion. Stockdale (2010: 38) makes a distinction
between displacement and replacement, namely “displacement is likely to be most associated with
affluent groups who purchase traditional farmhouses and cottages in the countryside, in the sense
that gentrifiers are in a position to outbid (and therefore displace) local residents. Replacement (as
opposed to displacement) may be more in evidence with regard to farm steading conversions. On
the one hand, one could argue that prior to conversion to residential use some displacement of
prior farming activity and farm workers will have taken place. In this interpretation displacement is
a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, gentrification. On the other hand, the conversion of
farm steadings creates a mechanism to increase the supply of housing in the Scottish countryside,
and as such enables in-migrants to replace former out-migrants. A similar interpretation can be
made in relation to new-build development in rural settlements. Indeed it could be argued that such
development includes aspects of both displacement and replacement. For example, in the Mearns
study area such development enables those displaced by urban gentrification processes to relocate
6.2 Conceptualising Small Town Gentrification 123
another of higher social status, entailing new patterns of social segregation. (2) It is
a transformation in the built environment, via building work, that exhibits some
common distinctive aesthetic features and the emergence of certain types of local
service provision. (3) It is the gathering together of persons with a putatively shared
culture and lifestyle, or at least shared, class-related, consumer preferences. (4) It is
an economic reordering of property values, a commercial opportunity for the
construction industry, and, generally, an extension of the system of private own-
ership of domestic property”. Since the writing of this explanation a quarter century
ago, numerous papers have been published internationally on gentrification,
including reviews of the literature. Hence, no review is offered here.
The recent review of the spatial manifestations of contemporary gentrification by
Doucet (2014) usefully summarises the ongoing dialogue on the gentrification
process. A first topic is the transformation of old industrial brownfield sites into
high-end, new-build developments, and the process is seen as gentrification because
of the “reinvestment of capital; social upgrading; landscape changes; and dis-
placement” (Doucet, 2014: 216). Second, there are debates on the creation of social
mixing through active state intervention and policy, i.e. the restructuring of housing
estates where affluent housing opportunities are created in poor neighbourhoods to
create a social mix. The third is the discourse on commercial gentrification not only
the housing landscape that changes but that the tensions have expanded to include a
situation that non-gentrifier residents do not necessarily have a need for these new
amenities, nor can they afford to pay for them. These tensions are especially
exemplified between gentrifiers and residents where “commercial gentrification
becomes entangled with the search for authenticity” (Ernst & Doucet, 2014: 190).
Fourth, a so-called fourth-wave gentrification, a distinctly American phenomenon
has emerged where policies favour the most affluent and while social welfare
programmes are being dismantled. The two last topics have engendered growing
academic discussion over the past five to eight years. These are, fifth (and partially
linked to the aforementioned), tourism gentrification for which a special session
was organised at the 2015 Association of the American Geographers meeting in
Chicago, and sixth, the rise of rural gentrification as research focus on gentrifica-
tion. Stockdale (2010: 32) has pointed out that unlike urban gentrification, “rural
gentrification represents an emerging research agenda” and is much less understood
than its urban counterpart. She further states that “the literature on rural migration,
and specifically counterurbanisation, has indirectly been investigating rural gen-
trification for some time but has largely failed to make this explicit conceptual link”
(Stockdale, 2010: 32). There has been a surprising lack of discussion on tourism-led
rural gentrification. A recent review of gentrification, albeit related to Spain and
(Footnote 2 continued)
to smaller settlements, and they in turn then contribute to the displacement of local rural residents
(by outbidding them in the local housing market). Equally, displacement from an urban housing
market can create sufficient demand for new housing in smaller settlements, and in that way those
displaced from urban centres act as a replacement for past out-migrants from rural areas”.
Table 6.1 Types of contemporary gentrification in Spain and Latin America

Gentrification type Description
Gentrification and transnational Globally connected expansion of certain countries’
migration economy may result in an influx of migrants. Many
of these migrants opt to settle in inner-city areas that
are being subjected to renewal and gentrification
(State-led) tourism gentrification Spain, as an example of a major tourist destination
worldwide, “has made significant efforts to adapt
beach and sun-seeking mass tourism, a mature
activity with low profit rates, towards an urban
tourism inspired by the appreciation of cultural
assets. In this regard, it is interesting how the logics
of spatial appropriation through tourism-related
activities have paired themselves with gentrification
induced by tourism. It is also noteworthy that, within
a general character of laissez-faire in most public
policies, local and regional politicians showed a
decisive will to prepare the ground for state-led
tourism gentrification”
Productive and retail gentrification “Suggesting the label of productive gentrification,
they support a focus on the spatial reconfiguration
arising from new economic activities related to
discourses that seek to attract members of the
creative class to live and work” in specific urban
places
Symbolic gentrification and cultural “New lifestyles based on distinctive practices of
production consumerism and models of citizenship are
introduced by novel cultural infrastructures and
commercial spaces. ‘Artistification’ a process
enacted by urban policies that embrace the
entrepreneurial and consumerist reappropriation of
city centres transformed into theme parks and spaces
for commercial performances. Such symbolic
gentrification of public space through the
establishment of institutionalized cultural production
facilities is a key question for interpreting the
dialectics between the public and the private as one
of the multiple expressions of the speculative nature
of capital in the contemporary city”
New geographies of gentrification: Transformations occurring in the social composition
provincial and rural gentrification of rural areas and across regions
Source Compiled from Janoschka et al. (2014: 1239–1247)
Latin American contexts (Janoschka, Sequera, & Salinas 2014), identifies five
specific gentrification types (Table 6.1) that have particular relevance to the Global
South.
The changing countryside has emerged as a topic in the traditional urban-related
discourse of gentrification (Phillips, 2004). The most authoritative research on rural
gentrification is that conducted by Phillips (2000, 2002, 2004, 2005) who, in his
detailed review of the literature on the topic, discussed the many and varied con-
ceptualisations of gentrification (Phillips, 2002). Phillips (2000: 1) has declared that
the process involves “often quite loosely, a change in the class composition of an
area—specifically to it becoming more ‘middle-class’—through the dual process of
middle-class in-migration or colonialization and the displacement of the working
class”. Phillips (2002: 286–7) has cited a number of studies that highlight how the
conversion of properties from agricultural to residential use enabled “retail and
leisure facilities to serve both resident and also visiting middle-class people…and
hence one might talk of rural consumption-biased spatial complexes as well as
urban ones”. In this context, rural gentrification entails a displacement of con-
sumption practices whereby agricultural towns are restructured into, among other
forms towns with an economic base primarily comprising tourism. He argued that
gentrification had become big business in rural towns and his research then
debunked the myth of lone gentrifiers, doing up property using their own labour and
resources. Phillips (2000) focused on what he called material rural spaces in his
references to the refurbishment of residential properties and an accompanying
change in the social composition of a rural area. Drawing on Lefebvre’s distinction
between material spaces, representational spaces, and spaces of representation,
Phillips (2000: 1) suggested that “gentrification can be seen alternatively, and often
co-terminously, as: (i) a material spatial product in that it involves a change in the
built fabric of spaces relating to the investment of material resources; (ii) a symbolic
creation enacted in the discourses of the popular media, as well as in a range of
advertising, specialist building and lifestyle texts; and (iii) cultural texture”.
The differences between gentrification in urban and rural communities are
summarised in Table 6.2. It is noteworthy that where urban gentrification is often
“viewed as a process whereby young middle-class singles or couples typically
without kids move into a previously run-down neighborhood and initiate the pro-
cesses of gentrification”, in rural gentrification the age structure of a gentrifying
household “tends to be older as the move from urban to rural areas often coincides
Table 6.2 Main differences between urban and rural gentrification

Urban Rural
Occurs in select neighbourhoods Occurs throughout whole towns and counties
Race and class elements; racial dimensions Less race, more class (although race is an issue
are very strong in specific areas)
Rented houses sold for homeownership; Most growth is conversion of farmland or
older buildings renovated or torn down; other open space; more residents are “locked
residents displaced out” of new development rather than displaced
New residents move in from other parts of New residents move into rural areas from
metro area expanding metropolitan areas
Countertrend; most growth is still in suburbs Dominant pattern of growth in area; rural
communities are in the path of metropolitan
expansion
Source After Housing Assistance Council (2005: 44)
with couples becoming ‘empty-nesters’” (Nelson, Oberg, & Nelson, 2010: 344).
A study conducted in the USA in the late 1990s suggested that such trends are
likely to continue because it reasoned that study indicated that by 2005 over 35
million Americans aged between 50 and 59 would be making retirement decisions
and that the majority of those aged over 50 would choose to settle in a small town
or rural area (Fetto, 1999). In the UK, rural towns are increasingly becoming
socially inclusive as the sites of primary residences for the middle classes (Hoggart,
1997; Shucksmith, 2001). Whereas urban gentrification is commonly associated
with the physical displacement of low-income families from their existing housing
through increases in rents or property taxes, rural gentrification in many cases rather
leads to:
a lack of housing opportunities, as high property values preclude, or “lock out” low-income
families from local housing markets. Even though the number of new housing units
increases as a result of growth, new housing serves upper-income residents; the quantity of
housing units for moderate- and low-income families diminishes in the face of increasing
housing costs. Even long-term residents of rural areas facing gentrification face the prospect
of leaving their communities to seek affordable housing. This lack of displacement makes
rural gentrification a more subtle process, and as a result, rural families facing affordability
problems may not garner the same degree of attention as similarly situated urban families.
When gentrification occurs in rural communities, it is the dominant trend; gentrification
occurs alongside housing development in rural areas (Housing Assistance Council, 2005:
44–45).
Tourism gentrification is commonly described as “the transformation of a

middle-class neighbourhood [or town] (own emphasis) into a relatively affluent and
exclusive enclave marked by a proliferation of corporate entertainment and tourism
venues” (Gotham, 2005: 1102). Coupled with declining economies and shrinking
tax revenues in small towns, rural gentrification accelerates shifts to amenity-based
tourist economies focused on leisure activities (Ghose, 2004; Lawson, Jarosz, &
Bonds, 2008). Gotham (2005: 1102) gives two reasons for considering the nature of
tourism gentrification. First, tourism gentrification “highlights the twin processes of
globalisation and localisation that define modern urbanisation and redevelopment
processes” where on the one hand tourism is a “global industry dominated by large
international hotel chains, tour operators, car rental agencies and financial services
companies” and on the other hand, tourism is a “local industry characterised by
grassroots cultural production, spatial fixity of the tourism commodity and localised
consumption of place”. Second, the concept of tourism gentrification challenges the
traditional explanations that assume demand-side or production-side factors to drive
the gentrification process. This conceptual duality (between production-side and
demand-side explanations of gentrification) is linked through a tourism gentrifica-
tion lens. For Gotham (2005: 1102), “on the production side, for example, tourism
is about shifting patterns of capital investment in the sphere of production, new
forms of financing real estate development and the creation of spaces of con-
sumption. On the demand side, the socio-physical spaces associated with gentrifi-
cation are also the highly visual expression of changing patterns of consumption in
cities”. MacCannell (1976) developed the idea of an increasing emphasis on
experiences as cultural criteria of social differences in his seminal work, The

Tourist, in which he presents one of the first and most prescient descriptions of the
emerging post-industrial section of the Western middle class. Drawing on
MacCannell (1976) Hines (2010: 516) points out that the tourist is an emblem for
the modern post-industrial subject, and that their actions whether in the “course of
expressly touristic pursuits or not, are primarily, if not exclusively, motivated by the
pursuit of experience. In this sense…rural gentrifiers can be seen as, in effect,
‘permanent tourists’” (Hines, 2010: 516).
It is commonly argued that cultural constructs such as heritage conservation are
precursors to gentrification (Coulson & Leichenko, 2004) although some scholars
have countered this notion; namely, “the available evidence suggests that conser-
vation is not a sufficient condition to produce gentrified urban landscapes” (Jones &
Bromley, 1996: 375). Symbolic gentrification is often entangled with policies that
re-stage the rich architectural heritage. But Janoschka et al. (2014: 1243) show that
this strategy is merely a “pretext for bringing local elites and middle-class house-
holds back to the historic city centres” and “can happen through a superimposition
of traditional developer-led gentrification processes and symbolic gentrification
grounded in retail and consumption”.
Cultural considerations, such as cultural activities (e.g. arts) and creative
enterprises, have been marginalised in the debates on rural gentrification. According
to Duxbury and Campbell (2011: 111), the “literature about arts activities in rural
communities tends to focus on three topics: the nature of arts activities occurring
indigenously within the communities (‘rural arts’), festivals, and the impacts of
touring activities”. They submit that “arts, culture, and heritage are increasingly
viewed not only as amenities to improve the quality of life, but as a foundation
upon which the future of these rural/small communities rests” (Duxbury and
Campbell, 2011: 111).
There is much anecdotal evidence of small towns undergoing agricultural culture
dramatic change: For example, in the American West many small ranching and
mining towns have become home to elite ranchers and are now popular tourist
destinations (Friedberger, 1996). In another context, Cheyne and Freeman (2006)
allude to Burnley and Murphy’s (2004) research on population movement to coastal
and some rural areas in Australia (the sea change phenomenon)—the so-called
alternative lifestyles. The former authors differentiate “contemporary sea-changers
as a different kind of alternative lifestyler (alternative with a little ‘a’). They are not
seeking self-sufficiency as, they argue, do Alternative lifestylers (who may never-
theless also have been dependent on income support). Many are likely to be in
self-employment based on teleworking but they may also continue in employment
in the metropolitan areas (albeit with some teleworking)” (Cheyne and Freeman
(2006: 107).
It is in the context of the above conceptualisation of rural gentrification that the
focus now turns to the case study of Greyton in the Western Cape.
6.3 Greyton as Archetypical Rural Gentrification Town
In 1854, Herbert Vigne founded a freehold agricultural village on his farm

Weltevreden. He kept two small portions for himself and bequeathed the remainder
of the farm to the proprietors of the erven as commonage, naming it Greyton (http://
greytonconservationsociety.com/history-of-greyton/). The town has no thorough-
fare and the road from the nearest large town, Caledon, ends here making the town
the final destination on this road. Although the reason for the establishment of the
village of Greyton remains obscure, the legacy of Herbert Vigne’s decision left the
rural South African landscape with a village of unsurpassed beauty, enchantment
and heritage. According to the Greyton Conservation Society, “it is a wonder that
the essence of the village and its Cape Vernacular architectural environment are
largely intact and that the out-of-context and unresponsive development that has
destroyed so many small towns of the Cape has up to now passed Greyton by”
(http://greytonconservationsociety.com/history-of-greyton/). The town was laid out
in 1854 and named after Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape Colony at that time
—a reminder of its British colonial heritage. Its noteworthy layout has a distinct
rectilinear-shaped onderdorp (low-income areas) and crescent-shaped bodorp
(upper town). Among the nineteenth-century buildings are several Rietdak (that-
ched) cottages which give a distinctive tone to the historic townscape (Fig. 6.2).
Fig. 6.2 A Rietdak house in Greyton. Photograph Author (2007)

6.3 Greyton as Archetypical Rural Gentrification Town 129
The erven were long and narrow, serviced with water running in leiwater (irrigation
stream) furrows, which criss-crossed the village. Cape vernacular-styled cottages
were built close to the street leaving large pieces of the erven for agricultural
pursuits. The produce consisted of a variety of vegetables and fruits such as onions,
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, beetroot, carrots, pomegranate, apricots, pears (http://
greytonconservationsociety.com/history-of-greyton/). By 1882, only 53 of the 160
erven had been sold, of which two-thirds went to non-whites (Fransen, 2004).
Having remained largely the same for over a century, the town’s character has
changed dramatically over the last four decades. Three distinct phases of change
occurred (The Greyton Sentinel, 2004). First, the Group Areas Act (the separation
of different racial groups) forced residents who were classified as non-white to
relocate to a township outside the town called Heuwelkroon, causing a spatial
fragmenting of the built environment. Second, in the 1980s and early 1990s a
largely Afrikaans-speaking agricultural community started selling properties to city
dwellers: “They have bought old houses and expanded and renovated them or built
luxury country houses, sometimes for use during long weekends or holiday periods
only” (Kemp, 2000: 58). At the same time, roads into the town were improved and
some of the streets were resurfaced with tarmac, thus making the town more
accessible and desirable for tourists and investors. A third phase of change began
towards the end of the 1990s: property prices rose meteorically, the number of
permanent residents increased and the town became a favourite weekend getaway
for tourists and second-home owners. The original country feel of the town was lost
due to the subdivision of plots in some parts eventually leading to a mix of land
uses. The number of houses (excluding those in Heuwelkroon) in the town
increased to 424 in 2000: more than twice the number in 1983 (192). Significantly,
and despite it being in a relatively crime-free area, the town today has a gated
community comprising 62 houses in a walled retirement village with 24-hour
security. Between 1970 and 2001, the town’s population increased by 28%, largely
owing to an increase in the number of coloured residents. The number of white
residents remained constant. However, between 2001 and 2011 the number of
whites settling permanently in the town increased significantly. As a consequence
of apartheid spatial planning, the town of Greyton is spatially and economically
polarised: there is the area called Greyton village where the residents are primarily
white, wealthy and retired and/or entrepreneurial and/or second-home owners, and
there is Heuwelkroon where all residents are coloured and most are impoverished
and young (Greyton Structure Plan, 2000). Noteworthy Frost and Laing’s (2014)
comments that in modern public policy the marketing of towns as villages has
become a powerful tool for successful rural regeneration where it builds on the rural
mystique and the idea that villages are idyllic and pastoral are particularly appli-
cable to Greyton.
Greyton thus provides a clear example of a small town that has undergone a
process of rural gentrification over a period of nearly 30 years. Table 6.3 provides
an overview of some of the key aspects of change during this period according to a
combination of Zukin’s (1990) and Phillips’ (2005) frameworks of analysis. The
timeline in Table 6.3 is described in more detail in the sections that follow.
Table 6.3 Overview of changes in Greyton relating to the process and outcomes of gentrification
Period Labour/Product Property relations Demographic Finance/Investment
1884–1979 Agriculture Nineteenth-century Afrikaans-speaking Agricultural
agricultural village community (white products
and coloured)
1980–84 Change from Distortion of Apartheid Creation of local
agricultural to historic aesthetic legislation leads to real estate market
residential through segregation of for urbanites
settlement, with development of a community (white
properties used as township (at main and non-white).
weekend entrance to town) White depopulation
second-home Devalorisation of and increase in
retreats agricultural number of
properties by lone second-home
gentrifiers owners
1985–93 Tourism Architectural Urban–rural Emerging tourism
entrepreneurs, restorations, immigration more area
local labour used subdivisions permanent
for renovations
1994–2017 Circulation of Re-creation of Retiree, second Property boom
ideas (local architectural styles occupations (real estate market
newspaper) and (e.g. Victorian and (tourism now solely for the
information Rietdak styles), entrepreneurs), rich), exclusive
(tourism centre), gated community in-movement of tourist spaces,
committees development, land persons over expanding tourism
established claims, 55 years of age and hospitality
(historic state-subsidised industry
conservation), low-cost housing.
re-creation of Investment in
agricultural restaurants and
lifestyle (Saturday tourism
market), arts and accommodation
craft markets
Source After Zukin (1990), Phillips (2004), Robinson (1986) and Donaldson (2006)
6.4 Rural Exodus and Forced Removals
Two factors led to the significant changes in Greyton after 1960, both of which
directly impacted the property market. The first was the end of agriculture as the
main occupation for the local population, and the second the annexing of the village
by affluent urbanites in the 1980s (Kemp, 2000). No doubt, apartheid policy was
central to both processes. No urban area in South Africa escaped the apartheid
government’s Group Areas Act (1951) which forced different racial groups (as per
Population Registration Act 1954) to live in designated segregated residential areas.
The implementation of the Group Areas Act in 1951 had profound impacts on all
urban places in the country and especially in the small town evolutionary process to
become rural (small town) gentrified places. For this reason, the gentrification
narrative in South Africa is different to that of all other countries in the world. It is
6.4 Rural Exodus and Forced Removals 131
conceivable that the forced removals resulting from the application of the Group
Areas Act constitute the grandest state-led gentrification project ever. In Greyton,
until the introduction of the Group Areas Act, no racial barriers existed in the town,
and there was a degree of homogeneity between coloured and white residents.
Robinson (1986: 75) observed that the “separation of people from one another by
the implementation of Group Areas was intended to remove this intimacy and the
enforced segregation reduced, and in most cases, destroyed the interaction between
people”. White residents were rather apathetic towards the proposed relocation of
the coloured residents. At the first Group Areas Board meeting in 1964, only
coloured residents vehemently protested and requested that they be allowed to
remain on their land.
The decision to transform Greyton into a white group area was formally
announced in 1969, at which time, according to newspaper reports, only 30 coloureds
owned property in the town. However, Robinson’s (1986) findings were rather dif-
ferent: she found that approximately 55 coloured families owned property at the time
and that their land holdings comprised more than 80 erven, meaning that they rep-
resented almost half the total number of property owners. In records at the Deeds
Office, she traced 66 properties which were transferred to white ownership between
1969 and 1985. As well as owning property, a large number of coloureds also rented
property and they too had to relocate to the new township of Heuwelkroon.
Heuwelkroon was purely residential, with hardly any space allotted for agricultural
pursuits. Initially, coloured farmers returned to their original properties to plant crops,
but this practice was stopped within a few years by the new owners denying them
access. In most instances, the former fertile agricultural land lay fallow “until such
time as resale or development took place”, and during this period, the town was aptly
described by Robinson as “a corpse of a town” (Robinson, 1986: 80). Furthermore,
Robinson (1986: 80) noted that “the immediate effect of the implementation of the
Group Areas Act was…to reduce the productivity of the land in Greyton and with it
the gross income of a large section of the local population”. Most coloured residents
of Greyton became migrant workers so severing their social networks in the town.
During this period, the government constructed 100 substandard houses in
Heuwelkroon for the coloured residents. Robinson (1986: 113) noted that the change
in social relationships in the town was accompanied by a “change in emphasis from
agricultural activity to property speculation and investment for holiday and retirement
purposes”. In effect, it was apartheid legislation that led to the process of rural (small
town) gentrification in Greyton.
6.4.1 Demographic Change and Trends
Robinson (1986) observed that to capitalise on the property boom in the early
1980s, many of the long-term elderly residents of Greyton sold their properties to
affluent incomers from the cities. Unable to afford property elsewhere in the town,
these elderly residents relocated to old-age homes in nearby Caledon or the Strand
Table 6.4 Population change in selected towns in three provinces, 1970–2001 and 2001–2011
Province Town Total population % change % change
1970– 2001–
2001 2011
1970 2001 2011
Western Greyton 860 1097 2780 +28 +153
Cape Riebeek Valley 2870 5191 5494 +81 +6
(Kasteel and
West)
Free State Philippolis 2173 1171 950 −46 0.1
Bethulie 4841 1349 2100 −72 +56
Northern Colesburg 6991 12,761 16,869 −39 +32
Cape Richmond 3137 3068 3793 −2 +24
Source Censuses for 1970, 2001 and 2011
(Robinson, 1986; confirmed by Nel 2004). It appears that there had been no
dominant pioneer gentrification group in Greyton at the time. Like the international
situation, in some cases the pioneers resettled once they had ignited a process of
gentrification and made their profit, and in others, the pioneers become displaced as
they themselves can no longer afford to live there or are overwhelmed by the
changes (Qian, He, & Liu, 2013).3
An application of the differential urbanisation model to South African urban
systems by Geyer (2003) showed that when the core regions grow the fastest (in
terms of economics and population) the urban system is in an urbanisation phase.
When regional centres start attracting migrants, the system enters the polarisation
reversal phase, and when smaller towns further down the hierarchy start attracting
significant numbers, it is assumed that the urban system has reached maturity and
enters the counterurbanisation phase. In this last phase, of particular relevance is
“people’s tastes about where they want to live” (Geyer, 2003: 90). To compare
population trends in Greyton with those in towns of similar size, two small towns
were arbitrarily selected from each of three provinces. Using census data for 1970,
2001 and 2011, percentage growth rates over a 41-year period were calculated for
all six towns (Table 6.4). Only in the Western Cape towns was there no decline in
population numbers or percentages between the two periods. Although the Free
State towns experienced the greatest depopulation between 1970 and 2001, between
2001 and 2011 there was a population recovery, especially in Bethulie.
New residents in the selected five towns between 2001 and 2011 reflect a
substantial trend of in-migration to the towns (Table 6.5). In Greyton, almost
one-third of the residents in 2011 were new, having moved there since the previous
3
See, for example, the case study of Xiaozhou, China (Qian et al., 2013). They found that
“grassroots artists’ aestheticisation and colonisation of the village ignited an initial stage of gen-
trification. The subsequent commodification of rural land and housing, induced by increasing
concentration of art students and middle class ‘elite artists’, led to deepened gentrification, stu-
dentification and eventually displacement of pioneer gentrifiers” (Qian et al., 2013: 331).
Table 6.5 Percentage of black, coloured and white residents living in the town in 2011 but not in
2001
Population Percentage of black, coloured and white residents living in the town in 2011 but
category not in 2001
Greyton Riebeeck Phillipolis Bethulie Richmond Colesburg
Valley
Black 1.3 1.8 4.1 5.1 7.0 8.9
Coloured 12.5 6.1 6.6 0.2 14.5 2.2
White 17.3 10.4 9.1 8.7 1.8 2.2
Total 31.1 18.3 19.8 14.0 23.3 13.3
Source Extracted from SuperCross, Census 2011
Note In calculating the percentages, the persons born after 2001 were not included, nor were the
“other” and Indian population categories (they are too small to affect the interpretation of the data)
census in 2001. Whites constitute the larger proportion of new in-migrants.

A similar trend (where whites are the dominant in-migrants) is evident for Riebeek
Valley, Phillipolis and Bethulie. Unfortunately, the data tool SuperCross for census
2011 does not allow for cross-tabulations between income, population group and
migration patterns; hence, it cannot be determined whether the white in-migrants
are indeed rural gentrifiers, i.e. affluent persons.
It is not surprising that there is a similarity between the case of Greyton and the
situation reported by of McEwen and Steyn (2013) for Prince Albert. They
observed that:
Two contrasting narratives currently construct Prince Albert. The first, an ‘official’ narrative
promoted by the Local and Provincial municipalities, tells the story of a town in despair,
characterised by poverty and lack of access to resources amongst the coloured majority
population of Prince Albert. In contrast, the ‘unofficial’ story, told by an elite group of
Prince Albert’s ‘semigrant’ residents, conveys a romantic description of the town’s
‘peacefulness’ and ‘old world charm’. How two completely different representations can
coexist to describe one place can be explained by Steyn’s (2012) notion of the ‘Ignorance
Contract’. For dominant groups, making sense of the world around them “is not as much
about accuracy as about how they would like the world to be, and having the power and
resources to impose their desires, drives and will upon the social field and to effect social
control” (McEwen & Steyn, 2013: 7).
Figure 6.3 shows this disparity in income categories for black-coloured and
white-headed households in 2011. The high percentage of whites who earned less
than R76,400 per household per year is quite likely ascribable to the presence of
pensioners (there is a large group living in Greyton since 2003 when the retirement
village4 was developed) who do not declare an income in the census. The bulk of
4
With the ageing of population, especially in developed countries, gated retirement villages are
springing up to meet the demand by the expanding stratum of retirees who are looking for a secure
place with a variety of leisure facilities for them to enjoy at this phase of their lives. In addition,
these locales contain a wider social context, meaning that their sense of place is shaped also by the
social, economic and cultural circumstances of retirees’ life (Massey, 1995).
Black households Coloured households White households

100
90 85 89
80
70
60
50
40 30
30 21 24
20 16
10 9 7
10 0 2 2 1 2 0
0
<R76 400 R 76 401 - R R 153 801 - R R 307 601 - R > R 614 001
153 800 307 600 614 400
Fig. 6.3 Annual average household income for Greyton per household Source Extracted from
SuperCross, Census 2011
coloured and black households is, however, very poor. The white elite have
unarguable power and resources in the town, but no claim is made here that they
deliberately control the underclass. Tensions do, however, exist between the roles
played by the local authority and the white residents and the incorporation of
previously disadvantaged individuals (PDIs) in empowerment. An interviewee in
Donaldson’s (2007) survey voiced strong opinions about the municipality not
playing a facilitative role in local economic development. The interviewee said that
the municipality sits back and waits for private persons to do things. There must be wider
consultation than just committees whose members do not really give enough importance to
input from outsiders. There is a need to both empower and get PDIs involved in civic
affairs. PDIs feel less worthy of voicing their opinions because they are poor and not
articulate, something people need to be sensitive to. There is more community spirit in the
coloured area than in Greyton. There are talented, willing people in the coloured com-
munity and we need to tap into this (Donaldson, 2007).
Demographic changes directly impact the property market and will be focused on in
the next section.
6.4.2 Property Market Changes
The appropriation of coloured residents’ properties under apartheid legislation took

place between 1970 and 1975. After the mid-1970s, the large plots previously used
for agriculture quickly became sought-after commodities. Most of the properties
were bought by the pioneer gentrifiers, investors who either renovated the houses or
built new houses on empty plots and then sold them. As elsewhere in the world,
rural newcomers involve several significant subsets. There can be (1) retirees;
(2) the wealthy and/or famous, including members of the: (a) national economic
elite (CEOs and owners of large listed companies) and (b) national cultural elite
(film actors, professional writers, and artists5); and (3) younger (30–40 s) ex-urban
members of the middle class (Hines, 2010). Anecdotal evidence also indicates that
the pioneering tourism-led gentrifiers in small towns in South Africa are gay
couples. Interviews with estate agents in a number of the country’s small towns,
including Greyton, all reveal the same story, namely that once “pink money” is
invested in a town, the green lights go on for estate agents to market such places as
ripe for gentrification.
Smith and Holt’s (2005: 313) study in Britain echoes this sentiment, namely,
“conventional representation of rural in-migrants tied to contemporary processes of
rural change in Britain, most notably rural gentrification, often obscures lesbian and
gay movers. Indeed, such rural transformations are often viewed as being syn-
onymous with the cultural consumption practices of new middle-class households
‘buying into’ particular heterosexual rural lifestyles and identities”. From the early
1980s, estate agents replaced the speculators and renovators (early gentrifiers) as
the main agents of change (Robinson, 1986). What is clear is that many small towns
that have undergone a process of tourism gentrification are now being shaped and
transformed into spaces of exclusivity. Typically, the in-migration of urban–rural
migrants, the so-called rural gentrifiers, to a small town leads to rejuvenation and
revitalisation, as well as increases in property prices. A well-known example
elsewhere in South Africa where the motive for in-migration is primarily business
related is Clarens in the eastern Free State where one businessman saw opportu-
nities for tourism development and bought many properties in the town
(Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2004; Marais, 2004).
During the second wave of gentrification in Greyton, in the early 1980s, hoteliers
and owners of the commercial outlets provided a new impetus for rural–urban
change. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Greyton had only one hotel.
This was sold in the mid-1980s and then refurbished by the new owner to attract a
new clientele. Subsequently, Greyton has essentially become a tourism destination
following the opening of two more accommodation establishments, namely the Post
House and Greyton Lodge. Tourism has grown incrementally with occupancy rates
of between 60 and 70% over weekends. Related attractions are restaurants, spe-
ciality shops, Old World charm (Fig. 6.4) and two annual festivals. The one, held in
winter, focuses on outdoor activities (4 4 drives, biking), the other one is a
garden festival held in October. These attractions evoke such interest that,
5
Small art towns [Villani Santa Fe’s (1999) term] are now through arts-related economic revi-
talisation and infrastructure developments attracting urban–rural migrant artists to start “artist
colonies”. Most small towns in the country that have undergone some form of rejuvenation can
attribute change to artists moving to the towns in the early stages of transformation. Off the beaten
track small towns that became artist colonies, such as Clarens, Stanford, McGregor eventually
developed into fully fledged tourism towns marked by an increase in restaurants, accommodation
establishments and other new developments such as golf courses and retirement and other walled
villages.
Fig. 6.4 Quaint streets with shops and restaurants in Greyton’s recreational business district
(Photograph: Author, 2007)
according to some, it is not uncommon for tourists visiting for the first time to buy
property in the town for a permanent retreat (Duff, 2004).
Since the 1990s, property purchasers in Greyton have fallen into two main
groups (Nel, 2004). One comprises the over 50s for whom Greyton is a desirable
retirement location. The other group is young adults with school-aged children. The
opening of a private school with monthly fees of up to R1000 (almost three times
more than a government school) has attracted young professionals to the town,
many of whom work from home or commute to nearby employment centres such as
Somerset West and even Cape Town.
An analysis of trends in property sales reveals a social dynamic in small towns
where an influx of affluent buyers is observable. Steady growth in the property
market is dictated by supply and demand. The South African Property Transfer
Guides provided information on property transfers in Greyton for the period 1994–
2009. Although during a ten-year period (1994–2003) only 114 transactions (11 of
which were transfers of publicly owned property) were registered (Table 6.6), these
sales amounted to almost R30 million (approximately £2.8 million at the time).
However, over the next six years (2004–2009) 563 property sales were recorded
(this total excludes the transfers of low-cost state, subsidised properties to the
indigent). The size of stands fluctuated after 1994, but generally declined, partic-
ularly after 2002, due to subdivision (Table 6.6). Subsequent years have not seen a
Table 6.6 Private property sales, average plot size and prices in Greyton, 1994–2009
Year Number of properties Average erf size Average Highest
sold (sq m) price price
1994 9 2131 R278,444 R1,368,000
1995 9 1526 R199,555 R451,000
1996 11 1831 R228,090 R360,000
1997 19 1632 R187,184 R350,000
1998 6 1837 R193,333 R320,000
1999 7 1922 R304,540 R570,000
2000 14 1532 R257,328 R845,000
2001 15 1565 R231,266 R50,000
2002 14 1217 R420,357 R1,600,000
2003 10 1130 R652,000 R1,950,000
2004 138 1397 R782,805 R3,500,000
2005 114 1493 R941,069 R2,400,000
2006 123 1378 R1,066,541 R3,000,000
2007 93 1387 R1,211,470 R8,500,000
2008 47 1745 R1,672,613 R3,850,000
2009 48 1635 R1793,692 R9120,000
Source Compiled by the author using South African Property Transfer Guides (data only available
from 1994 onwards. Excludes all low-cost housing sales of municipal property)
dramatic change in property sizes. The table shows that average prices rose steadily
with the highest price for a property in 2002 exceeding one million rand for the first
time since 1994 and by 2009, it was nearly R10 million. Statistics for the number of
rooms per household vividly illustrate a growing social polarisation with a 154%
increase in one-roomed houses (government subsidised, low-cost housing) and an
86% increase in houses with seven to nine rooms. In the case of very large houses,
i.e. those with more than ten rooms, the numbers decline significantly (−22%),
perhaps reflecting increased demolitions and/or adaptations of buildings (Statistics
South Africa, 2001).
The average sales price for each year and the percentage change in average price
from year to year, as well as the change in price over the 15-year period, were
calculated from the property data. The annual percentage growth in average
property sales between 1994 and 2009 illustrated in Fig. 6.5 shows that between
1994 and 1999 (the five-year change rate was 9%) the rate was generally negative.
From 1999 onwards (with the exception of the period 2000–2009), the annual
growth has consistently been more than 7%. Between 1999 and 2004 and between
2004 and 2009, the five-year change rates were 157 and 129% respectively.
As with urban gentrification (inner-city areas), cultural values (architecture,
diversity, lifestyle, nostalgia) are outstanding aspects of rural gentrification (Nelson
et al., 2010). Buyers’ interest in property in Greyton has put pressure on the market
to expand to meet the growing demand. A survey conducted in Greyton by the
planners responsible for the structure plan elicited residents’ views about the town’s
100
80
60
40
20
-20
-40
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Series1 -28 14 -18 3 58 -16 -10 82 55 20 20 13 14 38 7
Fig. 6.5 Annual average percentage growth rate in property prices in Greyton, 1993–2009
future. Their responses are shown in Fig. 6.6. The results suggest that Greyton’s
residents want to reinvent South African (romanticised) pastoralism despite their
village becoming a tourism town since 2000. Other than a few horses on the
outskirts of town (Fig. 6.7) and a weekly market, there are few remaining signs of
the former agricultural practices. The above trends in property sales and develop-
ments in Greyton confirm the observation that residential gentrification accompa-
nies the type of development that took place in the town (Phillips, 2002), namely
the replacement of agriculture with tourism as “the most important sector of the
economic base of the town” (Greyton Structure Plan, 2000: 129).
6.4.3 Tourism Gentrifiers
A survey (Donaldson, 2007) among tourism entrepreneurs questioned why they

specifically opted to settle in Greyton.6 The rural charm and natural scenic beauty of
the town were given priority over its architectural and historical qualities as reasons
for choosing Greyton as a place to live. Greyton was also rated highly as a place to
6
Primary data for the Greyton case study were collected through in-depth interviews conducted
with tourism small home-business entrepreneurs who had moved to Greyton after 1990.
Twenty-nine per cent of these entrepreneurs were randomly selected from the official town
website. In addition, interviews were held with a tourism official, a representative of the heritage
conservation committee, and municipal workers or councillors concerning issues relating to
conservation of the town’s heritage.
Historical character be preserved by

means of regulations
Resubdivision of erven be allowed for a

more compact development pattern
Future expansion of the town area must

be encouraged
Keep Greyton country
0 20 40 60 80 100
Fig. 6.6 Greyton residents’ views about the town’s future. Source Compiled from the Greyton
Structure Plan (2000: 22)
Fig. 6.7 Grazing horses: The last vestiges of agricultural land use in Greyton (Photograph:
Author, 2007)
retire and for its proximity to Cape Town. Surprisingly, the wish to open a business
was not mentioned as a reason for settling in Greyton. Whereas all the entrepreneurs
were looking for a suitable place to retire, they also aspired to making a contri-
bution to the small town’s economy (and their own household). For example, one
respondent moved to Greyton because “it is a small friendly community and there
are opportunities to make a difference”. Only a minority of the respondents made no
alterations to their houses. This finding confirms of the existence of two waves of
gentrifiers to the town. The first were responsible for the basic refurbishment of
properties. The others added new rooms to their houses and made minor
improvements to the interiors. Only one respondent built a completely new house.
All gentrifiers employed local people for the work (architects, interior designers,
professional builders and casual labourers), and only one employed an interior
designer from outside the town.
Generally, these newcomers are no longer the speculator-developers but are now
predominantly owner-occupiers (second homers) where “the people driving the
inflation of the local residential market are the same ones appropriating and rede-
veloping the available housing to fit their tastes” (Hines, 2010: 515). It becomes
apparent that the consumers of the gentrified landscape are also the producers of the
same and that it becomes a created “landscape of experience” (Hines, 2010: 515). In
this context, entrepreneurs responded with mixed opinions about the following
statement posed to them: “Apparently the best way to ruin a community is to have it
discovered by people with taste and money, who like the town so much that they
move in and change everything that they liked about it”. One-third disagreed,
stating that change is essential and necessary to create jobs for the unemployed and
that this is “the best way to build a community”. Another respondent saw it as “a
very negative statement”. Another third were neutral, with one saying “I am in the
middle. I want to keep the character of the town but tourism business wants to keep
tourists coming for survival and economic growth. Two streams of thought need to
find a middle way”. The remaining third agreed with the statement by comparing
Greyton to what happened in other small towns in the province. One respondent
opined that the newcomers “like it initially, but then living among cows, sheep and
chickens becomes onerous and they want to change it”.
In applying one of the triads of Lefebvre’s conception of space, Phillips (2002:
289) has suggested an explanation for gentrification as a symbolic creation “enacted
in the discourses of academia and the popular media, and in a range of advertising,
specialist building and lifestyle texts”. One question worth raising here is whether
or not the perceived revitalisation of selected small towns, as propagated in the
popular media, is evidence that a process of rural gentrification is taking place—an
assumption that is more often than not used as a tool for marketing property and
tourism. Small towns are persistently marketed in terms of escapism—safe and
desirable places to retreat to from an increasingly dangerous urban environment
(either permanently or as a second home). They are also eagerly promoted as
desirable places to retire to, and where to take up a second occupation. Two other
streams of place marketing emphasise (1) the value of small town living as enabling
people to be part of “other” subcultures in society and (2) small towns as sites for
tourism and leisure activities. The popular media, such as newspapers and living
and lifestyle magazines, especially the South African Country Life, romanticise life
in small towns, their aim being to promote them and to lure potential investors.
Typically, editorials and advertisements include lines like: “[S]ick of the stress of
city life, more and more people are opting for country style living, not just dreaming
about it” (Hamann, 2000: 18), and “cities buzz, but the little town of Greyton in the
Overberg just hums” (Richards, 2002: 35). It is noteworthy that the romanticism is
accompanied by stigmatisation, and later commercialisation.
6.4.4 Residential Tourism
The rising demand for second-homes in South Africa corresponds with the
increasing prosperity of middle- and high-income groups, mainly whites combined
with greater amounts of available leisure time (Hoogendoorn, Mellett and Visser
2005). The use of houses as second homes in small rural towns is typically linked to
a type of migration, namely visits for holidays and/or weekends. Later, second
homes may become retirement homes or be primarily acquired as investments
(Hoogendoorn et al., 2005). In 1986, only 120 of the 238 houses in Greyton
(excluding the coloured township) were inhabited permanently (Robinson, 1986).
Moreover, in 1986 only 13% of the white residents living permanently in Greyton
had lived there for more than 20 years, whereas 33% had moved there during the
previous ten years (Robinson, 1986). In 2007, of the 2426 registered properties in
the town (including Heuwelkroon), almost one-third were properties of
second-home owners who did not live permanently in the town.7 The geographic
origin of the second-home owners in Greyton in 2007 comprised 64% from Cape
Town and a significant number them reside in the English-speaking suburbs of
Cape Town [similar to the findings of Hoogendoorn et al. (2005)]. Only 12% lived
in the same region as Greyton, namely the Overberg. Three out of four therefore
lived within an hour’s drive of the town. Eight per cent reside in Gauteng and 4% in
the other seven provinces. There are also some UK residents (2%) and the rest come
from Denmark, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Namibia and Botswana.
6.4.5 Tourism Development
Tourism developments have played a vital role in reconstructing the identity of the
town from a gentrified hideaway and rural retreat to an attractive leisure-time
7
The methodology of Hoogendoorn et al. (2005) was applied, i.e., the official rates and taxes
mailing list was consulted and all addresses outside Greyton (which were assumed to be those of
second-home owners) determined the number of second-home owners in Greyton.
destination. However, most residents do not want mass tourism and the local
tourism association claims to be sensitive to their views. The gentrifier entrepre-
neurs who participated in Donaldson’s (2007) study reported being engaged in
finding alternative niche markets for Greyton. For example, one initiative aimed to
attract tourists from the East by offering English language teaching (Duff, 2004).
Greyton Lodge, which occasionally hosted former President Mbeki and owned by
British immigrants, was successful in attracting conferences to the town and hosted
a number of blue-chip companies such as BP, Shell and BMW (The Greyton
Sentinel, 2003).
The tourism entrepreneurs are contributing directly to the economic growth of
Greyton. Strategic use of the popular media for marketing the economic potential of
the town, such as promoting the town as a whole or a local economic development
project, has happened only to a limited extent. Inspiring success stories have been
told about ways in which in-migrants are contributing to the town’s economy, for
example, by engaging in craftwork and producing fruit, and by transferring skills to
and creating employment among previously disadvantaged communities. The
process of integrating the first generation of coloured residents (now residing in
Heuwelkroon) who were forcefully relocated during apartheid is taking place
informally in the tourism sector and through self-help projects. One example of how
incoming gentrifiers positively impact the town is a British woman who purchased a
cottage in Greyton in 1996, then established a textile business which employed six
previously disadvantaged individuals (PDIs), and exported cushions, table runners,
place mats and quilts (Van Ryneveld, 2003). As a result of the acclaimed Mfala
Designer Textiles enterprise, a new kind of coloured entrepreneur has emerged. For
example, a previously disadvantaged individual who worked for the company—
having previously gained experience in the tourism industry—started her own
restaurant in Heuwelkroon. The Greyton Tourism Association is aware of and
enthusiastic about pro-poor and responsible tourism. The Association intends to
maintain a high standard of service preferably by guiding and managing the process
of involving PDIs as entrepreneurs rather than fast-tracking PDI tourism initiatives.
The Association has also now reached a stage where it anticipates declaring a
moratorium on opening any new accommodation establishments in the former
whites-only part of Greyton and plans are there to implement a strategy to attract
high-income tourists.
6.5 Conclusion
Tourism-led gentrification is especially important in small towns where tourism

represents a central factor for development and growth (Cocola-Gant, 2018).
Greyton neatly fits the general description of a small town that has undergone a
process of rural (small town) tourism gentrification. The former Afrikaner farming
community was replaced by affluent English-speaking residents from metropolitan
areas. In the process, new forms of social segregation emerged. The distortion of the
6.5 Conclusion 143
built environment caused by apartheid’s forced removals, the revalorisation of

historic buildings and now the re-creation of old designs through a gated com-
munity for the elderly encapsulate the spatial nature of the gentrification process.
The townscape, now transformed through various renovations and building work,
has some attractive aesthetic features with a distinctive architectural history. A new
brand and sense of place has been created for the town where gentrifiers share
similar lifestyles.
The accumulation of wealth in Greyton is based on an economic triad of gen-
trification, tourism and retirement. Over the last decade and a half, the tourism and
hospitality industries have dramatically impacted on the way the town marries
financial and social capital. The lone gentrifier has been replaced by tourism
entrepreneur gentrifiers, second-home owners and a younger group settling with
families as evidenced by the nature of the financial investment in the town and
residents’ engagement in social, economic, developmental, environmental and
heritage endeavours. The commercialisation of property has resulted in sharp rises
in property prices. Capital accumulation in Greyton has contributed to its repopu-
lation and to the creation of a real estate market for the affluent. In the 1970s, it was
a middle-class town; today only the rich can afford to buy and/or stay there. It is
true that while small town and rural communities many lack finances, they are “rich
in an abundance of flair, creativity, warm hospitality and entrepreneurial skills”
(Briedenhann & Wickens, 2004: 77). This is particularly so in gentrified rural
spaces. Eventually once the original lone gentrifiers are replaced by other types of
gentrifiers, then small town communities tend to become inclusive, anti-outsiders
and the real charm of country folk and lifestyle are replaced with a new urbanity.
Gentrification is a continuous process, going through various phases, all
impacting differently on a range of residents in a town. Marketing and promoting
this process also varies through time. On the contrary, singular processes (yet
repetitive) such as events are key instigators of the development of destinations,
they figure prominently in developing and marketing of most many destinations and
they are gaining importance in the competitiveness of destinations. In the following
chapter, the context of small town events and festivals in South Africa is discussed
as a major tool for tourism development.
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Chapter 7
And Then There Was Another Festival…
Now it’s festivals, festivals everywhere. Big ones, small ones,

wild ones, silly ones, dutiful ones, pretentious ones, phony ones.
Many have lost purpose and direction, not to mention
individual profile. Place a potted plant near the box office,
double the ticket prices and—whoopee—we have a festival.
(Bernheimer, 2003, quoted in Quinn, 2005: 939).
Abstract Festivals have become a major tool in the tourism development of many
small towns. This chapter gives a brief discussion on the conceptual facets of events
and festivals, followed by a review of festival research conducted in a South African
small town context. As most of the research concentrated on the economic impacts
festivals have on towns, a review and a critique of the economic impact method-
ologies are provided in the last section of the chapter. A summary of the findings by
a selection of event impact studies in South Africa is presented. In economic terms,
the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown is by far the most successful
festival in the country, followed by the KKNK. National art festivals generally
attract most of the visitors from their catchment areas (immediate province and
nearby provinces). Most of the festivals are attended by Afrikaans-speaking per-
sons. Festival organisers often assign unrealistic values to the consequences of their
festivals, and in some cases, they discard the economic impact assessments done to
determine their festivals’ worth to the small town. The ability to lure the power elite
to attend festivals remains the most formidable challenge for success.

Keywords Small town festivals Typology of events Direct economic impact

methods Quick-fix solutions Events South Africa
7.1 Introduction
The cultural turn in tourism research (since the mid-1980s) is associated with the
changing nature of tourism itself with the “rise of adventure and ecotourism, heritage
tourism, and niche marketing of cultural events” resulting in “an entirely new phase of
tourism” whereby a focus on “the cultural component of tourist experiences” has

148 7 And Then There Was Another Festival…
emerged (Craik, 1997: 113). The impacts and roles of events and festivals within the
cultural tourism industry have been well documented (Getz, 2008). Broadly defined,
cultural tourism is “movements of persons for essentially cultural motivations such as
study tours, performing arts and cultural tours, travel to festivals and other cultural
events, visits to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or art, and
pilgrimages” (World Tourism Organisation, 1985: 131). Destination managers
develop, facilitate and promote events to meet various goals. More specifically, events
are hosted to generate income for the local economy, to attract tourists, to foster
positive destination images to contribute to general place marketing, to serve as cat-
alysts for future investments, to boost tourist numbers and to animate specific areas or
attractions (Getz, 2008). Festivals have become a major tool in the tourism develop-
ment of many small towns. In the context of non-metropolitan small towns, the
concern “is neither to unproblematically suggest that cultural festivals are the panacea
for all manner of economic woes, nor to write off cultural festivals as mere ‘pastiche,’
commercialism, or avenue for elitism” (Gibson et al., 2010: 281). There is a striking
similarity between the non-metropolitan contexts of South Africa and Australia:
There is plenty of anecdotal knowledge that festivals are increasingly important for rural
and non-metropolitan communities, beyond scholarly examination of economic impacts or
cultural meanings at individual events, surprisingly little is known (if at all) about (a) their
geographical and numerical extent; (b) their cumulative (rather than individual) signifi-
cance; and (c) crucially, whether or not (and how) cultural festivals are being incorporated
into formal regional development and planning strategies outside Australia’s major cities
(Gibson et al., 2010: 282).
Just over a decade ago, Visser (2005) observed that there was a paucity of research
results about festivals in South Africa. Since then the bulk of research relating to
festivals and events has focused on small towns. This chapter gives a brief dis-
cussion on the conceptual facets of events and festivals, followed by a review of
festival research conducted in a South African small town context. As most of the
research concentrated on the economic impacts festivals have on towns, a review
and a critique of the economic impact methodologies are provided in the last section
of the chapter.
7.2 Festivals Conceptualised as Events
Festivals are seen as strategic tools to promote and develop visitor activity to
ameliorate the effects of seasonality. However, location, attraction type and own-
ership determine patterns of off-peak operations (Connell, Page, & Meyer, 2015).
The diverse types of events can be grouped into eight categories (Table 7.1). Each
category comprises of a number of types. For example, cultural events include
festivals, carnivals and religious events. Some types overlap, for example, markets
and concerts can be considered “cultural” in some contexts, and so on.
Getz’s (2008) typology of events in a tourism context is based on the function of
events as factors of destination marketing or development such as local or regional
7.2 Festivals Conceptualised as Events 149
Table 7.1 Types of events

Event category Types
Political, state VIP visits, rallies, assemblies, inaugurations
Sports Professional, amateur
Recreational Games, sports, entertainment events
Educational and scientific Seminars, congresses, workshops, conferences
Cultural Festivals, carnivals, parades, religious events
Entertainment Concerts, exhibitions, awards, performances
Business Fairs, markets, auctions, public relations events, meetings
Private Social celebrations, social events
Source Golob and Jakulin (2014: 69)
events, major events, hallmark events and mega-events. O’Sullivan and Jackson
(2002) devised a typology of three festival types. The first is essentially small scale
and run by a few volunteers for the benefit of one locality (small town) and is called
a home-grown festival. Second is a tourist-tempter festival which is aimed at
specifically attracting visitors to stimulate local economic development, and it is
driven by the local authority. The third type is a large partnership-driven festival
aptly named a big-bang festival which is essentially a marketing tool that promotes
a myriad of related activities over a defined geographical area.
The main roles or functions of event and festival tourism are to attract tourists
(especially to remote areas outside the daily urban system and during off-peak
seasons); to act as image-makers (or cobranding—flagship projects, e.g.
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and large-scale events such as the Olympic Games,
FIFA Soccer World Cup are popular branding tools); to be a catalyst for the
development of new infrastructure; to animate attractions such as museums, venues
and spaces that need events to attract repeat visitors and to promote place marketing
(Getz, 2014). In an absolute sense, mega-events relate to size, international scope,
purpose-built infrastructure and global media coverage, whereas in a relative sense,
the term and the events are used in context and seen as “the biggest that a place can
accommodate, have the largest impacts and attract most attention” (Getz, 2014:
403). This interpretation is important for small towns as it implies that any place or
venue can host a mega-event as it is relative to the context of the town.
The notion of a hallmark event has evolved meaningfully since being coined in
the 1970s by Ritchie and Beliveau (1974). Getz (2014) contends that the term has
multiple meanings, sometimes used synonymously with community or mega-events
and other times interpreted as events that are permanent in nature and cobranded
with their destination. Getz (2005: 407) specifically linked the term hallmark event
to place marketing, destination branding and image making: “Hallmark describes an
event that possesses such significance—in terms of tradition, attractiveness, quality
and publicity—that the event provides the host venue, community or destination
with competitive advantage”. Special events, such as the Kwêla Town of the Year
competition (Chap. 4), can improve and create positive destination images for
small, economically declining towns so attracting more tourists and creating a
positive ripple effect of economic development in the town and in its surrounding
areas. In addition, spatio-temporality and uniqueness are key requirements for
successful events in small towns. The appeal of events lies in their never being the
same (Getz, 2008). Hallmark events are, by nature, also considered to be iconic
with symbolic value (Getz, 2014) that embodies “valued traditions” and gains
“mythical standing” through media exposure and reputation (Getz et al., 2012: 51)
whereby local pride is boosted and local traditions and customs celebrated
(Hernstein & Berger, 2014). These are typical of events held in slow towns as
reported in Chap. 5. Hallmark events are the festivals and sports events that become
larger community celebrations where over time, the event and destination even
become inseparable (Getz, 2005, 2014). There is ample anecdotal evidence that
festivals in Australia are vitally important to rural and non-metropolitan commu-
nities (Gibson et al., 2010). A study in Midwestern communities in the USA found
that in 38 of the 40 towns surveyed, the average number of festivals per town was
3.3 per year (Harshbarger, 2012), confirming Getz’s (2014) claims that destinations
need one or more hallmark event.
Quinn (2005: 927) defines a festival as: “It’s something exceptional, something
out of the ordinary… something that must create a special atmosphere which stems
not only from the quality of the art and the production, but from the countryside, the
ambience of a city and the traditions…of a region”. According to Cudny et al.
(2012: 709) (quoted in Cudny, 2014: 133), all festivals share the following features:
• They are varied, uncommon events, unconnected with work.
• They celebrate elements which are significant in a given community’s life and
consolidate it.
• They are often related to the culture and religion of local communities.
• They often consist of many different social and cultural events.
• They are often connected with art and culture.
• They are regular events.
• Sometimes they are combined with competitions.
In a comprehensive review of the literature on geographical festival research,
Cudny (2014) identified eight main themes. Culture as a research theme views
festivals as places where all forms of cultural phenomena occur. Culture is created
and consumed at festivals. Yet, according to Gibson et al. (2010: 281), cultural
festivals are an
under-acknowledged and yet potentially significant component of strategies to develop
grassroots economies. Cultural festivals may be more or less lucrative in terms of total
monetary gains; but cumulatively—from their sheer ubiquity and proliferation—they
diversify local economies…and improve local networks, connecting volunteers, diverse
paid workers, and local institutions. They also frequently advance laudable goals of
inclusion, community, and celebration.
The social research theme concentrates on the festivalgoers (‘festinos’ to some

scholars), on their motivations to attend the event, and where they come from.
Attention is also given to the towns and communities where these events take place
and to the attitudes residents have about them. Time–space analyses reflect on the
spatial distribution of festival types and how they evolve over time. The political
dimensions of festival research involve the ways politicians take advantage of such
events to promote their ideologies and political parties. Within historical contexts,
festivals are studied for their defining social and political roles. Theoretical studies
have tried to create festival typologies. Other studies combine several research
themes. But the research theme on which this chapter focuses is the economic
impacts of festivals, particularly the income they generate and the imaging of places.
In contrast to the extant body of work on big festivals, small-scale events in small
cities and towns have to a great extent been ignored (Herstein & Berger, 2014). It is
an incontrovertible fact that there is a diversity of festivals in heterogeneous cultural
settings in a range of non-metropolitan places (Gibson et al., 2011). For example,
fourteen different festival types were identified in a survey of non-metropolitan
places in Australia (listed in order of most common types): sport, community,
agriculture, music, arts, other (a range of other that includes lifestyle, outdoor,
animals, gay and lesbian), food, wine, gardening, culture, environment, heritage or
historic, children or youth and Christmas or New Year (Gibson et al., 2011).
Regarding festival policy, Jordan (2014) has proposed three types of festival.
First, aesthetic festivals have a focus on concerns such as art form and artist
development that “would traditionally be considered part of cultural policy…[and]
…[T]he unique productions are both artistically and economically important, yet it
is unlikely that policymakers within the tourist or economic domain would consider
this” (Jordan, 2014: 11). Second are commercial festivals which are not primarily
concerned with artist development, yet “the success of a new artist at certain events
provides validation and a higher price for their work” (Jordan, 2014: 11).
Commercial festivals with a strong brand will attract significant numbers of visitors
and, potentially, become an industry centre. Third, the fix on community devel-
opment of civic festivals is best understood from the perspective of urban authority
which is the driver behind such festivals. Jordan (2014: 11) maintains that while
some community festivals do “attract significant numbers of tourists, these are in the
minority” and “policymakers hoping that investment in a civic festival will support
their visitor economy are likely to be disappointed, but it might be successful in
engaging hard-to-reach communities or supporting community cohesion efforts”.
Community festivals initiated by small town residents are more often than not
done for their own entertainment, and attendance by non-locals is considered a
bonus. A significant degree of community support is however crucial to repeating
the successes of previous years. Experience has shown that in cases where the idea
for a festival was conceived by a non-resident without consultation with local
stakeholders, such endeavours are doomed to failure (Molloy, 2002). An inevitable
consequence of small town regional festivals is volunteer burnout possibly asso-
ciated with cycles of growth and decline of such events. When local support for a
festival is strong, locals will usually perceive the benefits of the event to extend
beyond economics. There also seems to be a relationship between active commu-
nity involvement and support, and community isolation, i.e. the farther the com-
munity lies from a large metropolitan centre, the stronger the level of community
support. Moreover, towns with small populations tend to have stronger commu-
nities than those with larger populations (Molloy, 2002).
Small town festivals have been shown to exhibit various common characteris-
tics, namely shoestring budgets; locals organising the events themselves rather than
hiring the services of professional events managers; festivals must feature a
big-name performer dictated by the festival genre; festival programming must make
provision for sufficient shows across the preferred genres (drama, comedy, music,
theatre, cabaret); active participation of community-based organisations; non-local
visitors like to meet and experience locals; a cohesive and good community spirit to
rub off on other spheres of life beyond the festival; festivals raise awareness of the
local region’s culture and other attractions so challenging perceptions of local
identity; and active communities aid the securing and accessing of external funding
from donor agencies (Botha, Vivier, & Slabbert, 2012; Molloy, 2002; Quinn,
2006). In addition, it has been argued that there is more to arts festivals than the
pursuit of art and culture, for example, political agendas can be advanced (Van der
Vyver & Du Plooy-Cilliers, 2006).
The hosting of events plays a crucial role in small town development. Events are
effective motivating forces for tourism as they promote a sense of identity, com-
munity building and cultural integration. Getz (2008) found that events are sig-
nificant stimulators of tourist interest in destinations that experience low tourist
demands. The planning and organisation of events usually aim to attract more
people of various ages, race and ethnicity by providing a ‘memorable’ experience.
From a visitor perspective, special events are occasions for experiencing something
different to everyday life which is an essential element of tourism development.
Getz (1989: 134) has encapsulated this as: “The key advantage of small events is
that they can make visitors believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are a part of
something authentically indigenous”.
Getz (2008) has observed the importance of analysing event tourism from a
demand (consumer side of tourism) perspective and from a supply (delivery aspect
of tourism) perspective. The demand perspective mainly focuses on the consumer,
in this case the tourist—who travels for events and also who attends events while
travelling. The demand perspective also looks at what event tourists do, spend and
why (Getz, 2008). The supply perspective aims to understand the delivery of ser-
vices and infrastructure to promote valuable tourism experiences:
to attract tourists (especially in the off-peak seasons), serve as a catalyst (for urban renewal,
and for increasing the infrastructure and tourism capacity of the destination), to foster a
positive destination image and contribute to general place marketing (including contribu-
tions to fostering a better place in which to live, work and invest), and to animate specific
attractions or areas (Getz, 2008: 406).
It is obvious that with careful planning, management and marketing of small town
tourism, development will favour the needs of tourists and improve services in towns.
Small town festivals as staged urban experiences often cause townscapes (as
backdrops for festivals) to be reinterpreted because the urban spaces are reordered and
for the events altered and the towns’ place identities are transformed. A visitor to
Oudtshoorn during the annual Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK) will find
that the festival identity of the town is completely different to that seen and experi-
enced on visits to the town outside the festival period. Festival staging often involves
removing people, closing streets to vehicular traffic and altering spaces to act as places
for performances in places “usually reserved for more mundane activities. The festival
demands a re-presentation of space in order to engross the visitors by locking the
festival gaze onto the city” (Johansson & Kociatkiewicz, 2011: 394).
The experience economy results in a town becoming “a site of use, symbolism and
experience” (Marling et al., 2009: 870). In contemporary advanced economies pre-
mised on and driven by the service industry (such as tourism), the underlying theory
of Pine and Gilmore (1998, 1999) intends that customers be provided with strong
emotional experiences, the so-called four Es (Fig. 7.1) of the experience economy,
namely educational; entertainment; escapist; and esthetics (Pine & Gilmore, 1999).
The reasons for attending festivals are myriad, but mostly attendees go to a
particular event on offer rather than events in general (Nicholson & Pearce, 2001).
Festivals and events are prime manifestations of the experience economy where
places and businesses have direct benefits through building a strong brand, per-
sonalising products and staging events. The event experience affects the satisfaction
of festivalgoers, therefore playing a decisive role in the survival of a festival and the
Absorption
Entertainment Educational
Passive Active
participation participation
Esthetic Escapist
Immersion
Fig. 7.1 Four Es of the experience economy. Source Pine and Gilmore (1999: 46)
achievement of a competitive advantage in the events tourism industry (Manthiou,

Lee, & Tang, no date). Oh, Fiore and Jeoung (2007: 127) aver that the “education
and entertainment dimensions may be related, for instance, to special events or
programs at the destination as well as the general theme of the destination”.
7.3 Small Town Festivals in South Africa
As revealed in reviews of the international literature on festival tourism, most of

festival tourism research in South Africa has primarily concerned its economic
impacts (see Chap. 2). A summary of the findings by a selection of event impact
studies in South Africa is given in Table 7.2. The typical demographic and eco-
nomic data (e.g. gender, origin, length of stay, travel party size) required for such
studies are included in most of the published papers. In economic terms, the
National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown is by far the most successful festival
in the country, followed by the KKNK. National art festivals generally attract most
of the visitors from their catchment areas (immediate province and nearby pro-
vinces). Most of the festivals are attended by Afrikaans-speaking persons. The
Woordfees is the festival that appeals to the oldest group of attendees. Saayman and
Saayman’s (2004) comparative study of the country’s three major art festivals—the
KKNK, Aardklop Nasionale Kunstefees at Potchefstroom and NAF—revealed that
Potchefstroom contained more of the generated income than Grahamstown or
Oudtshoorn did. Potchefstroom has a bigger economy and less money flowed to
other towns or cities because the host city caters for most of the services during the
festival. At Oudtshoorn and Grahamstown, non-residents and businesses of larger
neighbouring towns and elsewhere provide the services so that the proceeds do not
stay in the host community. Very little attention is paid in South African studies to
whether the previously disadvantaged communities are benefitting economically
from the festivals. Geography matters regarding the impact events have on towns or
regions as evidence has shown that the location and size of towns are important
factors (Saayman & Saayman, 2006a, b). The audience reach of festivals is such
that most “cater to a very small artistic and intellectual elite or to transitory social
groups such as tourists” and big spenders “rather than to a broad community of
local residents” (Quinn, 2006: 290). The big spenders travel for the purpose of
attending festivals (Saayman, Saayman, & Joubert, 2012). When festivals grow too
fast, they are prone to losing their magic; hence, it is essential to establish high
standards of quality (Pretorius, Viviers, & Botha, 2014).
7.3.1 Categories of Festivals
Visser’s (2005) study is the only South African work that has provided a spatial
interpretation of the number, type and distribution of various festivals. He found
Table 7.2 Selected information about small town festivals in South Africa
Festival National Arts Aardklop National Klein Oppikoppi Aardklop National Arts Knysna Oyster Prince Albert National Innibos (2010) Woordfees
(year Festival (2003) Karoo Arts Music (2008) Festival Festival (2011) Olive Festival Klein (2015)
surveyed) (2003) Festival Festival (2009) (2012) Karoo Arts
(2003) (2008) Festival
(2011)
Location Grahamstown Potchefstroom Oudtshoorn Northam Potchefstroom Grahamstown Knysna Prince Albert Oudtshoorn Nelspruit/Mbombela Stellenbosch
Attendees 400 400 400 261 495 435 220 171 479 438 145
surveyed
Total R27,574,000 R12,333,600 R59,835,900 R82,400,000 R26,626,209 R562,738 R27,214,353
economic
impact
Multiplier 1.15 1.52 1.43 – – – – – – – –
Male: 42:58 44:56 47:53 49:51 33:77 37:63 38:62
Female
Age Average Average 60% between 21– 60% older Average Average 38 years 51% older than
24 years 42 years 40 years old than 41 47 years 50 years
7.3 Small Town Festivals in South Africa
Home English Afrikaans Afrikaans 72% 94% 75% English – – 95% 90% Afrikaans 98% Afrikaans
language Afrikaans Afrikaans 18% Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Origin 24% Eastern 53% Gauteng; 51% Western Gauteng 43% Gauteng 45% Eastern 67% Western 78% Western 59% 55% Mpumalanga; 46% Western
Cape; 21% 18% North Cape; 24% and North and 32% Cape; 21% Cape; (57% from Cape (of Western 30% Gauteng Cape; 29%
Western Cape; West;13% Eastern Cape; West North West Gauteng; 17% Cape Town); which 45% Cape elsewhere in
20% Gauteng Free State 16% Gauteng Western Cape 15% Eastern from Cape country; 25%
Cape Town) Cape Town
Length of 9 days 5 days 8 days Varies 5 days – 10 days 2 days 8 days 3 days 10 days
festival between 3
and 5 days
Average 6.1 2.5 4.8 3.4 3.1 – – 3.0 4 2.3 4.9
number of
overnight
stays
Average 4.8 2.9 4.9 8.4 2.3 – – – 4 2.9 2.8
size of
travel
party
(group
size)
(continued)
155
Table 7.2 (continued)
156
Festival National Arts Aardklop National Klein Oppikoppi Aardklop National Arts Knysna Oyster Prince Albert National Innibos (2010) Woordfees
(year Festival (2003) Karoo Arts Music (2008) Festival Festival (2011) Olive Festival Klein (2015)
surveyed) (2003) Festival Festival (2009) (2012) Karoo Arts
(2003) (2008) Festival
(2011)
Average 4.8 4.5 3.6 – 5.2 – – – – 2.3 –
number
tickets
Number of 29,029 42,905 93,306 10,000 – – – 695 59,000 7028
visitors—
excluding
locals
Average 6.7 2.4 3.1 3.3 4.3 – – 3.0 6.0 2.6 3.6
number of
visits to
festival
Source Saayman and Saayman and Saayman and Kruger and Kruger, Saayman and Donaldson Donaldson Kruger and Kruger and Donaldson
Saayman Saayman Saayman Saayman Saayman and Roussouw (2011) (2012) Saayman, Saayman, (2012a, (2015)
(2006a, b) (2006a, b) (2006a, b) (2009) Ellis (2011) (2011) (2012a, b) b), Van Niekerk and
Coetzee (2011)
7
And Then There Was Another Festival…
7.3 Small Town Festivals in South Africa 157
Western Cape festivals

12
10
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Fig. 7.2 Number of festivals per month in the Western Cape (outside Cape Town). Sources
Official Western Cape Destination Marketing Organisation, Wesgro’s database as well as Google
search for events in the province
that most (40%) of the festivals are spatially concentrated in the Western Cape.
Since this study was done, there has been a market growth in the number of
short-term festivals in small towns (Van Niekerk & Coetzee, 2011). Because it is
beyond the scope of this chapter to update Visser’s study, a snap survey was
conducted to ascertain the extent of small town festivals in the Western Cape in
2016. It revealed a total of 74 annual festivals lasting two and more days held in the
small towns of the Western Cape. Two peak periods occur (Fig. 7.2). A minor peak
exists over the Easter period (April) with 11% of the annual events taking place
then. A major peak manifests from August to October during which 39% of the
events in the province are held. These are generally the low-peak tourist months in
the province. On the contrary in the four-month summer season (November to
January) features a mere 13% of the annual events. The events take place in a total
of 34 towns, seven of which host four or more events a year, namely Darling (4),
Hermanus (4), Knysna (4), Plettenberg Bay (5), Robertson (5), Franschhoek (6),
Stellenbosch (6).
It has been claimed that the annual increase in the number of new festivals on the
country’s festival calendar has oversupplied the festival tourism market, inevitably
threatening the sustainability of the festivals (Van Zyl & Strydom, 2007). A case in
point is the decline in ticket sales experienced since 2004 at the premier small town
Afrikaans national art festival, the KKNK. As a result, the festival is now in the
decline phase of the festival life cycle (Kruger & Saayman, 2012a, b). Botha et al.
(2012) have noted that it is crucial for festival organisers and marketers to ensure
that renowned actors, musicians and playwrights are included in festival pro-
grammes as this assures continued interest in the festival.
Visser (2005) classified 19 festival types1 into four categories, namely
agriculture-related festivals; arts festivals; a combination of arts and
agriculture-related festivals; and festivals dealing with culture and identity. A town
or region’s natural resource base (comprising inter alia availability of developable
land, agricultural potential, natural and cultural tourist attractions) can be used for
assessing the development potential and growth of towns (Van der Merwe, Ferreira,
& Zietsman, 2005). Agriculture-related festivals specifically focus on local attri-
butes and resources. Home-grown products of an area are marketed as unique to the
local context. For example, port wine is synonymous with the Calitzdorp Port
Festival, cherries with the Ficksburg Cherry Festival, and oysters with Knysna
Oyster Festival. Other examples are the Lamberts Bay Crayfish Festival, the
Phillipolis Witblits Festival and the Prince Albert Olive Festival. Most of these
festivals are held in the major holiday tourism seasons (December–January and
April). There are some off-peak season festivals too, such as scheduling of the
annual Hermanus Whale Festival with the whale-watching season. The whale
festival is said to attract 100,000 visitors each year. Arts festivals are fewer in
number, but they generate considerable media attention, funding and revenue. The
prime four arts festivals are the NAF, the KKNK, the Woordfees in Stellenbosch
and Aardklop. The target market is domestic cultural tourists and even international
tourists. Regional art festivals, such as the Gariep Arts festival, mainly attract
tourists from nearby major secondary cities like Bloemfontein and Kimberly, and
they cater for Afrikaans communities. The above festivals rely on external spon-
sorship for financial viability. Cultural festivals depend on uniqueness for their
sustainability, but this uniqueness requires a real connection with place (Quinn,
2005; Johansson & Kociatkiewicz, 2011). A festival as a cultural event “eventifies
elements and issues of South African society” (Hauptfleisch, 2001: 171).
Commemoration of the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War was the first major her-
itage event marked under the ANC government. It was launched in the Free State
town of Brandfort, and a “distinct African flavour was added to the occasion in an
unmistakable attempt of symbolic inversion by having young black girls dressed up
in white bonnets and Voortekker dresses to represent Boer women” (Grundlingh,
2004: 6). The ideological ramifications of battlefield war tourism were investigated
by Grundlingh (2004) in which he argues that it is “misleading to regard such
tourism as value free, as its narrow focus tends to shut out a fuller understanding of
the social and political impact of war and allows stereotypes to go unchecked”
(Grundlingh, 2004: 14). Small towns featured prominently in these events and
“each town gave its own imprint to proceedings” (Grundlingh, 2004: 14).
1
Art, art and music, dance, drama, film, general arts, key arts, jazz, music, agriculture, food, food
and wine, cheese and wine, wine, identity-based, tourism, sport, special interest, other.
7.3 Small Town Festivals in South Africa 159
7.3.2 Festival Investments and Market Segments
Empirical research on corporate investments in festivals and their subsequent social

investment programmes is scant and restricted to media reporting. For example, in
2001, Media24 invested a total of 2.5 million Rand in arts festivals of which
investment in local communities formed an important part. Investment spin-offs for
communities are key to funding festivals. For example, at the KKNK
a community liaison committee was established from the outset to enable local residents,
particularly those from previously disadvantaged communities, to benefit from the festival.
More than 500 jobs are created annually before and during the event, and people are trained
for various positions. Pre-festival shows are aimed specifically at introducing theatre to
rural schoolchildren and farmworkers. One of the biggest festival restaurants is run by a
school in a previously disadvantaged community, and the taxi service during the event is
run by local taxi owners (http://www.media24.com/eng/community.html).
The marketing of festivals must consider the different market segments and the
timing to promote the festival. Kruger and Saayman (2012a, b) have identified three
main market segments regarding festivals (using Innibos festival as a case study).
There are festivalgoers who decide up to a month before the event to attend,
so-called spontaneous decision-makers. The extended decision-makers decide a
month or more in advance. The routine decision-makers decide immediately after
attending a festival that they will attend the next event. Small town festival man-
agers should aim their marketing campaigns at the latter because they stay the
longest, spend the most at festivals and buy the most tickets for shows.
In a case study of Aardklop, it was found that ticketed show visitors contribute
substantially to the sustainability of the festival, compared to the non-ticket show
visitors (Kruger, Saayman, & Ellis, 2011). It is therefore advisable that festival
organisers target visitors who buy tickets and the key, according to Botha, Viviers
and Slabbert (2012), is to ensure that acclaimed actors, musicians and playwrights
are included in the festival programmes. Festivals are not to be judged solely on the
number of festinos they attract, rather on the income derived and the benefits that
accrue to local communities. Saayman and Saayman (2006a, b) found that the high
spenders at festivals are recognisable by socio-demographic indicators such as age,
family size and income. Their study showed that older festinos spend more than
their younger counterparts, small families spend more per person than large families
and there is a positive relationship between income and spending at festivals.
7.3.3 Non-financial Benefits
Post-festival studies of the sociocultural impacts of festivals on the local, especially

the previously disadvantaged communities are essential to better comprehend the
non-economic component of festivals. Snowball and Willis (2006a, b) measured the
value of cultural goods at national festivals and found that different ethnic groups
place different values on various elements of a festival. They contend that their
findings are useful to organisers for allocating resources more effectively so as to
attract previously excluded people to cultural events.
Innovative tourism events such as creative educational experiences where
tourists are given an opportunity to become personally involved with local artists
and crafts persons are novel form of festival taking place in the arts and crafts route
of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. The defining element of the Midland Meander
Creative Festival (started in 2004) is creativity involving instruction and/or
demonstration in all that is creative. Courses are presented in the visual arts and to
develop other creative skills. The festival provides tourists the opportunity to view
the production of and purchase creative products from the area, to be inspired by
presenting artists and fine crafters and to meet other creative people.
Contrary to viewing festivals from an economically strategic point of view,
Quinn (2005: 927) questions the disregard of social values by festival organisers
and argues that local authorities tend to “construe them simply as vehicles of
economic generation or as a ‘quick-fix’ solution”. In this regard, a genre of festivals
that aims to combine social and economic outcomes are events on the pink
(gay) calendar. The small coastal town of Knysna hosts the Pink Loerie Carnival
initiated by local residents to promote the town as a destination and to stimulate the
town’s economy in May, a month also referred to as “the suicide month”. However,
the aim of the festival embraces a multidimensional purpose of the gay carnival that
would “celebrate the diversity of the gay culture in a scenically magnificent envi-
ronment’. The carnival serves as platform for debate and education to stimulate
awareness and understanding of gay issues as well as the HIV/AIDS pandemic”
(http://www.pinkloerie.com).
The use of events to break stereotypes by hosting them elsewhere than at the
traditional sites is having positive social effects on selected small towns. South
Africa’s premier advertising, communication and design awards ceremony held at
Sun City for 27 years was moved in 2005 to the conservative coastal town of
Margate. Residents were reported to be overwhelmed by the creativity brought to
the town as evidenced by slogans such as “Watergate, Travelgate, Oilgate,
Margate”.
7.4 Methods and Challenges of Assessing Economic

Impacts
Notwithstanding the perceived economic consequences of festivals, especially the

creation of employment for locals [see case study of the Grahamstown and
Oudtshoorn festivals (Viviers & Slabbert, 2012)], the actual economic impacts of
events on local communities are often overstated (Crompton, 2006; Hodur &
Leistritz, 2006). Three distinct sources are responsible for the economic benefits of
7.4 Methods and Challenges of Assessing Economic Impacts 161
Table 7.3 Economic benefits of festivals

Source Nature of expenditure Method
Facility construction If most of the construction Estimating economic
(if applicable) budget represents funds impacts as a result of facility
raised outside the local area construction is fairly
(e.g. provincial or federal straightforward if facility
funding, corporate managers have an
sponsorships), the accounting system of the
construction activity costs associated with
represents a net economic construction
gain for the area. On the
other hand, if facility
construction is financed from
local sources, perhaps from
the local government’s
infrastructure budget, which
would otherwise be spent on
other local projects, there
would be no net economic
impact for the area
Facility and event (business) Examples of expenditures Economic benefits related to
operations related to business facilities and event
operations include supplies operations are also fairly
(e.g. concession supplies), straightforward if facility and
advertising, payroll and event managers can provide
benefits, facility records of operating
maintenance, utilities and expenses
other expenses related to
day-to-day operations
Expenditures related to Expenditures related to event Economic benefits from
attendees, spectators and participants and event expenditures made by event
event participants (e.g. attendees include travel costs participants and attendees
vendors, sportspersons, to attend or participate in the are less transparent and
event exhibitors event, meals, lodging, and require specialised data
other purchases motivated collection efforts
by event attendance or
participation
Source Compiled from Hodur and Leistritz (2006)
events and event facilities (Table 7.3). Facility construction usually does not apply
to small town events because these are too costly and not all festivals demand
expensive infrastructure (Tindall, 2011). Remotely located small towns are most
often unable to attract large numbers of overnight stays due to limited capacity of
their accommodation facilities (the case study of Richmond Book Festival in
Chap. 3 is a case in point). The use of existing infrastructure (multiple use) such as
sports fields, school and town halls is the norm in small towns. The other two
income sources relate to business expenses and operations, and to attendees and
participants (Table 7.3).
Assessments of the economic impacts of all festivals and events should address
the selection the study area, collection of data, estimation of direct economic
impacts, selection of a technique to estimate secondary economic impacts as well as
the interpretation of results (Hodur & Leistritz, 2006; Snowball, 2004; Snowball &
Antrobus, 2002). Given the size of small towns, a whole town (and sometimes it’s
immediate rural surroundings and region) is usually considered the study area.
Important data needed for determining the economic impact are collected through a
sample survey. Such surveys typically determine attendees’ demographic profiles
(age, gender, language, population group), length of stay, number in party, resi-
dence, motivation for attending (i.e. did they specifically travel to attend the event
or were they in the area anyway, the so-called casual attendees, and what they
would have done in the absence of the event, as well as their expenditures).
Generally, expenditure data are gathered in one of two ways: recall methods (in-
tercept or mailed surveys) or dairies (which require that respondents record expen-
ditures as they occur and then return the diary at the end of the visit). Both methods
have shortcomings, but intercept surveys are usually applied as norm. With the
exception of gated festivals, non-gated festival impact assessments (e.g. Kruger &
Saayman, 2012a, b) use non-probability sampling methods such as convenience and
purposive sampling. In such studies, the reliability of the data is justified, when the
population is unknown (as is the case in non-gated festivals), by considering 398
respondents as representative and result to have a 95% level of confidence with a 5%
sampling error. However, to make assumptions about the population based on sta-
tistical methods, a probability sampling method approach has to be followed. This is
very difficult to do in open-access events; hence, a carefully implemented ‘pseudo’
probability sampling approach is advisable. Unfortunately, this is not done in most
assessment surveys of festivals in South Africa. How best to obtain a representative
sample in a festival survey is a difficult task, especially where festivals are not gated.
The solution is to create and/or modify methods to fit the unique characteristics of an
individual event. Data collection issues also arise in specific circumstances, including
event selection (when a facility hosts multiple types of events) and the estimation of
event attendance. For events where access is uncontrolled (through pay points such as
gates) and open-access events with multiple venues, it is very difficult to determine
event attendance. Notwithstanding this, event attendance numbers are crucial to
accurate impact assessment. Regrettably, the determination of total festival attendance
is not treated with the necessary caution by many researchers. Four methods are worth
mention.
First, the ticket sales method can be used to estimate visitor numbers: by
dividing the number of tickets sold by the average number of ticketed events
attended (as indicated in the questionnaire survey) by respondents, the total festival
attendance can be estimated (Snowball & Antrobus, 2013). This method works well
with big national festivals such as the Woordfees and the NAF. The method does
have limitations in the absence of a properly designed sampling strategy which
considers day and night events, week and weekend events as well as different
genres and show types. Second, in small town, small-scale events (particularly
sports events), the number of participants in the event (e.g. mountain cycling,
marathon) will be a guide to the number of accompanying spectators (Kaylen,

Washington, & Osburn, 1998). Competitors in such events are numerable because
they are usually required to register. The challenge is to estimate the number of
spectators (excluding all local spectators and participants). It is assumed that par-
ticipants are accompanied by friends and/or family so that a survey among par-
ticipants about how many persons were in their travelling party and the group’s
expenditures can provide useful information about attendance and spending. The
method rests on the assumption that spectators have someone participating in the
event. Studies have however shown that the size and type of event are determinants
whether the spectators are affiliated to participants (Kaylen et al., 1998). A third
method is the capacity utilisation model (Bonn & Dai, 2004 cited in Hodur &
Leistritz, 2006). The number of non-local visitors attending an annual festival can
be estimated by a survey conducted among managers of tourism accommodation
establishments (hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, backpackers) to determine the per-
centage of accommodation capacity used by festival attendees. This ratio, when
applied to the total capacity of the town or immediate region’s accommodation
establishments, can be employed to estimate the total number of non-local (visitor)
attendees staying in these facilities. A fourth method applicable to an open-access
event (where attendees do not have to pay to get in) involves cases where the
festival area is accessible only at certain points (the area is fenced off). Individuals
are counted when exiting the festival at each of the access points. Donaldson and
Fourie (2014) employed this method in a study of the Cape Town summer market.
Over a 15–30 min period, each hour a small sample of attendees were asked near
each gate how many times they had left the grounds that day. This enables one to
calculate the total number of visitors to the event over a period of time taking into
cognition the actual count of attendees exiting the event and the survey findings.
It is reasonable that people who come to the festival region anyway to visit
family or friends or to do business, as well as spending by local residents, should be
excluded when assessing economic impacts. A mixed-method approach which
combines some of the above methods can potentially yield the best results, although
such an approach can be thwarted by a lack of data. For example, Donaldson (2015)
reported that his attempts to determine the visitor totals for the 2015 Woordfees
were hampered in collecting the required occupancy data about accommodation
establishments due to the managers’ unwillingness to participate in the survey.
Consequently, he had to rely on the ticket sales method.
Over the past decade, I-O (Input-Output), SAM (social accounting matrix) and
CGE (computable general equilibrium) appear to be the most popular models for
assessing the economic impact of events and festivals (Van Wyk, Saayman, &
Rossouw, 2013). Box 7.1 gives concise explanations of what each model entails.
Furthermore, Hodur and Leistritz (2006: 71) clarify that
studies have not properly distinguished between the direct economic impact of an event and
the total expenditures of event participants and visitors. Total expenditures are all expen-
ditures by event visitors and participants. Direct economic impacts represent new money or
new spending, that is spending that would not have occurred in the absence of the event. By
definition, economic impact is the net increase in regional expenditures as a result of an
event or activity. In order to differentiate between the two and accurately estimate the direct
economic impact of an event, it is important to determine event attendees’ and event

participants’ motivation for attending or participating in a particular event, as well as
determine what attendees would have done in the absence of the event.
The overestimation of economic impacts often occurs in cases of the displacement

or crowding-out of other visitors by event attendees. This typically happens in small
towns where accommodation supply is inadequate to meet demand and “visitors
attending an event may simply replace other visitors, who are displaced, ultimately
overstating the impact of the event” (Hodur & Leistritz, 2006: 71). Other forms of
leakage involve visiting entertainers or sports teams spending only a fraction of
their event receipts within the study area. Similarly, in the case at many small town
festivals, the vendors are often from outside the event area and they may spend little
of their receipts in the event area and it is seldom guaranteed that their supplies are
sourced in the event-hosting town. Their contributions to the local economy are
necessarily quite small. Were they to employ locals, buy products locally and invest
capital in the small towns, their impact on the local economy could be substantial.
Box: 7.1 Three models used to assess the economic impact of events and
festivals are the following:
An I-O model analyses the interdependence of industries in an economy. In
basic terms, it represents a system of linear equations that describes the
distribution of an industry’s product through the economy. The model esti-
mates the flow of money between sectors, sub-sectors, business, organisations
and consumers, by monitoring effects when various multipliers are applied.
The application of the model can measure the effect of macroeconomic
changes to the local economy and can investigate the monetary contribution
of a certain sector to the economy.
SAM models include both social and economic data of an economy and are
regarded as broader-based models, and their application is, therefore,
favoured. I-O tables, national income statistics and household income and
expenditure statistic serve as the foundations of this model, and they will,
therefore, include typical national accounts that present different kinds of
transactions within an economy. SAM is therefore broader than an I-O table
and typical national accounts, showing more detail about all kinds of trans-
actions within an economy.
CGE models as a class of economic models use actual economic data to
predict how an economy might react in the event of changing policy, tech-
nology or other external factors. The inclusion of the SAM within a con-
ceptual framework as provided by the CGE model (that contains the
behavioural and technical relationships between variables within and among
sets of accounts) could prove very useful when evaluating the economic
effects of event policy changes and other economic phenomena.
Source: Van Wyk et al. (2013: 130–131)
The so-called rising tide effect of increased hotel and other accommodation rates
during a festival is generally not captured in the economic contribution (Litvin, Pan,
& Smith, 2013). The study reported by Ngandu, Gwenhure, and Mbanda (2014)
assessed the economic impact of the Marula Cultural Festival in the Ba-Phalaborwa
Local Municipality, Limpopo Province. They argue that because most event impact
assessments use Input-Output or social accounting multipliers, such approaches are
problematic2 at the level of small regional economies due to unavailability of such
tables. Furthermore, given the strong leakages due to the absence of a diverse
industrial base in such small town economies, high leakage ratios may dampen the
impact of festival visitor spending in the local economy. To overcome method-
ological shortcomings Ngandu, Gwenhure, and Mbanda (2014) conducted two
surveys during the February–March 2014 Marula Cultural Festival. One, a business
survey, captured the share of business stock procured from outside the local
economy combined with the perceptions of business owners about the effects of the
event. Second, a visitor survey captured typical expenditure patterns of festival
attendees. Basic leakage ratios and details of festival costs and revenues provided
by the organiser were used to compute a simple Keynesian multiplier which was
applied in the assessment.
Regarding the estimation of secondary economic impacts, the applicable tech-
niques are best explained by Hodur and Leistritz (2006: 73):
Regional input-output (I-O) models are based on dividing the study area economy into
sectors. (A sector is a group of firms that produce similar products or services; for example,
the retail trade sector.) Input-output coefficients quantify the flows of purchases and sales
among the various sectors, which generally include the households sector as a supplier of
labour and consumer of goods and services. The I-O model thus provides a means of
estimating the effect of an additional expenditure (for example, by visitors attending an
event) on every sector of the local economy, including not only sectors that receive visitor
expenditures directly, but also those that are affected indirectly through the cycle of
spending and re-spending within the local economy that is set in motion by the initial
expenditure. Once the direct economic impact associated with an event or activity has been
estimated, attention turns to estimating the secondary (indirect and induced) economic
impacts. These arise from the spending and re-spending of the initial expenditures (direct
impacts) within the study area economy and are sometimes termed multiplier effects.
2
Methodological problems with I-O tables are that “these tables are published on a national level
although the application is needed on a regional level; published tables may be outdated; economic
assessors of events should be aware of the possible hindrance where the geographical area for
which the results are reported on and that of the I-O table has no relation; when applying these
models, limited, if any, price movements and supply constraints are accommodated; these models
do not allow for any changes in the relationship between sectoral inputs and outputs; no integrated
economic effects are taken into account; the assumption is made that the consumption preference
of the host region equals that of tourists; impact estimates are often overestimated due to multi-
pliers used that include consumption effects; the employment impact is often misinterpreted;
capital expenditure not directly attributable to tourism is often included in the analysis; and
value-added multipliers can be applied to spending that is calibrated in output terms” (Van Wyk
et al., 2013: 149).
Fig. 7.3 Woordfees event and sponsorships. Photograph Author (2016)
In South African economic impact studies, several multipliers have been used
which are subjective as they are based on the aims of the research team. The most
conservative multipliers reported in the literature on impact evaluation tend to be
just above 1.0, with 1.1 frequently being used. The most common multipliers range
between 1.4 and 1.6 (Donaldson & Fourie, 2014). Saayman, Saayman and Naude
(2002) have calculated a domestic tourism multiplier for South Africa of 1.96.
The national small town festivals such as Woordfees, KKNK and NAF have all
moved beyond the first stage of growth (becoming a tourist attraction) and are
already positioned in the next stage “to gain legitimacy or foster growth” (Getz &
Page, 2015: 8). The primary reasons why tourism and economic impact studies are
conducted are to gain substantial sponsorship and support by and/or the cooperation
of tourism agencies, or to be recognised in the tourism scene (Fig. 7.3—
Sponsorship at the Woordfees, Stellenbosch). Organisers have to prove their fes-
tivals’ value in economic terms (Getz & Page, 2015). Having said this, the literature
provides no evidence of consistency in fieldwork methods nor in the calculation of
impact values. As the major national festivals grow, the competition among them to
be biggest (in terms of economic impacts) and best (regarding winning national
awards at annual award ceremonies) becomes fiercer. Organisers often assign
unrealistic values to the consequences of their festivals, and in some cases, they
discard the economic impact assessments done to determine their festivals’ worth to
the small town.
7.5 Conclusion 167
7.5 Conclusion
Cultural tourism, anchored in heritage or special events and festivals, has the
potential to become the economic mainstay for many small towns (Duxburry &
Campbell, 2011). However, in the particular context of such small town destina-
tions, economic values (driven by the power elite) usually dominate the actual aim
of cultural events and festivals and this preoccupation is likely to restrict the sus-
tainability of the events (Getz, 2008). When a destination hosts an event, it must be
clear what is wanted from the event and how the value added by the event will be
measured. Festivals and events can “foster collective identity and a sense of
belonging” so that over time they characterise and enhance “a broadly defined
cultural expression of place” (Duxbury & Campbell, 2011: 114). Research has also
shown
how the staging of festivals is a hybrid affair, where culture and economics combine. That
this is so ought not to prevent economic development planners from taken festivals seri-
ously, particularly in nonmetropolitan areas where traditional industries face great chal-
lenges. Although ‘touchy-feely’ social and cultural aims and values might (rightly)
underpin festivals, even the most radical, avant-garde, or noncommercial festivals invari-
ably require audiences, support services, and staging and audio equipment (all things reliant
on some element of planning, and part of a broader festival economy). They too have both
demand and supply-side economic impacts on localities (even if inadvertently so). Where
noneconomic goals such as belonging and community inform how festivals are operated
and managed, they also bring about a qualitative improvement in ‘economic’ affairs by
encouraging stakeholders to debate how monetary transactions, contracts, business rela-
tionships, and qui-pro-quo deals are organized—and who benefits from them (Gibson et al.,
2010: 291).
The success of tourism relies on the ability of local governments, the private sector
and communities to market an area to potential sponsors and investors as well as
domestic and foreign tourists through place marketing. The hallmarks of such
marketing are the “hosting of festivals and the creation of flagship foci, such as
heritage sites, convention centres and capitalising on locally available natural
resources” (Binns & Nel, 2002: 237). Other than promoting tourism, small towns
use events to gain legitimacy and pride, and to entice tourists from neighbouring
communities, in the process exhibiting a sense of community building (Getz, 2008).
In recent years, festivals have become important tools for promotion in South
Africa. These events are held by local authorities and communities to be important
tourism platforms for marketing the tourism assets of small rural economies as part
of local economic growth and development strategies, although most still have no
dedicated tourism event policy.3 Festivals have become catalysts for image making
3
Typically tourism policy regarding events includes principles to minimise negative economic,
social, cultural and environmental impacts; aims to generate greater economic benefits for local
people and enhance the wellbeing of communities; improves working conditions and creates
employment; involves local people in decision making; embraces diversity and contributes to
conservation of natural and cultural heritage; creates enjoyable experiences by enabling visitors to
and attracting visitors. The risk however lies in festivals being seen as “a sort of
‘quick-fix’ solution to their image problems” (Quinn, 2005: 932). The successful
management and growth of festivals are greater challenges in small towns than in
bigger cities and metropolitan regions (Lyck, 2012) In the context of stakeholders
and resource dependency theory, Getz and Page (2015: 8) point out that events
must “secure tangible resources and political support to become sustainable, giving
up a degree of independence in the process and creating long-term value in the
event transaction and offer”. The ability to lure the power elite to attend festivals
remains the most formidable challenge for success.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion: The Power Behind Tourism
Development
Abstract In this concluding chapter, the interrelation between tourism and urban
developmental processes and themes concerning small towns are reflected on
within the context of the urban growth machine theory. In the case-studied towns
discussed in the book, it was evident that the local elite (the main drivers and
initiators—the wealthy, the power elite, the creative class) are the ones who benefit
most; they are the key role players in terms of representation of the driven initia-
tives; their powerful persuasions have made them the winners in the decisional
arena and in most cases they are known to be driven by power motives for small
town growth.
Keywords Power elite Urban growth machine Growth elite Power structure
8.1 Introduction
The introductory chapter set out that this book is about interrelated tourism and
urban developmental processes and themes concerning small towns, and also the
views and experiences of the main drivers and initiators—the wealthy, the power
elite, the creative class. Hallmarks of successful tourism towns are the critical
significance of initiative and entrepreneurship, resourceful local leader(s), a real
interest in the area by the private sector, reliance on a degree of external support,
proactive municipal support and the key role played by partnerships in towns (Nel,
2005). Hall’s (2010) summary of the writings of Hunter (1953) and Mills (1956)
concluded that elites dominated national and local governments in very direct ways.
Hunter (1953: 249) (quoted in Hall 2010: 201) asserted that community organi-
sations “are controlled by men who use their influence in devious ways, which may
be lumped under the phrase ‘being practical’, to keep down public discussion on all
issues except those that have the stamp of approval of the power group”. Yet, Hall
(2010) has observed that the issue of power in tourism studies has been given
relatively peripheral attention in most research. Regarding South African small
towns, Steyn and Ballard (2013: 3) maintain that such places offer an

174 8 Conclusion: The Power Behind Tourism Development
interesting site for the analysis of spatiality and identity because people are ‘thrown
together’ more intimately, and there is less room for ‘escape’ from ‘others’ than in bigger
towns or cities. In these environments one can expect the difference between formal
institutional changes and lived reality to be more visible and tangible than in urban areas,
where life is lived more anonymously.
Having read the book one would tend to agree with Rodgers’ (2009: npn) statement
that
a focus has been placed on elite strategies or representations, with an unstated assumption
that such … projects are in some way effective or hegemonic in relation to urban public life.
By directing most empirical attention to studies of elite behavior, discourses or represen-
tations, the supposed subjectification of urban publics through such projects has more often
been a matter of theorization, or even just speculation.
Case studies were used in the book to illustrate, albeit sometimes indirect, how the
elite and power groups in selected small towns have impacted on tourism devel-
opment. The aim was to start a dialogue on the role such groups play in advancing
small towns’ tourism economies and geographies. This concluding chapter provides
insights into the nexus between tourism-development interests and power which is
the golden thread running through the chapters of the book. These understandings
are synthesised from the empirical evidence established in the case studies.
8.2 Power and Tourism in the Small Town Case Studies
The tourism literature mainly frames the study of power in the context of tourism
policy. However, since Church’s (2004) observations made more than a decade
ago, research has shown who is really empowered by tourism policy at a local scale.
Moreover, he observed that power is “rooted in social relations and can be used to
set social norms and wield influence over other social groups” (Church, 2004: 565).
According to Domhoff (2007: 6), the underlying basic assumption in research into
power structures is that “there is a power structure of some kind or another—no
matter how weak, fragmented or pluralistic—in any large-scale society”. Domhoff
(2007: 6) defined power structure “as the network of people and institutions that
stands at the top in any given city or nation on the combination of power indicators
it has been possible to utilize”. It can also show that “some organisations, groups or
classes have power in one arena, some in another arena. In addition, it can reveal
changes in a power structure over time by changes in the power indicators”
(Domhoff, 2007: 6). Four power indicators familiar to social scientists are:
(1) what organization, group, or class in the social structure under study receives the most
of what people seek for and value (who benefits?); (2) what organization, group, or class is
over represented in key decision-making positions (who sits?); (3) what organization,
group, or class wins in the decisional arena? (who wins?); and (4) who is thought to be
powerful by knowledgeable observers and peers (who has a reputation for power?)
(Domhoff, 2007: 5).
8.2 Power and Tourism in the Small Town Case Studies 175
In the case-studied towns discussed in the book, it was evident that the local elite
are the ones who benefit most; they are the key role players in terms of represen-
tation of the driven initiatives; their powerful persuasions have made them the
winners in the decisional arena; and in most cases they are known to be driven by
power motives for small town growth. Power relations are according to Foucault
(1997: 292), only possible when there is “at least a certain degree of freedom on
both sides” because if someone or a group are “completely at someone else’s
disposal” there would not be any power relations. Similarly, development in the
Marxist thinking of Lenin (1972: 360) is the “struggle of opposites” where
development is seen as decrease and increase (as reposition) and “development as a
unity of opposites”. Where the unity of opposites takes place, such as in the case
studies of the Kwêla Town of the Year, these are seen as “conditional, temporary,
transitory, relative” (Lenin, 1972: 360). And, as seen in the case study of rural
tourism-led gentrification in Greyton and the formation of place identity in
Sedgefield’s Cittaslow, the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is “absolute,
just as development and motion are absolute” (Lenin, 1972: 360).
In attempting to understand who is responsible for promoting local economic
development and issues of growth (through town branding, marketing, tourist
attractions), one can turn to Molotch’s (1976) thesis of the urban growth machine. It
is not the intention here to critique how power elites in small towns shape society
and spaces through tourism development. Instead, in the context of Molotch (1976),
the case studies of the Richmond book town, Kwêla Town of the Year and the
Cittaslow of Sedgefield can be aptly conceptualised in Rodgers’ (2009) review of
the thesis. According to him, the thesis
suggests the objective of growth unites otherwise pluralistic interests in relation to a city.
The thesis is situated within a broader theory about the commodification of place, where
place is understood to be socially and economically valued land. Its key premise is that
coalitions of actors and organizations (i.e., growth machines), all sharing an interest in local
growth and its effects on land values, compete with growth machines elsewhere for scarce
mobile capital investment, while simultaneously attempting to gain the tacit support of local
publics for such urban growth (Rodgers, 2009: npn).
The places branded as town of the year or slow city are essentially commodified
spaces of capital. Through the operations and intentions of the growth machines
(e.g. the organisers of the town of the year campaigns, the initiators of the Cittaslow
proclamation), these small towns have competed against similar towns for these
‘titles’, invariably competing for capital investments to stimulate small town
growth.
Bourdieu (1993: 127) has contended that
the ability to dominate space, notably by appropriating (materially or symbolically) the rare
goods (public and private) distributed there, depends on the capital possessed. Capital
makes it possible to keep undesirable persons and things at a distance at the same time that
it brings closer desirable persons and things … thereby minimising the necessary expense
(notably in time) in appropriating them.
Conversely, the “lack of capital intensifies the experience of finitude: it chains one
to a place” (Bourdieu, 1993: 127). In this regard, the growth elites also need to
convince the local populace about growth intentions and aspirations, implicitly
getting their support for such activities through growth coalitions. Unsurprisingly,
those with vested business interests in the towns are the driving forces behind
growth coalitions. Such coalitions, according to Rodgers (2009: npn), propagate an
ideology of urban growth as value-free where the growth machine (power elite
groups) “de-emphasise the exchange value benefits of growth for narrower groups,
and emphasise growth as an inherent collective good that will enhance the lives of
regular people”. This has been evident in the case studies, but in reality the mar-
ginalised remain trapped in poverty and pockets of impoverished living spaces. As
tourism development becomes the driving force in the local economy of some small
towns, tourism benefits accrued anticipated to unchain those from places of poverty
traps, but rarely happens in reality.
The growth elite construct and disseminate an image of the ‘good’ town “to
manage people by discursively normalising the need to privilege business interests”
(Cochran, 2012: 4). Indeed, it is not a new notion that it is landowners (the so-called
tourism place entrepreneurs) and not industrial capitalists who are the powerful
persons who initiate events and influence people—see for example Jonas and
Wilson (1999), Mollenkopf (1975) and Molotch (1976). My argument is that
whereas the primary goal of place entrepreneurs is to increase property values
through the intensification of land uses, one can expand Molotch’s (1976) thesis to
include activities in tourism small towns (as seen in the Greyton case study of
tourism-led gentrification and the book town initiative in Richmond). The case
studies have revealed that the ultimate aim of growth elites (working as tourism
place entrepreneurs) is to make the small towns attractive for outside capital (via
tourists visiting the towns or buying second-home properties or starting a business).
For example, the tourism-led pioneering gentrifiers in Greyton succeeded in putting
this rural hideaway on the proverbial map, making it an attractive second-home
base for mainly Cape Town residents. The townscape, transformed through various
renovations and building work, now has a new brand and sense of place created for
the town where gentrifiers share similar lifestyles. The accumulation of wealth in
Greyton is based on an economic triad of gentrification, tourism and retirement.
Over the last decade and a half, the tourism and hospitality industries have dra-
matically impacted on the way the town marries financial and social capital. The
lone gentrifier has been replaced by a new cohort of growth elites, namely tourism
entrepreneur gentrifiers, second-home owners and a younger group settling with
families as evidenced by the nature of the financial investments in the town and
residents’ engagement in social, economic, developmental, environmental and
heritage endeavours.
In the growth machine process, the growth elites hope that the local government
structures will take note of such changes and also “come to the party” by means of
incentives and improvement of basic services and infrastructure. This did not
happen in most of the case studies explored in the book. In Richmond book town,
for example, there seems to be no synergy or working relations between the private
8.2 Power and Tourism in the Small Town Case Studies 177
initiators and the authorities. The book town revitalisation plan was unrelated to any
official initiative and was put into practice by growth elites with the necessary
insight and knowledge of how to implement the plan. When originally put forward
the growth machine thesis1 did not consider any actions of trade unions and
environmental movements, the latter being most prominent in challenging the
activities of land-based elites (Jonas & Wilkson, 1999) when explaining the role of
growth elites.
According to Domhoff (2007: 6) there is a “built-in conflict at the local level
between the exchange and use values of land, which is resolved or compromised in
a variety of ways, some halfway reasonable, some very ugly”. And, conflict often
leads to some unexpected and understandable alliances such as worker unions often
siding with the growth elites in the name of job creation, whereas conservationists,
environmentalists and activists usually line up in coalition with other residents as
opposition. No empirical evidence of such groups and their impacts on town image
and branding was noted in any of the case studies. Although there are environ-
mental and heritage conservation movements in some of the small towns—such as
the Sedgefield and Greyton—their actions can to some extent be considered what
Molotch (1976) predicted, namely countercoalition. The environmental agenda has
justifiably been very much driven in Sedgefield as a countercoalition for any other
forms of small town growth. The town takes great care through the local munici-
pality, National Parks Board, Cape Nature Conservation and private conservation
bodies to continuously monitor and protect the environment of the town and sur-
roundings from the effects of pollution of any sort and developments that may harm
the environmental quality of the town and region. Similarly, the Greyton
Conservation Society has managed, at least to keep the essence of the village and its
Cape vernacular architectural environment largely intact while constantly battling
against the out-of-context and unresponsive development that has destroyed the
built heritage environment in many other small towns throughout the country.
However, it has been noted by Rogerson and Visser (2014) that the hosting of
festivals and events and the creation of heritage products (slow city creation can be
considered a heritage product) and other non-small town features such as waterfront
developments and new shopping and leisure complexes, are now at the forefront of
small town tourism boosterism. Generally, however, “the growth machine thesis
suggests widely held local identities and civic pride are tied in various ways to
urban growth as an inherent good” (Rodgers, 2009: npn). This inherent good is (at
least in theory) characterised by the elites as manipulating local pride to promote the
former’s particular agenda. In the place-making process (as seen in the Sedgefield
Cittaslow case study) the meanings of places and their
associated social, environmental and landscape characteristics become connected with
particular social classes. Those place meanings and associated values which represent the
1
The thesis also did not view the understandings of land use “through the new urbanism and the
creative class (thereby mobilising governmentality) through a banal rhetoric of economic viability,
environmental responsibility, and social meritocracy” (Cochran, 2012: 6).
interests and preferences of the dominant classes take on great sentimental value within a
society. The hegemonic character of this sentiment strongly influences the way places are
planned and managed (Perkins, 1989: 62).
In contrast to the dominant classes, the general public is often skeptical of boost-
erism of the small towns.
8.3 Conclusion
Most successful small towns find a balance between short-term economic gains and
long-term community development goals by applying a variety of development
strategies (Lambe, 2008). A long-term community development approach with
residents and leaders committed to a vision or plan usually works better than
short-term quick-fix and artificial theme-branded approaches. According to Lambe
(2008), the growth of powerful tourist towns comes from the recognition of, or the
creation of, a natural or comparative advantage. Knox and Mayer (2009) have
advanced the thesis that “small towns offer unique opportunities for residents to
collectively fashion alternatives to the forces of neoliberal globalisation that tend to
commodify and homogenise places”. In contexts such as these small towns can
“carve out unique niches by reclaiming their inherited identities and sense of place”
(Bjelland, 2010: 1150).
By reflection on the challenging peculiarities of small towns and the interplay of
capital and power has led to a conceptualisation of rural places which identifies four
constructions of capital and countryside (small town) spaces (Marsden et al., 1993).
In any given scenario, some of these constructions may overlap, while in other
cases they may not. The preserved countryside is anti-developmental and charac-
terised by preservationist attitudes that dominate local decision-making. The actions
of the middle class and power elite action are primarily to preserve “amenity”, and
the reconstitution process is dominated by consumption interests. These places have
an attractive natural environment. The contested countryside lies beyond the major
commuter catchments and has no special environmental quality. Farming and other
productivist interests still have key roles. Incomer groups are growing, and chal-
lenges to “the way things are” are increasing and power struggles may start to
emerge. The paternalistic countryside features the survival of large private estates.
Given these extensive areas of land capital, there is less pressure on large
landowners to enter into dealings with external developers so that land management
is less intensive and more “rural”. There is a loss of “occupational communities”
but remnants of the old social order survive. An insufficiency of resources exists.
The clientelist countryside is considered to be a residual category of few incomers
and social transformation over a substantial period. Capital interests in the area are
mostly local and external finance may be resented. However, there are high levels
of dependence and few development alternatives are in sight.
8.3 Conclusion 179
Empirical evidence about the case-studied places was used to understand how
certain initiatives and developments have indeed transformed, branded or stimulated
small town growth. The ways successful small towns lure tourists and grow their local
tourism industry vary widely. Successful promotion depends on a vast range of
factors. While peripherality can be a handicap to some towns, other remote and less
well connected towns (such as Richmond) are performing successfully, and vice
versa. Some of the important tangible factors are level of infrastructure, good-quality
land and housing (specifically heritage) and at least some visible level of business
structure. The less tangible factors include quality of life (of at least the power elite),
the physical attractiveness (all the small towns covered in the book meet this crite-
rion), community spirit and cultural attributes (such as the book culture in Richmond,
the culture of preservation through Cittaslow in Sedgefield). The housing market may
play a crucial role in attracting or trapping certain types of advantaged and/or dis-
advantaged households in some towns (http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/
dynamic-smaller-towns/?lang=en). The pioneer gentrifiers or the lone tourism-led
place entrepreneurs in the case of Greyton and Richmond advanced the housing
markets in these towns and succeeded in attracting a power elite to buy property there.
On the other hand, poor economic performance of towns entraps the poor,
marginalising them in the process. The operation of local institutions (such as net-
works) was not found to be particularly important in practice and remarkably suc-
cessful in lobbying Fouriesburg and De Rust to win the town of the year completion.
In the latter case studies, the quick-fix actions of improving the physical fabric by
employing clean-up operations leading up to and during the year as winners were
successful in the short term, but were unfortunately not carried on afterwards. The
alternative tourism-development initiatives reported in the chapters (town of the year,
book town, Cittaslow) represent success stories of branding and imaging endeavours
in the short term because of elitist community-driven processes and interests.
The stories chronicled in these chapters are intended to contribute to call for
scholarly investigation of the role power elites play in tourism development of
small towns in South Africa. Small towns will remain fertile laboratories for
enquiring culture and tourism development. The legacies of apartheid with their
persistent socio-spatial inequalities serve as worst-case scenarios for understanding
the tourism-development initiatives of small towns. Although the case studies
reported on in the book were not deliberately aimed at assessing the successes of
development and branding initiatives, they do demonstrate that the role of selected
individuals in putting towns on the tourist map is indeed a fruitful field to till.
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The Urban Book Series

Series Advisory Editors

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14773

Small Town Tourism

ISSN 2365-757X ISSN 2365-7588 (electronic)

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Small Towns in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

4 Some More Branding: ‘Town of the Year’ as Stimulus

6.4.2 Property Market Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Rural/small communities are facing a time of transition.

When asked in 2006 to contribute a literature review on small town tourism

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

Fig. 1.1 Small town decay in

Fig. 1.2 Some more small

Fig. 1.3 Closed down

service centres. Fifth, as a result of the amalgamation of smaller centres under a

1.2 The Scale of Small Towns

Table 1.1 Classiﬁcations of small towns

1.3 Rationale of the Book

Tourism-based development is a theme equally important in the developing world

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 13

2.2 Second-Home Research

2.3 Festivals and Events

An extensive informational literature on festivals as tourist attractions has been

2.4 On the Margins of Small Towns: Water, Nature

point, Donaldson (2017) explored the exponential growth in the tourism-related

2.5 LED and Tourism Development

• The growth of tourism towns.

Notwithstanding national government’s acknowledgement of the essential role

Box 2.1: Key policy implications for Mpumalanga

• Among the new entrepreneurs in the Mpumulanga tourism economy are a

agricultural economy of the province (Acheampong, 2016). This scenario applies to

2.6 Connecting Small Towns Tourism Through Tourism

High unemployment, isolated geographical locations, lack of infrastructure, lack of

Tourists following themed routes is no new phenomenon in tourism. The European

thousands of weekend motorcyclist on breakfast runs. Speciﬁcally designed

2.7 Visiting Friends and Relatives

2.8 Other Research Foci

In Roebert’s (2014) rebuttal, “[T]he black magic of ‘whiteness studies’”, of

“tourism”, as a means for establishing a segregated “apartheid-era” white control of

Box 2.2: Politics of rebranding Greater St Lucia Wetland Park

whether any miracles as the name iSimangaliso suggests will be experienced

Aspects of educational tourism at university towns such as Stellenbosch

Acheampong, K. O. (2016). Analysing inequalities in tourism activities between local

McEwen, H. (2013). Deserting transformation: Heritage, tourism, and hegemonic spatiality in

Abstract As an inherent geographical concept, place branding is considered to

Keywords Book town Richmond Branding Place identity Book festival

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 45

3.2 Small Towns and Branding

Fig. 3.1 Dimensions of great places. Source http://www.placecollective.com.au/

3.2.1 Place Imaging and Identity

The ﬁrst step in branding is to determine an image. In addition to branding, a poor

operandi (structure and sustainability) of the brand/place community” (Aitken &

3.2.2 Place Branding, Culture and Tourism

Table 3.1 Promotion strategies of cultural tourism

3.2.3 Theme Towns and Branding

For Jensen (2007: 214)

3.3 Book Towns as a Brand

Box 3.1: Book towns conceptualised

Internationally, book towns are organised through the International Organisation

Economic Interest Grouping), was founded in Redu on 1 April 2001, as a result of