South Africa’s most successful tourism ambassador is a little chap – about the size of a postage stamp. Actually, he is a postage stamp.

Letters and their stamps are, believe it or not, powerful advertisements for a country.  The South African Post Office has a Philately Services Department entirely devoted to this very purpose. Several times a year they issue stamps that show South African features, interest or innovation. My interest in stamps peaked recently when I visited the Post Office with a letter, and was given a beautiful round frilly stamp with a rose on it, peeled off a heart-shaped backing sheet with ‘All You Need is Love’ written boldly across the top. When you think of the post office, you think of dour and humourless clerks engaged in the weighty tasks of packing off parcels and accepting your TV licence fee. You don’t think of stamps being a subject filled with romance and intrigue. So I spoke to the SA Post Office’s Johan van Wyk about the sticky business of stamps. “We work about two years in advance,” says postage-enthusiast Johan. “Every year we ask the public to give us ideas for stamp design. We get about 100 contributions, and the Philatelic Board whittles this down to 15 practical concepts.” These ideas go up the dizzying chain to Parliament, where they are debated by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and the Cabinet, approved, and make their way back down to earth to be put into action. The first step is to brief the artists. The Post Office uses about 20 artists who can be professionals or hobbyists, schoolchildren or art students. The outcome of this first step is a range of different visualisations. The artists must do their own research and background investigation and then come up with a pictorial representation of the concepts. “A lot of these designs look fantastic in the A4 sketches,” says Johan, “but they don’t really work when they are rendered down to the size of the stamp. So we use artists who understand the brief and who know that their finished work is going to be tiny.” Once the designs have been decided upon, the stamps go to the printers. Only the best designs, the best paper, the best printer and the best inks, are used. “Our stamps are ambassadors for the country,” says Johan. “They must promote South Africa and they must be of the highest quality.” For many people around the world, the best introduction to South Africa will be through a stamp. So we must make sure that our stamps encourage a closer acquaintance.
 
The whimsical story of the ‘All You Need is Love’ stamp sheet came about as a result of several ideas conflating. “We got a few suggestions from the public regarding celebrating events like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, and at the same time we got a suggestion about commemorating South Africa’s unique roses,” says Johan. “So we debated it and decided that the one thing that these celebrations had in common were people buying roses for their loved ones, and – there it was, love and roses.” And you thought the Post Office had no romance! “The one stamp that towers over all of them,” says Johan, “was when the Post Office last year commemorated Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday in July. We’ve never seen anything like it – talk about a tsunami! Even people who have worked for the Post Office all their lives have never experienced such a demand for a stamp.” Last year as well, the Post Office made modest history by issuing a stamp featuring Namaqualand’s flowers, complete with fragrance – a first for stamps. Another innovation was dye-cutting the stamp to fit the shape of the flower. For the 75th anniversary of SAA, the Post Office issued stamps featuring a Captain’s cap as it progressed through the years, overprinting with gold foil as the headgear became more modern and more fancy. Every time the Post Office decides on a new ‘commemorative series’ (as opposed to the boring old ordinary stamp referred to as a ‘definitive series’), they print a limited run of say, 100 000 and then no more. This makes the stamps attractive to collectors, which is what stamps are really all about. And on that subject, next year – while the whole world talks about the World Cup Soccer - the Post Office will be busy with something far more important:  the International Stamp Show at the Sandton Convention Centre from October 27-31. Collectors will be arriving from all over the world to show off their stamps, and the pièce de resistance will be a selection from Queen Elizabeth II’s personal stamp collection. This should be something to see, as England is where stamps started, after all. There is even a Keeper of the Royal Philatelic Collection who says that Her Majesty personally OK’d the exhibit.  It is doubtful that Mrs Windsor will be there in person, but her stamps should be drawcard enough. If you are interested in finding out more about the International Stamp Show, e-mail info@joburg2010stampshow.co.za   You could possibly even send them a letter.  But don’t forget the stamp!