CapeTownMagazine.com is starting a Heritage Day movement and Tru-Cape is joining in.
A South African apple and pear marketer, WESGRO, the tourism, trade and investment agency, prestige diamond jeweller Shimansky and the iconic Table Mountain Aerial Cableway have all joined a campaign that celebrates our shared heritage.
“Amagwinya made by gogo and warm, fragrant koesisters with coconut flakes sold by the auntie down your street. The sweet smell of apricot konfyt sizzling on the snoek braai and the infectious pulse of amapiano at a shisanyama. Locate and save your family recipes. Ask your elders about history. And choose a neighbouring region, town, or dorpie for your Western Cape travel bucket list.
The stories and sayings and phrases shared by your elders. These are all part of the inaugural, This is Your Heritage campaign,” says CapeTownMagazine.com editor-in-chief Joonji Mdyogolo.
Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing is the largest exporter of South African apples and pears and wholly owned by its growers. “Apples and pears were among the first food crops planted in the Company’s Garden at the Cape in the 1600’s. Still today, growers put food on the tables in our country and South African-grown produce is exported the world over,” says Tru-Cape managing director Roelf Pienaar.
Tru-Cape’s marketing director Conrad Fick says of the promotional partnership: “Storytelling is one of the most fundamental ways in which we humans communicate and CapeTownMagazine.com‘s focus on locating and sharing the stories that bind rather than separate us resonated with our team.” he says.
CapeTownMagazine.com says it is challenging all of us to share the stories that make us who we are in 10 challenges taking place over 10 days. The campaign, launched on September 21, 2020 continues until 30 September. A new challenge is to be announced daily on CapeTownMagazine.com’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.
“There are so many small and unique things that form our heritage,” says Mdyogolo, “And we had such a special time in our own team when we talked through the challenges. Sometimes you find that you are much closer than you thought.”
Other campaign partners include WESGRO and Shimansky, who design and manufacture classic, timeless and contemporary jewellery as well as the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway.
CapeTownMagazine.com founder and publisher Marcus Zandhuis asks how special it would be if the world joined in this Heritage Challenge? “Imagine if every radio station and every company in South Africa would take on the 10-days of challenges. This, now, as we open South Africa to tourism again, is the time to share with the world what is most special and unique about us.” The challenge, says Zandhuis, is to turn Heritage Day, a proclaimed public holiday, into something more relevant and powerful than ‘Braai Day’. “The objective of the online tourism and travel magazine’s #HeritageChallenge, or This Is Your Heritage Day campaign, is to enable “moments of joy” for locals and international travellers by “bringing out the most unique in the biggest way, and biggest in the most unique way. “In our work, the stories we encounter are so full and so many are rich with heritage. Because CapeTownMagazine.com is online in all social channels, we thought we’d bring heritage to them in channels where they live,” says Zandhuis.
Tru-Cape’s New Variety Expert Buks Nel who discovered the Bigbucks tree, the fruit of which is marketed as FLASH GALA ™, took part in the challenges on behalf of Tru-Cape.
Ultimately, Zandhuis says, the challenge is about storytelling and ‘storymaking’. “My passion has always been storytelling not selling. With what we achieved at CapeTownMagazine.com we’ve moved into something I call ‘storymaking’. Creating something that uses storytelling but all put together, there’s a bigger purpose that makes a whole new story of good. That’s a whole new story you were part of making. It makes me get up every morning and take the risks we take,” he says.
Zandhuis is excited about the stories he believes the magazine has found a way to release. “There’s the recognition that everyone’s got more in common or something more interesting to tell and together that’s a stepping stone for all of us to ‘see each other’,” he ends.
Follow the campaign on CapeTownMagazine.com
