We have been celebrating Heritage month in September under the theme: Celebrating 2010 Fifa Soccer
World Cup. In some ways the Soccer World Cup is a great focal point because it highlights one of the biggest successes this country has ever experienced.
We have been celebrating Heritage month in September under the theme: Celebrating 2010 Fifa Soccer
World Cup. In some ways the Soccer World Cup is a great focal point because it highlights one of the biggest successes this country has ever experienced.
It also reveals however, that our heritage is still quite young, and as a united heritage, perhaps we only have the Soccer World Cup and the democratic miracle of 1994 that all South Africans can claim in togetherness.
But the newness of our united heritage should not take anything away from the many differerent cultures' heritage that exist in this country.
We still need to celebrate the colourful array of cultures that have long histories preceding the beginning of a democratic South Africa in 1994.
We can all tap our feet in time to goema music, admire the puffy, multi-coloured dresses of the Shangaan women and wonder what the Xhosa matriarch is smoking in her pipe as she gazes out between the white dots painted in a wave pattern on her face.
We need a Heritage Day to celebrate our diverse cultures, but we also need it to forge a new common heritage that we can all appreciate together instead of attending events where we awkwardly observe how the other groups do it.
Perhaps we can build this common heritage over something as mundane as braavleis – after all, it is one thing that all South African ethnic groups really enjoy, even if each of us do it in our own special ways.
Whether we use a kettle, a skottel or just a petrol drum sliced in half the braai is something we can all identify with, and there is nothing wrong with a veggie-burger.
