EFF HERITAGE DAY STATEMENT

Thursday, 24 September 2020

The Economic Freedom Fighters joins the country in observing Heritage Day and calls on all Africans to reflect on our collective dispossession and displacement. Heritage refers to a culture, tradition, language, norms and customs. At the forefront of the observance of Heritage is the ability to practice value and cultural systems free from persecution, oppression, spiritual and economic restraints. To have a heritage means to be able to exist with pride, a pride in the identity that defines our forebears and us, and carrying our Heritage, languages and symbols which are inextricably linked to our relationship with the land.

As things stand in South Africa, there is no heritage to celebrate so long as we remain landless and on the outskirts of our own economy. The Heritage of South Africa is one of dispossession and continued humiliation at the hands of a white-minority that continues to exploit our people and turn Africans against one another.

We are people defined by fear and hopelessness, where farmworkers are abused, brutalised and killed by white farm owners who the government of the day fears and is undermined by. Our identity is ridiculed through the bastardisation of our languages in examination papers that make a mockery of African languages by altering English words to make them sound African. Our identity is undermined by corporates who define us as inferior to the standards and norms of beauty set by white people, and our children are told their hair is unkempt, damaged and dry in the land of their birth.

The black skin which defines all of us in Africa has become a signifier of criminality, inferiority and decay, and our landlessness is at the centre of all the problems facing us as a people. As we observe Heritage Day, we call on all Africans to remember these painful realities beyond the wearing of customary clothing.

Instead of a call to dance and forget our history and current conditions, which is a trademark of the rainbow nations depoliticising of our people, we call on our people to remember their conditions. We call on our people reflect on whether they truly have a heritage in a country where they are servants and tenants of a white-minority.

As a concrete move from meaningless reconciliation towards a heritage founded on justice, the EFF reiterates its call for land expropriation without compensation. The spiritual, cultural and economic strength of a people is dependent on the land, and without the land, we have no ability to call our souls our own.

As a concrete step towards respecting the Heritage and identity of those who constitute the majority in this country, we call for the removal of all colonial and apartheid statues and symbols that glorify those who dispossessed Africans, massacring us and distorting our history.

We reiterate our call for the removal of "Die Stem" from the national anthem, a song of murderers which was sung while Africans were burnt on braai stands. "Die Stem" is a spit in the face of those who sang the hymn Nkosi Sikelela iAfrika, praying for the dignity and prosperity of all Africans.

Our Heritage is rooted in symbolism, justice and the land, and without these, there is no heritage to celebrate in this country. Our public holidays must become moments in which we reflect truthfully on our history and the road we have travelled as a nation.

A genuine celebration of our Heritage can only be achieved if the injustices of the past are corrected. This can only be achieved through the fulfilment of the above. Only then can South Africa truly claim to be on the path of reconciliation and pride.

Statement issued by the EFF, 24 September 2020