Tourism, indigenous people, and the challenge of development: The representations of ovahimbas in tourism promotion and community perceptions toward tourism

In Namibia the tourism industry is increasingly used as a medium for economic and social development goals in the country. By involving local communities the benefits of tourism are expected to trickle down to a local level where the tourist activities actually take place. These challenges highlight the need to discuss the nature of tourism and community relations and perceptions. First, the article overviews the role and representations of local people, namely Ovahimbas (or Himbas), in Namibian tourism promotion. Secondly, the article aims to analyze how the role of tourism is seen by the local Ovahimba communities in north western Namibia. The former overview is based on the contemporary tourism brochures while the latter is studied by using community interviews. Based on the tourism promotion, the representations of Ovahimbas are dominated by female depictions referring to historically constructed primitive, exotic, and erotic objects for Western tourists to explore. The Ovahimbas are trapped to play an unchanged static culture referring to a past in order to satisfy the expectations of nonlocal visitors. According to the interviews the local practices of tourism were seen as highly beneficial, however, and tourism-related developments were perceived positively. On the other hand, the position that local people placed themselves in tourism was referring to the same passive role also represented in the tourism brochures. It is evident that tourism development has not yet contributed sufficiently to community empowerment, participation, and control over tourism activities, for example, which are named as strategic aims in the national tourism plans and community-based policy goals in Namibia.