One of the dividends of the 1994 democratic breakthrough is the elevation of heritage as a national asset worth celebrating and bringing aspects of the economy to a halt for its own sake. What makes heritage real to a nation, in the end, is not just the splendid edifices at its centre, nor even the smooth functioning of the institutions that house it. At its core, heritage is the texts that are taught in schools, learned by future generations and recollected in times of tribulation.
As we celebrate heritage day in South Africa, we need not forget to reflect on the questions of what is or constitutes a South African heritage. Do we have a heritage that brings us together as a nation in a state. Can we securely claim that our diversity is indeed the basis of a heritage commonly shared?
As a nation we have a history of strife and conflict. The battles that were fought to create a society that embraces the values of non-racialism, non-sexism and prosperity for all have come and gone, yet left traces on our canvas that are now part of our heritage. We are a nation whose past has advantaged some at the expense of others to a level where exclusion is in the mix of our heritage. We are a nation whose spatial demographics have generated social grievances whose articulation has become a condition to be political.
We are also a nation whose growth and development was a function of policies whose objects included extraction of natural resources value. A nation whose national security planning grew to be more about protecting itself against the majority of its citizens. A nation whose legal system has developed a tradition of easily criminalising conscientious actions without due regard of the substantive issues undergirding it.
In this whirlpool of what we had been becoming, we also became a nation that learnt how to be self-sufficient in order to protect privilege. We have mastered how to create 'own value' chains to insulate ourselves from exogenous shocks to our economic system. We have created a capacity to be food secured and thus nutrition sovereign.
These are all aspects of our heritage whose celebration as independent monuments has thus far only served to deepen the division fault lines that have become a liability to our efforts at building social cohesion. Our inability to transcend these fault lines and go beyond what our history has shaped us to be, is becoming a national past time whose practice is concretising into an artefact with arteries that go deep into our psyche.
Heritage as a collection of human experiences is a treasured wealth of humanity and the appropriate inheritance of generations and nations. Its preservation stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every household's library of cultural experiences. It has no cause of its own to plead, but it enlightens and sustains a nation. Those in power to shape and direct it, are a natural and irresistible aristocracy of society, and, more than kings or emperors, they exert an influence on mankind.
What we should strive to be is never to reject our origins. Rejecting them will make us become the product of whatever soil that we find ourselves planted. The colors of our leaves will always change as we consume borrowed nutrients with borrowed roots and, like a tree, we will continue to grow into what we all agree should not be us. With a 'national' ancestry that bequeathed us with a conflict-based heritage, history and place, we are variously proud and rejectionist about, our vulnerability to exploitation, manipulation and exploitation is high.
The essence of our expectations of each other in a country that hopes to reconcile with its past without changing templates that condition its national grievances, is for us to be ignorant of the collective past. This call for voluntary amnesia will leave us untethered and adrift in time. "Which is why all societies have sought some kind of memory bank, whether by way of folklore, story-telling, recitation of the ancestors". And why the dominant heritage industry does so well today; most people may not be particularly interested in the narrative of the past, in the detail or the discussion, but they are glad to know that it is there.
Taking an interest therefore in our heritage is the basis of understanding the pathways to our development and growth as a nation. It is the narrative of our past victories and triumphs as a nation that will create connecting nodes for future generations to find points out of which continuity can be drawn from. The narrative about society's business and industrial history as a heritage that brought us where we are, will, if inclusively narrated, spur the new to have a relationship with possibility.
As proud descendants we should work to be responsible ancestors.
Happy Heritage Month
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
🤷🏽♂️Ek praat maar net
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