J Tselapedi on behalf of E Molewa: Southern African Heritage Day
celebrations

24 September 2007

Programme Director
All protocol observed

It is a long way home, but home is where your soul is, and today my soul is
here as our Heritage Day fills our minds with reflection and our hearts with
emotion as we recall the place of our history, culture and tradition in the
construction of our nationhood. Thank you for making me a part of this ceremony
of celebration.

One of the most famous African-American poems is entitled 'Heritage,' and it
is written by Countee Cullen. Its fame is founded largely on its eloquent
articulation of the identity crisis faced by the speaker, an African-American,
in it, who asks:

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, jungle star or jungle
track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black women from whose loins I sprang when
the birds of Eden sang?

The invocation of identity in a poem entitled 'Heritage' is a clear pointer
to the relationship between heritage and identity. That is why it is always
argued that the loss of one's heritage is effectively a loss of identity.

One's heritage is one's description and definition. Without it one is
effectively rendered soulless. That is why every country proud of itself
jealously guards its heritage and the symbols representative of it. That is
why, as well, a country's heraldic symbols – signs of the country's heritage –
are almost always the first targets of the bombs of war. The idea is that
destroying a nation's heritage would be psychologically devastating to its
people and therefore hasten the breakdown of their spirit.

Heritage is an amalgam of historical experience – good and bad. Countries,
therefore, which have been through the cauldron of water and fire, are often
the ones with the most evocative heritage.

South Africa, our country, is emblematic in this respect. Our life from the
idyllic times of hunter-gatherer San and Khoi, to the days of subsistence
farming by the Nguni and the Sotho, to our subjugation and colonialism under
apartheid, to our courageous African National Congress (ANC) - led struggle for
freedom and democracy – All these denote a heritage rich in experience. It is a
canvas of commitment to our nationhood, a tapestry of love for our country as
evoked by Don Mattera in his famous poem, 'Sea and sand,' where he says:

Sea and sand, my love, my land, God bless Africa.

The experience may well have been quite painful and tragic at times, but it
represents a national character of defiance and resilience, and of which we can
be proud. It is not many societies which have fought their way out of
brigandage and subjugation to begin their national lives in peace and
reconciliation. Our heritage is our best lesson in freedom and democracy.

Heritage Day to us, then, is as much a day of tradition as it is a spiritual
day. It is a day which re-ignites our passion for freedom and reminds us of
where we come from, why we are where we are today, and where we have to go.
Heritage Day in South Africa contextualises our dichotomous situation of two
economies in one country, and why our rallying cry of 'A better life for all'
is as pertinent today as it was in 1999 when we reached the mid-point of our
first decade of democracy.

The theme of today's celebration back home is 'Celebrating South African
poetry.' It is a theme which tacitly reconfirms the role of literature broadly
and poetry specifically in the liberation of our country. It reminds us that
when the voices of the media and our leaders were silenced by apartheid the
poets – in a combination of education and entertainment – mobilised political
consciousness around the country and rallied our masses to battle. Who, for
example, can forget the reverberating defiance of Ingoapele Madingoane's words,
'Africa my beginning, and Africa my ending,' and his forceful statement of
history that our oppressors:

Came from the west sailing to the east with hatred and disease flowing from
their flesh and a burden to harden our lives

Who can forget, as well, the selfsame Madingoane in the selfsame poem
arguing that:

When foreigner met foreigner they fought for the reign oppressors of my
land, Africa my beginning, Africa my ending.

It is both protest poetry and the poetry of defiance – as encapsulated in
Madingoane's voice of anger – that fired the souls of many a young person and
revived the fighting spirit of many an older person as our masses in the farms
and the villages and the townships of the country flagged their fists high up
in the air and cried 'Amandla!', and as they raised their knees in an up and
down motion as they danced the toyi-toyi, our dance of war – a dance of
defiance.

Our poetry is a repository of our historical and cultural experience as it
captures our feelings, our hopes, our consciousness and our dreams. It is an
expression of all that we have been, that which we are, and that which we want
to be. Our poetry is our testament to our existence as a people who have known
pain, poverty, hunger and disease, and who have consequently developed a spirit
of resilience and a social sense where community precedes individualism and "I
am because you are."

As we celebrate Heritage Day today we salute and honour our cultural workers
– those men and women who, through their work, entertain and educate us. We
honour them, however, with questions in our minds about some of the
developments in the world of the arts – both in terms of content and the
example set by some of our artists. We do face a challenge where popular
culture imported uncritiqued from other countries, especially the United States
(US), is sometimes presented as something to emulate when it in fact promotes
values at odds with the best elements of African culture.

We do, therefore, as we celebrate this momentous day, have to reflect on the
challenges presented and the risks posed by this development. Today's Heritage
Day must begin a struggle to reclaim and reassert our cultural tradition,
including the education about life and living inherent in our songs and music
and theatre and drama and dance.

We have developed music genres and dance styles which celebrate our life as
a free people, but we have to interrogate and unpack the essential meaning and
influence of some of these – including kwaito - in the context of a nation
still in a nascent existence, and which has to be strong both economically and
spiritually to retain the essence of freedom and democracy as its defining
element.

As we do so let us revisit the economics of culture, for it is in the
context of a situation where culture cannot bring food on the table that it
tends to be twisted and abused and debased to a point where it can actually be
counter-revolutionary. If culture, as it threatens to at home, creates a gap
between the people and those things – such as the political direction of a
country – that really matter, then it becomes imperative to take another look
at it and determine the reasons behind its trajectory.

We cannot countenance a situation where the cultural oeuvre of Zakes Nkosi,
Ntemi Piliso, Jonas Gwangwa, Mirriam Makeba, Sophie Mgcina, Thandi Klaasen,
Hugh Masekela and Pops Mohamed, to name but a few, is counteracted by popular
culture whose meaning is largely meaningless. Culture has an insidious effect
on its consumers, and therefore it is important that both in the literary and
the musical fields we as a nation develop in a direction which enhances our
struggle for reconstruction and development both at the level of materiality
and the nation's soul. If I may be more specific let us, for example, refuse to
entertain music which promotes violence against women and children, and crime
in general.

On that note let me end – with our admiration for the role of our culture,
poetry included, historically, and our concern about how to support it, today,
to play a nation-building role rather than plant values inimical to a nation
where a new society of social consciousness is a sine qua non.

May we all see the next South African Heritage Day with culture and
community fused in a nation-building embrace.

I thank you all

Issued by: North West Provincial Government
24 September 2007