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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