by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – WHEN an isiXhosa-speaking member of Fashion World’s store staff greets one person, she says molo, and when she greets more than one she says molweni.
“Molweni and molo mean the same thing, like ‘good morning, how are you?’,” she says. “All of that is wrapped up together in that one word.”
For Heritage Month, which South Africa marks every September and which culminates on Heritage Day on 24 September, Fashion World recorded staff from its stores answering four questions: who taught them to welcome people, what their greeting means, what Heritage Month means to them, and what serving customers has taught them.
The clips carry the campaign line “We’ve been greeting you locally for over 40 years”, a reference to the four decades the company has traded in South African communities, where it now has 253 stores.
Several of the answers go back to home.
“My mom raised me to know that we greet people, we respect people,” says a colleague on the shop floor.
“I remember my mom always saying, ‘You must greet the elders before you do anything, before you even step outside.’”
She still greets according to age, with a formal greeting for an older man or woman and “Hello, how are you? How is it?” for her friends.
A Xitsonga-speaking colleague describes a Heritage Month of song, dance and traditional food, and a custom in her community in which a visitor arriving at someone’s home sits or kneels until the household greets
them.
For the isiXhosa-speaking staff member, the month is about everything that makes up identity.
“We’re celebrating who we are: our identity, our traditional clothing, the way we eat, the way we speak, the way we come together and unite as South Africans.”
South Africa has had twelve official languages since South African Sign Language was recognised in 2023, and each carries its own rules about who greets first, how an elder is addressed and how a greeting changes
when it is offered to a group.
The clips will play in Fashion World stores and on the company’s social channels during Heritage Month.
A Setswana-speaking colleague grew up among her elders, her grandparents and the visitors who came to their home, and says in Setswana that a child who greeted badly would be corrected and shown the right way.
Asked what years of serving customers have taught her, she answers with a Setswana word for the humanity and respect owed to every person: “Always, always, you must have botho.”
– CAJ News
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