Matsamo Cultural Park

On the Jeppe’s Reef border post between Swaziland and South Africa, a quite unique cultural experience opened to the public in 2001 and, ever since, the Matsamo Cultural Park has been winning awards and thousands of fans from all over the world.

The park was the inspiration of the Nkomazi Tribal Authority whose leaders wondered how their impoverished community could reach out to the coachloads of tourists passing from the Kruger National Park and Nelspruit into Swaziland and vice versa and, in the process, create much-needed jobs.

The result was the Matsamo Cultural Park, a multi-faceted tourism offering which takes visitors into the heart of Swazi culture. Touring an authentic village, tourists learn how the Swazis lived for centuries; they see children playing as their forefathers played, and they get to watch a lively performance of traditional dance and singing. Depending on a particular group’s preferences, demonstrations of cooking, beadwork, weaving or drumming are staged. The cultural park has a well-stocked, sprawling curio shop and an African-themed restaurant seating 300 set around a small dam (often home to a crocodile or two) and among dense, subtropical foliage.

Dudu Ngomane is the chief executive of Matsamo. She’s 31 and has worked at the park since before it started. In fact, Dudu prefers being called the “marketing manager” to “CEO” but she fulfils both roles. Before the park opened, Dudu was hired as a dancer but, like the rest of the troupe, she was physically involved in building the park. She was then made a waiter, then a cashier and, such was her gift for hospitality, eventually took over running the park.

“The park is not only for people from outside,” says Dudu. “It’s as much for us as it is for them. Our culture is running away. People are living modern lives and the children don’t really know our culture. They don’t know how our ancestors used to live, so the park is helping to keep our culture alive.”

Dudu explains that while the park was conceived as attracting tourists travelling between the Kruger National Park, then to Swaziland and on to KwaZulu-Natal – or the other way round – in recent years it has started appealing to a whole new audience – locals who come to Matsamo for the experience, without venturing into the kingdom on its doorstep.

Most of these visitors spend the night in Matsamo’s rooms. But these are by no means ordinary rooms. At night, after dinner and a cultural experience, lamps lead visitors from the restaurant area through the bush to a kraal or homestead where the park’s 21 rooms are grouped together around a blazing fire, each room affording maximum privacy. What makes the Matsamo rooms unique is that they are traditional Swazi beehive-shaped huts covered with thatch which has to be renewed every two years.  Authentic to the last detail, visitors have to stoop to pass through the low entrance. Inside, they are amazed at the amenities on offer: each room is completely waterproof and equipped with airconditioning, showers, kettles and even safe-deposit boxes. Off-peak rates start from R625 per person sharing including dinner, bed and breakfast and evening entertainment. Peak rates are R925 for the same package.

Matsamo, Dudu says, has “made her”. “When I started I was no-one but now I can talk to clients, I can work out rates and market the business. Thanks to Matsamo I can call myself an entrepreneur.”

Only one of the almost 100 young people who now work at the park had a job before the park opened, she adds, evidence that in empowering the local community Matsamo has succeeded possibly beyond its founders’ expectations. In addition to those permanently employed, Matsamo offers practical work experience to dozens of students who are supported with school fees, clothes and stationery.

TEP, Dudu says, has assisted Matsamo since the very beginning. This assistance has taken a number of forms, including financial support to attend trade exhibitions, help with marketing materials and the all-important area of staff training. “Thanks to TEP we can honestly tell people that no visit to South Africa is complete without visiting Matsamo.”