The influence of tourism on the woodcarving trade around Cape Town and implications for forest resources in southern Africa

Abstract

Woodcarving is an important informal sector industry that is heavily dependent on tourism and yet sustains the livelihoods of many migrant communities in South Africa. In the Cape Town area, the trade appears to be dominated by sellers from neighbouring countries, including Zimbabwe, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The most traded wood species are Dalbergia melanoxylon (African ebony), Brachylaena huillensis (silver oak or muhuhu) and Afzelia quanzensis (pod mahogany). This study found that the average gross income from the trade was R6450 and R2692 per month in the tourism peak and off seasons, respectively. However, while the woodcarving industry provides an important source of informal employment, it has contributed to the scarcity of highly prized hardwood species, especially in impoverished, underdeveloped areas.

1. INTRODUCTION

South Africa is becoming a prime tourist destination, with tourists flocking to the country to enjoy its scenery, sunshine, culture and diversity. Tourism has become one of the fastest growing industries, with tourist numbers increasing by 72 per cent between 1994 and 2002 (Marshall, 2005).

Tourism is most often seen as a non-consumptive natural resource-user that relies on the maintenance of ecosystems and their fauna and flora. Tourists enjoy the aesthetic and visual attributes of such ecosystems without physically using or consuming its fauna and flora. Tourism is regarded as a development tool with a strong conservation focus, and has stimulated the establishment of game parks and protected areas in South Africa (Marshall, 2005). It also serves as a stimulus for the South African informal economy, where roadside vendors sell a wide range of natural resource-based crafts and other goods to tourists keen on taking ‘a little bit of Africa’ home with them.

The ability of woodcarving to sustain the livelihoods of people venturing into this trade has been well documented, and case studies carried out in developing countries have been convincing (Centre for International Forestry Research [CIFOR], 2002; Campbell et al., 2005). In Kenya the industry provides a livelihood for up to 300 000 people (Campbell et al., 2005), and in Saharanpur (India) up to 50 000 people (CIFOR, 2002). The role of forest products in sustaining the livelihoods of forest-dependent people is increasingly recognised. This role ranges from daily subsistence to income generation (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004), contributing significantly to households and the national economy of many developing countries (Steenkamp, 1999; López & Shanley, 2004; Campbell et al., 2005).

However, woody resources used for carving are unsustainably managed in countries such as Kenya (Choge et al., 2002; Choge, 2004), Zimbabwe (Braedt & Campbell, 2001; Standa-Gunda, 2004) and part of South Africa (Steenkamp, 1999; Shackleton & Steenkamp, 2004). Thus, while an increase in tourism in South Africa might stimulate informal employment in the woodcarving trade, it might also contribute to resource overexploitation and shortages in other countries where highly prized tree species are harvested for the woodcarving trade.

The objective of the study on which this paper is based was firstly to investigate the extent of tourism-stimulated woodcraft trade around Cape Town and the role it plays in sustaining livelihoods, and secondly to highlight the impact the trade may have on the forest resources of neighbouring African countries.

2. METHODS

2.1 Study area

The study was carried out in the Cape Town area of the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Sixty-one traders were interviewed in six woodcraft markets in Greenmarket Square (central Cape Town), the Fountain Market (Adderley Street, Cape Town), Hout Bay, Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Hermanus (Figure 1). Initially, a pilot study was undertaken in the Stellenbosch woodcraft market, which helped to assess the effectiveness of the sampling method and the quality of the coding method used (Wilson, 1996; Burton, 2000).

Figure 1: Map of the Western Cape showing the study areas around Cape Town

2.2 Data collection and analysis

As the number of woodcraft traders at each of the markets was small, it was decided that all the owners of stalls selling woodcarvings would be interviewed. Triangulation (see Denscombe, 1998; Neuman, 2003; Ritchie, 2003) of data and information from the various sources was achieved as follows:

• Value chain analysis (see Schmitz, 2005) was used to map out the various actors engaged in the woodcarving trade.

• Questionnaires were completed by stall owners. However, in cases of misunderstanding of questions, the researcher provided extra information.

• Personal observation and note-taking were carried out during the interviews or after stall owners had filled in the questionnaire. In-depth interviews were conducted with key informants such as municipal authorities' staff in order to obtain extra information and cross-check information provided by traders.

Descriptive statistics were used to present the data collected from the traders.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 The woodcarving value chain

While a few studies have been carried out on the woodcarving trade and trade in other related non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as a form of commercialisation, much of the work on woodcarving in the various countries mentioned above has focused on producers (carvers) and there is much less comparative data on secondary traders, especially cross-border traders (see Cunningham et al., 2005). Marshall et al. (2003) further suggest that an analytical framework would be required to enable results from different case studies to be integrated and compared. Since the present study only attempted to understand the market dynamics of the woodcarving trade, it looked at the sellers only (retailers), not the actual carvers. And since it looked only at six markets in the Cape Town area, the results cannot be directly extrapolated to other trade areas.

The woodcarving trade around Western Cape is segmented, with many people – such as sellers of handmade products, wholesalers and retailers, intermediaries, producers of end products and the actual woodcarvers – being involved along the market chain (Figure 2). At the upper end of the market chain (the marketplace) are the retailers (the people interviewed in this study), who acquire products directly from the wholesalers – who are in the middle – and at the lower end are the producers, who harvest raw material from the forests, transport it and carve it into wooden curios. In the rural areas of South Africa, the same value chain has been highlighted (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004) in the case of the trade in NTFPs.

Figure 2: Flow of woodcarvings along the value chain from natural forests to tourists

3.2 Profile of sellers involved in the woodcarving trade

A higher proportion (68 per cent – 42 respondents) of the sellers were from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region than from other regions (see Figure 3). This may be because of their closer proximity to the woodcarving markets of the Western Cape, which would help keep transport costs down.

However, this alone cannot explain the high level of involvement of sellers originating from the SADC region. The study by Steenkamp (1999) on the woodcarving trade in South Africa suggests the following reasons for its growth: South Africa's entry into the democratic arena since 1994, the removal of trade barriers, and the increase in the number of tourists. All of these factors have created an environment that has favoured the free movement of goods and capital in the country, including the import of carved wooden items. A further factor is that the involvement of sellers from other regions of Africa is driven by self-employment opportunities created through tourism in the Western Cape (Steenkamp, 1999; Nkuna, 2004).

The mean age of the traders in this study was 33 years, with 38 traders (63 per cent of the respondents) being 21–35 years of age, which is representative of the active population seeking employment (see Table 1). Nkuna (2004:1–2) argues that the lack of employment and job opportunities in the formal economy around Hazyview in Mpumalanga has boosted the involvement of young adults in the woodcarving trade; and Matose argues that the high involvement of young male adults, at the expense of women and older men, in handicraft trades away from their home is driven by the adventurous and risky nature of small enterprise development, especially the commercialisation of woodcarving (Matose, 2006:7–11).

Figure 3: Nationality distribution of woodcarving traders in Cape Town (n = 61)

Table 1: Characterisation of woodcraft traders in Cape Town markets

Factor	Classes	Number of traders	Percentage of traders
Age distribution	15	0	0
	20	11	18
	25	18	30
	30	9	15
	35	13	21
	40	4	7
	45	2	3
	50	3	5
	55	1	2
	60	0	0
Years of work experience	0	0	0
	2	18	30
	4	15	25
	6	8	13
	8	11	18
	10	4	7
	12	2	3
	14	3	5
	16	0	0
Factors driving traders' involvement in the trade	Earning a living	43	70
	Family problems	12	20
	No alternative	5	8
	Additional income	1	2
Education level	No formal	2	3
	Primary cycle	4	7
	Secondary cycle	40	66
	Tertiary cycle	15	25
Factors affecting the trade and the livelihood of the trader	Seasonality	36	59
	Higher demand	5	8
	Quality	11	18
	Resource scarcity	6	10
	Other	3	5

The study showed that 45 of the respondents (74 per cent) would like to look for other employment opportunities in the formal economy in the Cape Town area as it provides a stable source of income and security of employment. This converges with the findings of a study that showed that most of the people engaged in the trade see woodcarving as a temporary activity carried out while waiting for better opportunities (Cultural Strategy Group, 1998; Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004). This conflicts, however, with other studies conducted in the lowveld of the Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces that have shown the woodcarving trade can be a lifetime activity, with two categories of sellers – ‘roadside carver vendors’ and ‘home carvers’ (see Shackleton & Steenkamp, 2004). The reason for this difference may be that the sellers in the Cape Town markets are not directly involved in the process of woodcarving, and so are less attached to the art of woodcarving.

According to Nkuna (2004), experience plays a crucial role in people's ability to price products and market them, taking advantage of access to market information in a global environment. The average number of years of experience of the sellers in this study may suggest that people engaged in the trade have a tendency not to stay longer than 4 years before moving on to other jobs (Table 1).

The study revealed that earning a living was the most important factor (43 respondents – 70 per cent) driving people into the informal trade in woodcraft (Table 1). The few sellers who had been in the trade for a long period of time viewed it as their primary source of income. Shackleton and Shackleton (2003:14) pointed out that other factors such as retrenchment and family problems stimulated people to start producing and selling woodcarvings in Bushbuckridge in South Africa.

It was found that fairly well educated people (with secondary and tertiary education) dominated the trade in wooden curios in the study area (55 respondents – over 90 per cent; see Table 1). However, these statistics may change in the context of rural trade in woodcraft. The lack of job opportunities in the formal economy rather than poor education acted as a driving force for the involvement of reasonably educated people in the trade. Shackleton and Shackleton (2003:11) point out that the involvement of fairly well educated women in the trade in NTFPs such as marula beer and traditional brushes has been triggered by the incapacity of the formal economy to provide them with employment opportunities rather than by a lack of education and a low level of skills.

According to Nkuna (2004), a good education plays an important role in the sellers' ability to communicate and bargain to sell their products. All of the sellers interviewed in this study acknowledged that bargaining is a very important marketing technique they use to sell their products to tourists. This author points out that well-educated people's knowledge and access to information gives them an advantage in the markets over the less educated. In addition, people need to be fairly well educated to be able to cross borders and find opportunities in a foreign country. This was evident from this study, and agrees with Coleman's view that the growth and success of small enterprise ventures is correlated to the educational level of people engaged in the business venture (2004:127).

3.3 Income from the woodcarving trade

Many scholars have observed the seasonal character of income generation from the trade in NTFPs, especially the commercialisation of woodcarvings (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004; Matose, 2006). The sale of woodcarvings is particularly dependent on the seasonal flow of tourists (CIFOR, 2002; Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003). Income also depends on the effort that individuals put into the activity. In this study it was difficult to establish the monthly net income, as in most cases the sellers were not willing to divulge detailed information of their cash flow. Hence income in this case was assumed to be gross.

During the lean months for tourism (the winter season), the gross income varies. The largest monthly returns from sales, reported by only four (7 per cent) of the traders, were estimated at R6000, while the majority of traders earned less than R3000 – with 23 (38%) earning between R1500 and R3000, and 22 (36%) earning less than R1500 (see Table 2).

In a good month during the peak tourist season (summer), 10 sellers (16 per cent) earned a gross income greater than R12 000 (Table 2). These sellers rented more than one trading spot at the same marketplace. This was an exceptional finding, showing that the activity can provide substantive incomes despite its seasonal character. Similarly, other studies (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004; Matose, 2006) have shown that sellers of woodcarvings earned better income in peak periods during annual holidays, such as Christmas, due to increased local and international tourist arrivals in South Africa and Zimbabwe. During busy tourist seasons, coping with increasing demand requires that traders invest more time in the trade (Nkuna, 2004).

Table 2: Traders' monthly income during high and low tourist seasons

Season	Income level	Number of traders	Percentage of traders
Lean month	<R1500	22	36
	R1500–R3000	23	38
	R3000–R4500	5	8
	R4500–R6000	7	11
	>R6000	4	7
Good month	<R3000	8	13
	R3000–R6000	27	44
	R6000–R9000	10	16
	R9000–R12 000	6	10
	>R12 000	10	16

The shortage of woodcarvings in summer, especially December and January, could be the result of an increased market demand and inadequate supply. In winter, the sellers experience a shortage of revenue since there are fewer tourists. This in turn significantly restricts their ability to obtain and market woodcarvings. This situation has a particularly negative effect on them if they lack an alternative source of income (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004). A study by Matose (2006) in the Victoria Falls area of Zimbabwe also found that woodcraft traders were slightly better off in autumn (excluding the Easter holidays) and spring than in winter, when there are fewer tourists.

3.4 Livelihood strategies and sustainability of the trade

As a way of coping with vulnerability factors such as seasonality, the number of people venturing into the trade tends to fluctuate with time and as new opportunities arise (Cultural Strategy Group, 1998; Shackleton & Shackleton, 2003, 2004). During peak seasons the number of stall assistants (male and female) tends to increase, while during the off season it decreases. Coping with increasing consumer demand is likely to compel stall owners to hire extra pairs of hands. However, the reduction in the number of stall assistants during the low-demand off season allows stall owners to cut down on labour costs. Another coping mechanism identified in this study was the sale of ‘minor products’ besides woodcrafts. Woodcrafts are the main source of income for stall owners, as acknowledged by 48 (79 per cent) of the respondents in this study, but many also sell batiks, paintings and beads, especially during the times when woodcraft products are in short supply. Besides product diversification, Shackleton (2006:3) also highlights livelihood diversification (i.e. involvement in more than one income activity) as an important coping strategy, especially for the marginalised segment of society.

3.5 Origin and distribution of common wood species in the woodcarving trade

The study showed that there was a low supply of woodcarvings from provinces of South Africa other than the Western Cape. However, the number of South African traders at the marketplace was not negligible (seven respondents – 11 per cent), compared with other nationalities such as Zambian (one respondent – 2 per cent), Tanzanian (four respondents – 7 per cent) and Cameroonian (three respondents – 5 per cent) (see Figure 3). South Africa is a small producer of woodcraft items (Steenkamp, 1999; Belcher & Achdiawan, 2005). Extensive agriculture, coupled with increasing extraction of woody resources for household needs such as cooking (Steenkamp, 1999), and the policy restricting the utilisation and commercialisation of wood for carving purposes (Nkuna, 2004; Steenkamp & Shackleton, 2004), were among the reasons for the low level of production of woodcarvings in South Africa.

With regard to imports, it appeared from this study that Zimbabwe (reported by 18 respondents – 30 per cent), Malawi (reported by 22 respondents – 36 per cent) and Kenya (reported by eight respondents – 13 per cent) were the main sources of woodcrafts coming into the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The reason for the large imports from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Kenya is that the marketing of wood products from these countries is well established in the Western Cape (Steenkamp, 1999). Countries such as Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Tanzania appeared to have a much smaller share of the market (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Countries of origin of woodcraft products traded in Cape Town

The research in the study area suggested that the most traded wood species in the woodcarving industry in the Western Cape were Dalbergia melanoxylon (African ebony) from Zimbabwe (reported by nine out of 19 respondents) and Malawi (reported by three out of 19 respondents), Brachylaena huillensis (silver oak, or muhuhu) from Kenya (reported by seven out of 15 respondents) and Afzelia quanzensis (pod mahogany) from Zimbabwe (reported by four out of 15 respondents) (see Table 3).

Table 3: Most commonly traded wood species by country of origin in the woodcarving trade in the study area around Cape Town

Number of respondents	Species
	Dalbergia (n = 19)	Afzelia (n = 15)	Brachylaena (n = 15)
Tanzania	2	0	0
Kenya	1	0	7
Zimbabwe	9	4	0
Cameroon	1	1	0
Malawi	3	1	0
Democratic Republic of Congo	1	0	0
Zambia	0	2	0
Republic of South Africa	2	0	0

3.6 Resource impacts caused by the woodcraft trade

Sunderland and Ndoye (2004:14) have pointed out that commercialisation of NTFPs follows the law of supply and demand. Thus, as the demand for woodcarvings increases, so does the supply. However, this can unfortunately lead to forest resource degradation in the absence of sustainable management of resources. The problem of resource degradation has been observed in many countries, such as Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico and Central Australia (Cunningham, 2002). The degradation restricts the livelihoods of people who depend on these resources to meet their everyday needs and worsens their poverty. Other studies (Sangalakula, 1999; Choge, 2004) have highlighted the problem of sustainability of resources caused by increasing international, regional and local commercialisation of wood for carving.

In the case of South Africa, factors such as growing imports and market opportunities as well as policy improvement have boosted the growth of the woodcarving industry (Steenkamp, 1999). D. melanoxylon, one of the ebony species largely traded in the context of this research study, has been cited as an endangered species (CIFOR, 2002). Another species on the verge of depletion in Kenya is B. huillensis or silver oak (Choge et al., 2002). A study by CIFOR (2002) pointed out that in southern Zimbabwe the current rate of wood extraction would lead to resource shortage in the future. The same study highlighted the shortage of B. huillensis, which it said would be in short supply in less than two to three decades as a result of illegal, unsustainable extraction and the low growth rate of the species.

4. CONCLUSION

The woodcarving trade around Cape Town areas of the Western Cape Province of South Africa is stimulated by increased tourist numbers, and is an informal cross-border trade dominated for the most part by sellers from the SADC region.

The trade contributes significantly to meeting the traders' vital needs. However, it cannot be considered a stable source of employment because it is threatened by the seasonality of tourism, which means there is not a steady flow of income. According to the sellers in this study it provided an average monthly gross income estimated at R6450 and R2692 in the tourism peak and off seasons, respectively.

The study showed that most of the woodcarving products (reported by 56 respondents – 91 per cent) come from the SADC region, with Malawi and Zimbabwe as the main sources. D. melanoxylon from Zimbabwe and Malawi, and B. huillensis from Kenya were cited as the most traded wood species within the markets in the study area around Cape Town.

While tourism can stimulate employment in the informal woodcarving trade in and around Cape Town and the southern African region as a whole, it can indirectly make forest resources in Africa unsustainable. Many scholars have already acknowledged that some of the most traded wood species in South Africa and within East Africa and southern Africa are on the verge of extinction (see Sangalakula, 1999; Steenkamp, 1999; Choge, 2004; Shackleton & Steenkamp, 2004). It is quite ironic, therefore, that while the woodcarving industry is helping reduce poverty in the Western Cape Province of South Africa (one of the richest areas in Africa), at the same time it is contributing to the depletion of forest resources in neighbouring underdeveloped poverty-stricken areas of Africa – where, for many communities, ‘no wood means no work’ (see Chonga, 1999:1).

The first author would like to acknowledge the sponsorship of his studies and research by the Government of Gabon.

Notes