MEDIA
Media Production: I am a storyteller. I produce premium quality media. With my network of chosen colleagues I possess the skills, experience and knowledge to produce the content required to make your product or story, whether NGO, Corporate or Editorial, look as you wish; edgy, conventional, always professional.
Corporate Television inserts
News Doccies
Podcasts
Hire me for my recognized writing / copywriting. The only writer from Africa shortlisted for the International Travel Writer of the Year 2015, I have extensive experience in producing travel and conservation editorial. I produce digital and traditional brochures. For examples click here.
Core to my Storytelling mission, where possible, is making the proverbial difference to the lives of people and the planet. Caring for our fellow creatures, and the rhinos, toads, sharks and pangolins that call it home.
Hire me for photographic shoots you can find examples of my work on the blink.la website and on my site Africanstorybook.
GUIDING
Private & Specialist Guiding: When I am not producing multimedia content and news stories I am using the above journalistic Storytelling experience to inform my 2nd career as a specialist guide.
Covering the Somalia of ‘Black Hawk Down’, days, I visited Mt Kenya and the Masai Mara on the way back to Joburg, for my first east African ‘safari’. The travel bug had bitten. Covering the Rwandan genocide of 1994, I returned to produce a Rwanda Retrospective for CNN Traveller, making my first acquaintance with the gorillas, driving the whole country, witnessing the remarkable changes. I had found the intersect of journalism and travel. Yet realised that Rwanda isn’t the only destination with a compelling narrative that needs to be translated for the tourist.
I have since covered all of southern Africa as a photojournalist, topics ranging from wildlife, culture to politics, agritourism and wine. I have travelled almost every road in South Africa, equipping myself with the destination and infrastructure know-how that allows me to create whizz-bang travel experiences. Journeys cut to the client’s interests and cloth.
A few examples of suggested South African journeys below.
A Walk through my Cape Town Start our day with, in my opinion, one of Cape Town’s best baristas, Moses of Harrington St. We touch on District Six, passing through areas that were bulldozed and emptied of vibrant communities, its residents trucked off to the other side of the mountain. We visit the D6 museum, and walk and talk while absorbing Cape Town and South Africa’s history, architecture and politics in the Company’s Gardens. It’s your holiday. You tell me what you wish to see and experience.
Winelands Unplugged The Swartland, with its garagista winemakers, grantic soils, and impressive chenin blanc and Shiraz, is where it’s at. Plus all those majestic mountains. We could meet some of the winemakers, spice it up with a zigzag easy zipline across a gorge, and trawl the streets of what is arguably the most beautiful street in South Africa.
Garden Route Unplugged Let me take you on a Photographic Garden Route tour, an interactive Responsible Tourism experience of 4-10 days that we design together. This could include foraging for lunch, meeting strike leaders in a township, and a cool climate wine and lunch experience in the Hemel en Aaarde valley – all wrapped up in one of the whale-capitals of the world. There are more sauvignon blanc and chenin blanc vineyards to be found near Africa’s southern tip, Cape Agulhas, from where we visit the historical mission-station village of Elim. Here we meet and share lunch with locals before heading out for some whale-watching or responsible shark-cage from Kleinbaai. This region offers stunning indigenous forests, windswept coastal plain, warm ocean, fresh seafood and the very best places to eat.
Interactive Limpopo I return to this rural African playground of my youth, leading guests on a narrative journey through the magificent province of Limpopo, starting amongst forest up on the escarpment. A gas-lit, historic farmhouse, ticking off ‘specials’ in SA’s 2nd indigenous forest with the country’s top-bird guide, ziplining, cheese-making from Swiss cows on a quaint organic farm, a craft brewery and then down into the lowveld flatland for a rare, interactive community experience. We meet a famous Venda sculptor, drum by the fire with a local group, learn how to make cloths, join Shangaan women as they harvest salt from a river on the border of the Kruger Park. And end off with a blissful couple of Kruger Park wildlife nights at a community-owned lodge in the Park itself.
Seriously Custom-made Experiences such as these above. Fulfilled with one of a couple of eminent local tour operators, handpicked by myself (I insist on ethics and attention to detail).
www.personalcollectionbyta.com/angus-begg
Who is Angus Begg?
I am the creator of African Storybook Media. Through this vehicle I produce TV doccies, podcasts, articles and the Humans of Cape Town and African Storybook pages on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
My aspirations as a youngster shifted between wanting to be a game ranger and a journalist. It was my family experiences as a youngster at the peak of what I would later discover was called apartheid, that shaped me (the good and the bad bits). When my Dad took the family to Victoria Falls in 1979, a fellow 12 year-old called Zwanai Sibanda taught me how to shoot a bow ‘n arrow (into a target we circled on a baobab tree). We became pen-friends. I have no idea where he is now, but still have some of his letters. At the golf course that I sneaked onto as a young teen with my clutch of mahogany clubs, I became mates with a caddy, Steve Sepamla. He’d come over with his mates for tea. I later found he was working for a juice manufacturer, driving a forklift.
Such are the experiences that informed my world view, the work I produce, and the experiences I offer.
I completed a degree in international Relations and Law, before studying a Postgrad Journalism and Media Studies qualification during the time of the 1986 apartheid uprisings. Radio, Photography, Podcasts, News, Environment & Travel, they were – and remain – my passions .
Starting with Visnews (now Reuters TV) as a soundman in the townships of pre-democracy South Africa, I reported on the opening shots of America’s attack on Baghdad solo from an SABC radio studio in 1991. During the international news stories of Somalia ’92 and Rwanda ’94, I discovered East Africa, the travel hub of Nairobi and the intersect between people, travel and conservation. I covered Nelson Mandela’s release as a fixer for a Dutch TV news channel, before four years producing and presenting for national current affairs drive-time radio, SAfm, in the country’s golden period of journalism (1991-95). This period included covering South Africa’s historic ’94 elections in the volatile KZN Midlands. I assisted in starting up SABC Africa as news editor, a pan-African TV channel for SABC, after which I was editor-in-chief of Safari.net, arguably Africa’s first (and finest) travel-content website.
I started writing and photographing on my travel experiences, for among others, Conde Nast Traveller, CNN Traveller, the UK’s Weekend Telegraph and a range of local titles.
Nine years followed as a producer/director for the award-winning investigative documentary programme Carte Blanche, where something called ‘attention to detail’ was tattooed on my mind, I covered a range of stories around southern Africa linked to conservation, cultures, health, education and travel.
I have worked in print, radio – now podcast – photography and TV. I have visited, written on and photographed over 100 lodges, and the most significant game reserves in southern and East Africa. I know every square inch of South Africa, my home, having travelled and produced stories around, almost every road in the country. Southern Africa has been my playground. Using that experience I added private guiding to my repertoire.
Inbetween news stories, in October 2017 I started leading eMBA groups from the USA ias a specialist guide. I have since led a number of FIT’s (foreign independent travellers), introducing them to winemakers, artists, game rangers and strike leaders, sharing the real South Africa.
I have won a CNN TV award, received a commendation for my photojournalism, and my photography is being featuring in an exhibition on women. I have been twice nominated for radio documentaries, and I was the only writer from Africa to be nominated for the International Travel writer of the year award 2015.