#SONA2019: SA to double international tourist arrivals in ten years

Image via Flickr/ Government ZA

"This will be achieved through the renewal of the country’s brand, introducing a world-class visa regime and a significant focus on Chinese and Indian markets and air arrivals from the rest of our continent," President Ramaphosa said on Thursday night.

Delivering the State of the Nation Address in Parliament, the President said government is determined to ensure that tourists who come to South Africa are safe.

"We want a South Africa wherein all enjoy comfort and prosperity. We want a South Africa that has prioritised its rail networks, and is producing high-speed trains connecting our megacities and the remotest areas of our country.

"I dream of a South Africa where the first entirely new city built in the democratic era rises, with skyscrapers, schools, universities, hospitals and factories.

"We should imagine a country where bullet trains pass through Johannesburg as they travel from here to Musina, and they stop in Buffalo City on their way from eThekwini back here," he said.

Building on Vision 2030

He said extraordinary measures need to be taken to realise Vision 2030.

"As we enter the last decade of Vision 2030, let us even more clearly define the South Africa we want and agree on the concrete actions we need to achieve them," he said.

He said there must be a focus on those actions that will have the greatest impact, actions that will catalyse faster movement forward, both in the immediate term and over the next 10 years.

"We must restore the National Development Plan (NDP) to its place at the centre of our national effort, to make it alive, to make it part of the lived experience of the South African people.

"As South Africa enters the next 25 years of democracy, and in pursuit of the objectives of the NDP, let us proclaim a bold and ambitious goal, a unifying purpose, to which we dedicate all our resources and energies," he said.