Leveraging State-Owned Nature-Based Assets for Transformation and SMME Development: Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa

Small firm development issues are a major theme in international tourism scholarship. The South African experience is of special interest because of the national government’s need to address the apartheid legacy of the exclusion of Black communities from participation as entrepreneurs in the mainstream tourism economy. Several supply-side support programmes have been initiated to assist in the development of Black-owned SMMEs. In addition, a new policy direction is to leverage state-owned assets to expand the participation of Black entrepreneurs in the tourism economy particularly in supply chains. The core aim of this chapter is to explore the leveraging possibilities of one major state asset in nature tourism and the associated challenges for increasing the participation of Black-owned SMMEs into South Africa’s tourism economy. The specific focus here is to analyse the challenges for developing a more inclusive tourism economy in the context of the Pilanesberg National Park. Using a mixed-method approach, consisting of interviews and questionnaires, this chapter analyses the challenges both from a supply and demand perspective. The findings show few linkages exist between this state-owned asset and local SMMEs, that local SMMEs are unable to meet the demands required by the facilities within the Pilanesberg National Park, and that limits exist on the influence that state agencies can exert on procurement by operating facilities in the park.