While many people enjoyed the country's first National Braai Day on Heritage Day, others viewed it as a sacrilege or, worse still, a brutal mass slaughter of farm animals.
"Millions of farm animals in South Africa have died to satisfy the celebration of a primitive ritual - cooking a once-living, sentient being over an open fire - often rotated over the flames on a steel bar shoved through her anus and emerging through her mouth," stated Catherine Molyneux of United for Animals in objection to the new event.
Adding to the outcry, the National Heritage Council (NHC) announced its disappointment by claiming that Heritage Day had been "regretfully misnamed by a campaign that is perpetuating the lack of appreciation for the purpose of celebrating the rich diverse cultures of South Africa".
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NHC chief executive Sonwabile Mancotywa said the campaign would "have a negative outcome on the consciousness of South Africans, especially the young who need to be made aware of the value of their heritage in relation to other cultures as we build a unified nation".
'We had absolutely no motives or hidden agendas' In a statement on Tuesday, the NHC said coinciding the celebration of braaing with Heritage Day trivialised the latter.
Braai Day CEO Jan Scannel Tuesday morning said it was regrettable that people were upset as "this was definitely not our intention".
He said their aim had been "to make all South Africans aware of our one shared collective heritage and to enhance the Heritage Day celebrations".
"We had absolutely no motives or hidden agendas. We wanted to focus on the fact that this is a wonderful country to live in, and that cannot be a bad thing."
The Braai Day website punts the occasion as an event that "will allow us to get together, burn the past and cook up a succulent future" - an objective that was taken on by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
In his support, the man regarded as South Africa's moral conscience declared the shared love of open air cooking a unifying force between blacks and whites.
But his sentiments are not shared by United for Animals, which described the event as "a 'cultural' ritual that should be dumped in history's dustbin, where slavery and apartheid and other obscenities have been buried".
Unperturbed by this, Scannel said: "The nation has to eat. And if animals died in the process, at least it was for a great cause."
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This article was originally published on page 1 of The Star on September 25, 2007
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