Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
INSTEAD of a mere ticket that they can purchase at the entrance, revellers at this year’s edition of the Matobo Gin Festival will carry with them a passport, which is set to serve not only as their tag for access to the venue but also a record of the local and international delights they will have consumed during the event.
This year’s edition of the festival takes place between September 13 and 15.
With preparations for the festival winding down, organisers of the fest have unveiled their ground-breaking passport concept, which they say will act as a guide to the wants and preferences of imbibers during an event in which some of the best craft gin makers from around the continent and beyond will be present.
Mzansi Gin by Obonato Distillery from Cape Town, Matobo African Gin from Zimbabwe, Malawi Gin from Malawi, Shelela Gin from Swaziland, Nyanga Craft from Zimbabwe and Copperfield Gin by Surrey Copper Distillery from the United Kingdom, will all be there to quench the thirst of gin lovers.
Festival goers will also have a variety of other beverages to choose from.
“When you get in, we stamp your passport,” said one of the organisers of the festival, Bhekimpilo Ncube.
“The idea is that since we have a lot of craft gins both locally and internationally, every time you get a gin from a particular country, we stamp your passport because you’re experiencing a different destination every time you fill up your glass.
“So, if you buy Matobo Gin, you get a Zimbabwean stamp for that. If you purchase Malawi Gin, you get their stamp and the same goes with craft gins from South Africa and other countries. So, the idea is to bring those countries together in a glass. You might not have travelled to Nyanga, Malawi, or Cape Town, but you get a taste of what these destinations can offer you through the products that we are bringing you. When you get in through the gate, we call it Gin Immigration. The whole idea is that we want this to serve as a guide to your experience of the festival. It should also serve as your souvenir. We want to give people an experience that they haven’t had in a long time.”
Ncube said the passport would also emphasise their desire to focus on tourism and animal conservation, which they believed were the event’s main focus.
“On the first page, it shows the whole idea of the gin festival. First, we promote tourism then we promote animal conservation and then we market the craft beverages. This is something that we are doing in conjunction with ZimParks, so the drive is mainly towards tourism. This is reflected in some of our activities as well. For example, the year of the white rhino and that is why we have rhino tracking as one of our key activities this year. So, the cover of the passport has the white rhino for that very reason. The second page acts as a guide to the entire gin festival,” he said.
Ncube said that they had decided to align with the tail-end of the Sanganai/Hlanganani World Tourism Expo, which is set to be held in Bulawayo between September 12 and 14, because they believed that their purpose was to continue highlighting the beauty and significance of Matobo.
“We wanted to align the gin fest with Sanganai/Hlanganani because this is about tourism and exposing local brands to the international market. What better time to do it than during what is probably the biggest tourism conference in southern Africa? We make a local gin named after a World Heritage Site so why can’t we take the opportunity to expose Matobo to the rest of the region? The main thrust of the festival is tourism, then animal conservation, the gin comes a distant third because it is not the main thing. We named our gin Matobo because there’s a certain value and sentiment attached to the name, so we want to continue tapping into that,” he said.
Ncube said that this year they also wanted to give a platform for the people that reside near the Matobo National Park to benefit from the festival, as very often they did not reap any benefits from having a World Heritage Site on their doorstep.
“For this year’s edition of the fest, we will have the community of Matobo bringing their wares to showcase and sell to the people attending. There’s a lady who approached us and opened our eyes to the reality that very often people come to do things in Matobo, yet people who live in the area end up feeling like outsiders looking in. So, this year, they will have their stall because we don’t want to be people who just come in, have fun and then leave the people who live there with nothing,” he said.
