occasion of Heritage Day, Cape Town
24 September 2006
Programme Director, MEC Whitey Jacobs (TBC),
Minister of Arts and Culture, Pallo Jordan,
Premier of the Western Cape Province, Ebrahim Rasool,
Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Your Worship, Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille,
Lord Mayor Provost of Edinburgh, The Right Honourable Leslie Hinds,
Members of our National and Provincial Parliaments,
Municipal Councillors,
Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Distinguished guests,
Fellow South Africans:
It gives me great pleasure to be with you here today when the nation
celebrates Heritage Day. On behalf of the government I send our warmest
greetings to all the people of South Africa.
I am also delighted to welcome the Lord Mayor Provost of the City of
Edinburgh, Leslie Hinds, who is in South Africa for the Homeless World Cup. We
are very happy that Cape Town is hosting this important sporting event which, I
am certain, will further popularise participation in soccer and other sports in
our country. The 2010 FIFA World Cup holds much promise and we hope this
Homeless World Cup will inspire everyone to do everything we need to do make
the 2010 tournament very successful indeed.
We wish all the participants, South Africa's own Bafowethu and all the
teams, the very best in the competition. May this Heritage Day herald new
beginnings for the homeless not only to succeed in the beautiful game but also
that, working together with government through our housing programmes, we
ensure that we end homelessness in our country.
Not only is this day exciting because it is Heritage Day, but also because
of the power and the richness of the sub theme that we are celebrating, which
says, "Celebrating Our Music, Our Heritage" under the rubric of the theme,
"Celebrating Our Living Heritage (What We Live)", which the Department of Arts
and Culture has been running for the last three years.
At these Heritage Day celebrations, especially because we meet here in Cape
Town, I thought we should pay some attention to the history of our people, many
of whom lived in this part of our country and were the first to encounter the
Europeans travellers and settlers. These are the Khoi and the San people - the
indigenous South Africans wrongly called for many centuries Hottentots and
Bushmen.
Many of us, South Africans, know little about the history of these valued
sections of our population. I am certain that we should so everything to
address this deficit. I believe that we made a good beginning when we decided
to use the now extinct Cham language on our national Coat of Arms and succeeded
to bring back from France and bury with all due dignity the remains of our Khoi
heroine, Saartjie Baartman.
As we know, or should know, when Bartholomew Dias and later Vasco da Gama
sailed past the Cape to the East, the first people they encountered in this
part of Africa were the Khoi and the San. Although initially suspicious of the
strangers that had docked on their shores, these Africans, imbued with the
spirit of Ubuntu welcomed those Europeans and gave them the best African
hospitality that still characterise our people today. Jan van Riebeeck and his
Dutch companions were received with the same hospitality when they arrived here
in 1652.
But of course, as happened elsewhere in our country the Khoi and the San
were soon to be involved in the protracted conflict in our country that ended
with our accession to democracy in 1994.
The historian Noel Mostert says of the Cape when Europeans arrived that:
"The Cape was as bountifully pleasing and idyllically hospitable as anything
the sailors could crave for their suffering bodies. It fulfilled every
immediate dream of succour from the shipboard afflictions of scurvy, fevers,
foul water and salt food. It is hard to suppose that a lovelier place then
existed on the face of the earth, or that there was anything more bountifully
provisioned by nature." (p 95, The Frontiers, Noel Mostert)
It was among other things, this beauty at the corner of a great continent
that made Europeans to plan, as they said, a refreshment station, which began
the painful birth of the new South Africa. During the course of that long
history, which included the death of many Khoi and San, death also visited
their languages, their cultures and tradition, their names and identity, their
communities, their songs and their spirit.
That is why it is important that as we strive to build the new South Africa,
we must, together, pay homage to the Khoi and the San who set an example for
all of us to fight for our freedom so as to create the space for us, together,
to celebrate our music and heritage as we do today.
Accordingly, as we compose and sing songs of praise let us also sing about
these and the other peoples that constitute the rich tapestry of races,
languages and cultures that constitutes the South African nation.
At the same time, the early encounters of which I have spoken, as well as
the importation of slaves from the Malaysian archipelago and other African
lands ensured that the Western Cape in particular became, for many centuries,
the confluence and meeting point of occidental, oriental and African
cultures.
The intercultural meeting later gave birth to a new culture which ceased to
resemble the original cultures in their "purest" forms. Such a culture has
developed, mutated and evolved to give our nation its identity, which is both
South African and African. The music we hear here, attests to our common human
origin as well as this intercultural coalescence that I am talking about.
Indeed, music permeates all walks of life and has been a powerful instrument
and a tool commonly invoked in various occasions and circumstances, good and
bad, joyful and sorrowful.
We sing to welcome a new-born baby. The lullabies are sung to wean and
comfort the young ones as they grapple and struggle with the challenges of
teething, growth and development. We have sung in sadness as we endeavour to
muster strength of dealing with harsh realities of pain and death. In different
social contexts and situations, music has served and serves today to sooth the
troubled soul, lift the dejected spirit, and celebrate the very joy of being
human.
Music talks to our experiences, our troubles and hopes as individuals,
families and communities. It talks to our trials and tribulations as a people
and expresses visions and ideals that human generations have cherished over the
millennia. As life is like a kaleidoscope that is dynamic and ever-changing,
music follows suit. Yesteryear's music that was produced at different times and
spaces reflected the morals, values and spirit of communities and societies of
their time.
The spirit of ubuntu which enshrined the values of group solidarity,
compassion, respect, human dignity and collective unity characterised the
lifestyles of our forebears. The stories, legends, fairytales, the music and
dance of this historical epoch reflect these values and norms.
And then came the time when we heard the songs of resistance and protest in
which the oppressed masses of our people called for the restoration of their
liberties and freedoms. Such cries and rhythms are evident in the musical
performances of the artists of the time as they persistently envisioned a new
day of a democratic South Africa that is non-racial, non-sexist, non-tribal and
free from all forms of discrimination.
As many of us know, the music of the time helped to sustain the momentum and
impetus of the struggle for liberation and freedom. Today, we honour and
remember all those artists through whose music, dance and theatre we got
inspiration to join hands to promote the vision of liberty and democracy for
all.
In a post-colonial and post-apartheid, democratic South Africa, which is
confronted by a different set of challenges ranging from matters of morality,
criminal abuse of women and children, to the poverty and destitution that
continues to afflict many of our people, we must ask ourselves what the role of
our music and our artists should be without making any prescriptions about
matters of artistic expression, creativity and the productions of our
performing artists.
We need to engage our musicians to ask them what their individual or
collective role should be in making music one of the critical factors in
dealing with our current socio-economic challenges. At the same time, clearly
our government must do everything possible to give the necessary support to our
musicians and other cultural workers.
Clearly, what musicians sing is easily imprinted in our minds and
imagination, especially of young people, at times more than what parents and
teachers teach or what religious leaders preach. I think that if the same
sermons and moral lessons were to be given by our artists and musicians, these
would indeed become etched in the minds of young people.
I therefore would like to make a call to all musicians to do what the
musicians of yesteryears did, who in the composition of their songs never
forgot to refer to the challenges of the day.
It is through the lyrics and rhythms of musicians and other artists that
those values, norms and morals that extol and exalt human dignity and human
decency, peace, prosperity and harmony in our land will be venerated. Among
other things, it is also through their work that all of us would internalise
and live those values that stand for the greatest good for all our people.
I want to re-iterate the call that I made on Heritage Day last in Taung
about the need to revitalise and champion the spirit of ubuntu. Because if we
revive those values that celebrate our humanity, we will be less prone to
perpetrate gross human rights violations. I am aware that the Department of
Arts and Culture through one of its associated institutions, the National
Heritage Council, has embarked upon a programme on ubuntu that seeks to use
heritage as a main driver of the concept and practice of ubuntu.
This is indeed most encouraging but not enough. I challenge all the organs
of civil society to participate in such a programme because it is through
partnerships and synergies between government and civil society organisations
that we will be able to present a united front against all the challenges that
we face.
I would also like to make an appeal to the management and leadership of the
music industry, which I am certain has been made before. On many occasions,
popular musicians and artists whose works have contributed to building and
nourishing the soul of the nation have died poor. Others, such as the recently
departed Moses Khumalo, a young, budding and a prolific jazz musician, pass
away, as he did, under mysterious conditions.
This has devastated many of us who could not understand the reason for his
untimely death. We are baffled by the sad reality of our beloved artists who
commonly die so poor, such that their families struggle even to give them
proper and dignified burials.
I am saying that it is wrong that musicians whose works makes millions of
rands, themselves struggle to live a decent life. Further, the music industry
is a multimillion-rand industry that adds substantially towards our
economy.
Fellow South Africans:
As we celebrate Heritage Day through music, dance and other performances, we
invoke and evoke the memories of our common ancestors and forebears who have
bequeathed a rich inheritance and heritage to us.
They bring back memories of the values, norms and morals that have shaped
humanity from time immemorial.
On this important day on our national calendar, I would like to say - let
the nation sing and dance. I wish you all across our magnificent land, a very
happy Heritage Day.
Thank you.
Baie dankie.
Issued by: The Presidency
24 September 2006
Source: SAPA
