In light of the energy crisis, the South African government’s tourist board has conditionally approved plans to sponsor English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur, according to a statement released on Thursday by South African Tourism (SAT).

The contentious sponsorship agreement, which has not yet been formalized, is said to be worth about $58 million (R1 billion).

“We can’t keep on as normal since that won’t provide the required results. To really help us change the dial on our visitor arrivals, we are considering a relationship of this size with Tottenham Hotspurs FC, said interim SAT CEO Themba Khumalo in the release.

The Democratic Alliance, an opposition party in South Africa, protests outside the offices of the ANC, the country’s ruling party, over power outages there.
rotting corpses and dead chickens Inside the ‘pandemic’ of power outages in South Africa “It is unfortunate that the collaboration information was released ahead of time. On Tuesday, January 31, we received conditional Board approval for the cooperation.

Before making any decisions, Khumalo continued, “What is left in the process is to contact our tourism sector stakeholders and the national treasury.”

The government-mandated objective “to attain 21 million foreign tourist visits by 2030” has been used by SAT to justify the sponsorship.

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At a press conference on Thursday, Khumalo addressed the media and said, “This is not about football.”

“We are reaching out to the British Premier League audience. We are gaining access to it so that we can convince them to visit South Africa, spend pounds, euros, dollars, and yen there, and restore honor to our people, the businessman stated.

Spurs has chosen not to comment on the sponsorship arrangement.

Loadshedding, as the persistent power outages are known in South Africa, have prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to contemplate issuing a national disaster declaration akin to the one that was issued in 2020 during the height of the Covid outbreak, which had a disastrous impact on the nation’s economy.