A Perspective on Community Based Tourism from South Africa: The TRANSFORM Programme, 1996–2007 - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 61

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A Perspective on Community Based
Tourism from South Africa:
The TRANSFORM Programme,
1996-2007
Steve Collins and Herman Snel 1
Introduction and outline
This chapter gives a perspective on sustainable tourism projects in South Africa
from the point of view of an external assistance agency that was involved in a
bilateral programme between the South African government and the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Agency for Development
Cooperation, GTZ). Within this programme GTZ played an advisory role as well
as a managing and implementing role. It must be noted that the view portrayed in
this chapter is not necessarily an official view of GTZ but rather reflects perspec-
tives of the authors who both worked in the TRANSFORM programme.
The chapter starts with an outline of development approaches that link
sustainable tourism to conservation and poverty reduction in the South African
context. It then proceeds to give a brief overview on how the GTZ became
involved in managing and implementing tourism projects in a joint venture
programme with the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and
Tourism (DEAT), through the Training and Support for Resource Management
programme (TRANSFORM).
TRANSFORM's approach was to work with selected communities chosen by
the South African Government and to learn lessons from the field and inform the
policy-making process. Subsequently, the second part of the chapter will provide