George Tarzan sets his sights on Mount Kilimanjaro

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

George's very own Tarzan has his sights set on reaching new heights – this time around the dizzying heights of Mount Kilimanjaro.

De Wet Du Toit, a 26-year-old bodybuilder and aspiring actor has often made headlines with his loincloth-clad antics in his quest to one day play the king of the apes in a Hollywood adaptation Tarzan.

This dream however has led to various opportunities, including his latest venture – an opportunity to summit Mount Kilimanjaro as part of a team of five influential individuals across the world.

The Summit Kilimanjaro team will be selecting three outstanding start-up business owners as well as two “outstanding” individuals to join them on this trip of a lifetime and fundraising for charity initiative. Last year they were joined by big names including founders of Spotify, WordPress and Pandora, as well as the chief executive of Ticketmaster, Lady Gaga’s manager, investor Chris Sacca, Hollywood actors and directors, and a star skateboarder Tony Hawk.

“I am in the top 200 out of more than 2000 applicants worldwide and they are now choosing the top 50. The process works around a voting system, so the public can vote for their favourite, so please vote for me. This is an opportunity of a lifetime,” Du Toit said.

The group will be climbing Africa’s highest mountain in September and come November they will be sharing the stories from the main stage at The Summit, the world’s biggest technology gathering, in Dublin, Ireland.

Du Toit has a deep love for nature – one of the reasons playing Tarzan comes so naturally to the young aspiring actor and also one of the reasons he wants to have one of those spots on the Kilimanjoro team.

Du Toit has always had a fascination with the character that came alive in the books he read as a child and since his self-created Tarzan YouTube clip went viral more than two years ago, he has not looked back.

His ultimate dream is to play the lead in director David Yates' - who was responsible for four of the Harry Potter movies - remake of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. Filming for this Warner Brothers movie is expected to start this year.

Since his clip went viral, Du Toit has added about 10 more Tarzan YouTube videos, which have had more than 1-million views.

In the meantime he also has his hands full with other Tarzan-related projects including doing a book trailer for English author Andy Briggs’ series of Tarzan novels. Du Toit was also appointed recently as the Africa representative of the environmental education organisation A-Team for Wildlife and part of his job is to produce short anti-poaching awareness videos as Tarzan.

These clips are far from the homemade videos of the past, but are being filmed by the crew of the American television series SAF 3 – about a Malibu air, sea and fire rescue task team starring Hollywood actors such as Dolph Lundgren. He met the crew while he was a stand-in for two of the actors in the series.

To vote for De Wet visit http://thesummit.co/kilimanjaro/nominees-individual#entry-202

Yolande Stander