ABSTRACT
South Africans put an end to apartheid when they voted in the country's first non-racial elections in April 1994. Since then, an ambitious reconstruction and development programme has been put into place by the government of national unity to correct the economic inequalities inherited from the past. Most sectors of the economy, however, are either stagnating or are not growing rapidly enough to generate the resources needed to ensure an effective redistribution of wealth. The trade in tourism, however, is an exception. Statistics show the number of visitors to the country is steadily climbing, with an average annual increase of 10 per cent in the last three years. The year of the elections, abnormal because of the unprecedented number of political missions that came into the country from abroad, saw an increase of between 20 and 25 per cent.
