During Jordan's meeting with community leaders here, there emerged a lot of concern that not enough consultation with local people had been carried out before the World Heritage declaration. Lucia is white,'' noted a petition circulated by one of the groups fighting for multi-racial management of the resort. Some 400 Whites live and run the tourism mecca. Another 12,000- odd Blacks live on its periphery, and among them, as many as 96 percent of people of working age are said to be jobless. There has been a series of forced removals in and around this area since the 1950s when the apartheid government began putting into practice its policy of separate development.
Social services are virtually non-existent in the black areas.
It brings together Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland in an effort to build a tourism and agricultural belt along their common borders. St. Lucia Wetland Park is made up of 218,000 hectares of state land containing the largest estuarine system in Africa, the continent's southernmost coral reefs and rare, protected sea species. The SDI seeks to identify economic opportunities such as tourism in an area of stunning, unspoilt coastlines, game reserves and rich cultural traditions. These people are our constituency. Whatever we do, we will have to see to the needs of the people.