The Week After The Month Before

It’s been a week since Heritage month ended and it’s safe to say we’re all steadily coming down from having thoroughly overindulged on our collective heritage, identity, culture, customs, what it means to be who you are and all the other good things. Heritage month came with an almost overwhelming, almost innate awareness of who we are, and where we come from.  Heritage month imposed on us the propensity to be retrospective and reflect on our South Africaness.

To many, heritage means so many different things, which is why confining it to a definition will be diminishing its significance and profoundness. Incidentally, the Oxford dictionary defines heritage as: “Valued objects and qualities such as historic buildings and cultural traditions that have been passed down from previous generations.” See what I mean.

A question thrown around a lot during Heritage month was what does it mean to be South African? I love it when people ask me that question because I never quite know how to go about answering it. It’s both simple and complex at the same time. Perhaps I reference a braai; declare my “Africaness;” declare how “woke” I am (I’m not really), or protest that I’m a Coloured from Jo’burg and not a Coloured from Cape Town! A distinction only Coloureds grasp.

There are so many diverse identities in South Africa, so many overlapping characters, each contributing a unique flavour to our collective identity. Is it possible to form an identity from the melting pot of identities present in South Africa today? Or should we exclude ourselves from a particular South African identity whether coloured, black, Afrikaans, Xhosa or Zulu because we don’t associate with that identity, even though the contribution of that identity underwrites the very fabric of our collective identity. Our identity is drenched in the many gooey, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet collective ZA-ness. For me, and I’m sure for many South Africans, the little nuances we experience everyday with each other, with our different cultures, with our languages and with our sport, make us uniquely South African.  

Down with Afrikaans artefacts, down!

In recent years, there were a number of cases where aspects of our “heritage” have come under fire. A prominent one that springs to mind is the debate around “Die Stem” in Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica. It was dubbed by one political party as being; “a song of oppressors, racists and mass murderers.” Notwithstanding the above, national anthems are songs of collective pride, we all don’t identify as Afrikaans, as black or as coloured, but we all do identify as South African. Much like the layers of an onion, our identity and our heritage is a collective identity within so many diverse identities, including the Afrikaans culture. So will destroying Afrikaans artefacts, in whatever form they take, give our “heritage” more meaning?  

Someone suggested we replace “Die Stem” with Nkalakatha, because never before has a song inspired social cohesion like Nkalakatha! I am not averse to such an inclusion, although I would miss the Afrikaans. When I sing the national anthem, I’m filled with so much pride and devotion to an inclusive nation, to unity and to oneness. For me, the anthem is indicative of this.     

But will removing “Die Stem” from our national anthem, while simultaneously (wittingly or unwittingly) rebuking a language; a people and a memory make our heritage more meaningful? If yes, is this diminishing the profoundness of our heritage?

Can we possess a profound sense of heritage?

It is a common fact that people maintain a positive image of the ethnic or cultural group they belong to, because membership in the group relates to social identity. National groups will always have a history in which things are done to other groups which can be viewed as morally wrong in light of present beliefs and values. But how do we build a new identity without destroying the identity of others, while acknowledging the losses and sufferings of the past? How do we forge a future where we no longer think of “black” and “white” as the oppressed and oppressors? How do we internalise our past without making the same mistakes if those who oppressed us?

The question I ask is, is it possible to embrace a shared, experienced heritage without harbouring resentment but acknowledging the memory of our past and the significance it played and continues to play in the construction of our collective identity, despite repudiation.  

If we succeed in tearing down all embodiments of our difficult past, we run the risk of mimicking tyrannical actions of the past and forging a society that will never be united. If we succeed in tearing down all embodiments of our ugly past, we forego the ability to forgive and dare I say, we forego the triumphant memories of those who fought fearlessly for freedom.

Speaking about the recent destruction of colonial artefacts at the annual Helen Joseph Lecture, Professor Njabulo Ndebele asks what happens after all colonial artefacts are destroyed? Will we then be liberated? Professor Ndebele also eloquently stated that what people do with oppressive representations throughout history, is at the heart of the human story because people learn from history and their actions set a precedent for the next generation and mould our future. “In the unfolding Rhodes Must Fall events, it became clear that the incineration of white colonial objects as embodiments of whiteness was at the onset of a declared process to decolonise the University of Cape Town and rid it of aspects of its legacy. Thus, the pictorial memory of whiteness; an attribute of imperialism and colonialism in this part of the world, would symbolically and practically be devoured by fire into ashes. Its visual presence erased and its historicity rendered invisible.”

“It remains to be seen if total erasure is possible. Human memory exists independent of its physical representations, in the realms of the mind and in the imagination. Without memory, it will be virtually impossible to learn, we could not learn from experience because experience is something remembered,” he narrated.  

One thing is clear; our future will not be written by the great strides of yesterday, but by the steps we take in unity, as a country with numerous identities, today.

Watch Professor Ndebele deliver the annual Helen Joseph lecture