A WOUNDED HERITAGE
Sep 22, 2018
Since 1996, the government declared the former Shaka Day, 24 September, as a new national holiday that would embrace the common heritage of the country, including its culture, history, wildlife, monuments, artwork, literature, music, folklore, languages, culinary traditions, and more.
President Nelson Mandela declared that Heritage Day would help South Africans use their “rich and varied cultural heritage to build our new nation”. He added that declaring this a national holiday was crucial in the attempt to create a strong and proud nation, “We did so knowing that the struggles against the injustice and inequities of the past are part of our national identity; they are part of our culture. We knew that, if indeed our nation has to rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of division and conflict, we had to acknowledge those whose selfless efforts and talents were dedicated to this goal of non-racial democracy.”
Twenty-two years since Heritage Day was first celebrated warrants pause for reflection.
While much has taken place over this period, both positive and negative, a profoundly unsettling set of statistics were released on 11 September 2018 by Police Minister, Bheki Cele. The crimes reflected in the statistics were largely committed on Fikile Mbalula and Nathi Nhleko’s watch, and coincide with the worst excesses of the Zuma administration.