Minister of Tourism Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane recently held a successful tourism golf tournament at The Country Club Johannesburg in Woodmead. The fundraising golf tournament was staged for the sole purpose of giving the much-needed assistance to the women-owned tourism businesses that are based in the rural and township businesses.

This resulted as the impact of COVID19 that ravaged the entire economy in the country, leaving the much damaged faced by the small businesses in the sector. The inaugural golf tournament was therefore the result of the Minister’s engagement with various stakeholders in bid to acquire donations and contributions to realize full potential of this tournament as means to give back to the struggling tourism SMME’s across the country.

“Today we have a fundraising golf tournament and dinner. This is fundraising for rural and township SMME’s who had hard-hit by the COVID19, of which the majority of them are battling to come back to business and are battling because the operating costs are high, and one of the things we are doing here is to raise money, from various stakeholders on our portfolio and outside our portfolio from people I’ve interacted with and others who just head the call to come and support this initiative”, says Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane

The fundraising golf tournament held an art exhibition which was sourced from rural and township areas while golfers were teeing off and chasing the ball to secure the bag for these SMME’s. The artwork of these artists, which was curated during Level 5 and 4 of hard lockdown was auctioned in the evening during the prize giving dinner as means to raise more funds to assist these ailing women-led tourism businesses.