Zenzile Khoisan examines the question of heritage and how it crosses the racial, cultural and class divide.
As we slowly feel the power of spring, shake off winter’s heaviness and prepare for the big days lurking in the wings, it seems natural that Heritage Month would bring us outdoors to share and celebrate the tangible and intangible treasures that are our collective and individual inheritances from the environments and histories that shaped and formed us.
This becomes most apparent on Heritage Day, when many people will attend official and unofficial events arranged by the government, religious organisations, social clubs, NGOs and political parties. Others simply plan to be in a relaxed space at home or outdoors with a braai.
Whatever our choices, there is still a sense that this day will, at one point or another, bring heritage to mind and into our conversations. It is natural that we should be curious about how we relate to the environments within which we exist and how we, as groups, and as a collective, make meaning with the histories that formed us.
These are weighty issues, which go to the essence of our individual and collective cores. However, while there are those for whom heritage is a space of contestation, for challenging false consciousness and blatant untruths and excisions from the historical record, there are others who approach this sensitive subject in a lighter manner, seeking the things that are shared, the ties that bind us and underwrite our collective humanity, often referred to as ubuntu. In approaching heritage from this perspective, as spaces of common ground, I turned to one of Abdullah Ibrahim’s sentinel pieces of music, Water from an Ancient Well.
In that most exceptional offering Ibrahim strips us from our space of certainty, the temple of our familiar, and takes us on a journey to a world in which we would not naturally claim association, even custody. As he explained several years ago, “the very essence of our faith, the path we travelled, the elements that define our identity, and the things that make us truly human”.
What I understood from my discussion with this legend, is that there is more to us than what we think we are, there are elements that give us the pathway and the passport to search for and even define our identities, but that there are also elements in our tangible and intangible heritages that speak to universality, the experiences and the spaces that we have all shared, and can serve as one of our reference points in the quest for social cohesion, reconciliation and restoration. But what is heritage, what does it mean and why is it important or relevant to us, here and now? Is heritage something heavy, immovable, tactile, or is it something lighter, like oral traditions, handed on through generations?
Former president Thabo Mbeki answered this question on heritage day 1999 when he said: “We must work to rediscover and claim the African heritage for the benefit especially of our young generation. From South Africa to Ethiopia lie strewn ancient fossils, which in their stillness still speak of the African origins of all humanity. Recorded history and the material things that time left behind also speak of Africa’s historic contribution to the universe of philosophy, the natural sciences, human settlement and organisation and the creative arts.”
This quote provides food for thought. However, many people would rather enjoy Heritage Day as a time of well-deserved rest. Many view it as the opportunity for intimates and small and large extended families to get together, shoot the breeze, braai, bring out the cards, and catch up on the latest developments in sport, entertainment, social scandal, politics and the gripe list everyone keeps handy for such an occasion. After all the dominoes have fallen, the braais and potjiekos firmly ensconced in tummies, the conversation generally tends to turn to the walk down memory lane, the family histories, the places and events that families tend to pass down from generation to generation.
While everyone has their own quirky, crazy and sometimes disturbing family narratives, there will be many things that will emerge as common to us all. How could we live in Cape Town and not be aware of our greatest common heritage treasure, Hoerikwaggo (Table Mountain). This sandstone rock formation within the Cape supergroup sequence of rocks predates all recorded human habitation (even its very first Khoi and San custodians), and, therefore, is the collective heritage of all who have come to live in its shadow.
There are so many stories from across the racial, cultural and class divide of people who have hiked, climbed or even camped in its caves, or mountain cabins. Whether it is hiking from Constantia Nek, Skeleton Gorge, Platteklip Gorge or just a jolly romp along the pipe track, this mountain holds many treasured memories for all who’ve drank from the fresh water streams, fallen in love or written on the walls of Peyton Place cave. The mountain holds clues to the activities of early inhabitants who took shelter, hunted, gathered and conducted rituals there. Subsequent inhabitants have personal and collective narratives embedded in its rocks.
The same holds true for our collective love of the treasures of the sea. The two oceans that wash the peninsula have brought both hope and trouble, sometimes terrible misery, from which we are still trying to recover, reconcile, restore. Many shipwrecks speak to ancient and modern tragedy, where the force and power of the waters at the Cape of Storms took its toll.
Almost everyone, at one point or another, has been in proximity to this marine heritage, either at Blaauwberg, or Cape Point, Hout Bay, Oudekraal, or False Bay, stretching from Gordon’s Bay to beyond Simon’s Town. Along these coasts are heritages of harvesting the treasures of the sea. Fisherfolk have tales of fish that got away, even as they continue to ply the age-old skill of reeling in the big one.
Speaking of fish, the one thing we Capetonians all certainly share is our memories of Kalk Bay harbour, and scouring the wharf, with its fresh afternoon catch for a yellowtail, a snoek, red roman or some hottentots for a fry or braai. The gutting knives on that wharf are fast and legendary, as are the tongues of the women who sell and slice in one quick movement.
The tongues on that wharf are sharper than the gutting knives, and haggling a determine seller down is not a good idea, as it will produce that most unique Cape Flats vernacular Afrikaans, punctuated with very rude personal remarks or observations. The stories of trips to and from that colourful experience is also a common heritage we all share, something that has been there for a long time, like the fresh fish from the Kalk Bay harbour, nutrient for the ties that bind.
* This article was first published in the Weekend Argus