Jerome Slamat
Another Heritage Day has come and gone. Now that the festivities have died down, it may be a good time to reflect on the idea of heritage and perhaps to look at it differently from the way many people understand and talk about it.
Although heritage has something to do with our past, I think it is as much a concept concerned with the future as it is with the past.
To launch the argument that heritage is about the future, I want to briefly explore the relationship between culture and heritage.
Recently a good colleague of mine explained the difference between culture and heritage to us as a committee of the Stellenbosch Heritage Project. According to her, culture is that which people make – music, art, architecture, etc; visible and invisible things. When she put it in these simple terms, my simple mind clicked: we, as people, actively make culture; we have tremendous agency and choice in the making of culture.
Culture is not a static, immovable, reified frame into which we are pressed; and of which we are victims or subjects.
My colleague went on to describe the relationship between culture and heritage: Culture only becomes heritage when it is transferred or carried over to the next generation, for them to make with it as they wish: to accept the cultural inheritance, to pass it on further or to reject it.
Heritage is thus the culture that we choose to pass on.
Up till here I followed my colleague perfectly well, but after this point a critical voice started to play devil’s advocate in my head. This is what the voice said: In the very distant past, theoretically, we may have had experiences of very homogenous communities that produced uniform cultures, that were transferred to the next generation in ways that could be regarded as very obvious, self-evident and unproblematic.
Certainly our current reality is quite different. It is complex, multi-dimensional and diverse: we have majority and minority cultures. Also, our current reality is pervaded by deep inequalities that threaten the sustainability of our society as a whole.
After 20 years of democracy, perhaps the time has come to talk forcefully again about jointly developing a culture that our country and our world needs. It would be a culture that is made by the people of our day and by our own choice, which we can pass on to the next generations; a testament of our generation to the next; a new covenant. What kind of culture do we want to make to leave for our children and grandchildren as a heritage?
If I were to answer this question, I would articulate my preference for a culture of solidarity and remembering.
A culture of solidarity is needed because our country is deeply divided. Besides the separation along racial lines, there is also the divide between rich and poor. South Africa is considered the most unequal country in the world. Unequal societies that lack social cohesion, like ours, are not sustainable. Something is going to give sometime!
Therefore, in my view, we desperately need to establish a culture of solidarity (with all its related concepts like inclusion, connectedness, caring and compassion) to actively militate against the current spirit of rampant individualism and self-interest. We must build solidarity as a crucial link between people and groups that were socially divided from each other historically. It is necessary for us to see ourselves as belonging to one another – each an integral part of the other, individuals who stand in relation to each other as South Africans. Whatever we do or however we live our lives, it affects others.
We also need a culture of remembering because too many glibly say we must forgive and forget the tragic past of our country and move on. No, we must remember, in order for us never, ever again to commit the divisive acts of the past. We must not develop amnesia about our tragic past, but remember it in order that it never, ever happens again in our beautiful country.
But we need also to see the “member” that is hidden in remembering: we must “re-member”, once again become members of each other, belonging to one people. Remember thus does not only imply looking back; it also requires us to look forward to what we can be.
This culture of solidarity and remembering that isn’t threatening our other cultural affiliations and identities, provided they are not explicitly intolerant and discriminatory, will not drop from the sky. We must make it – deliberately, intentionally and purposefully.
We need groups and individuals who can create opportunities for people who were historically separated to engage, encounter and learn from each other. For example, as part of the Stellenbosch Heritage Project, we provide such opportunities each Heritage Day through a public lecture, a mass school choir festival, arts and cultural events, sports events, etc. Also around the same time, Stellenbosch University holds its Diversity Week during which students and staff celebrate diversity with conversations and concerts that are colourful, critical and courageous.
A good point of departure on future Heritage Days may be to learn to recognise each other as fellow human beings, fellow residents, fellow citizens, together with everything that it implies. This would be a good baseline – respect and awe for human life. Let’s add to this baseline a special concern for the poor, small and weak among us and together launch concrete efforts to change their futures, for how we treat them is an important barometer of the character of our society.
For now, we need women and men right across the country and the world to purposefully, intentionally and deliberately work hard to create the opportunities for a culture of solidarity and remembering to flourish.
In this moment in history, our generation has the tremendous agency and choice to make the culture that we desire in the places that we inhabit with our families and loved ones.
Hopefully, we can make or create a culture of solidarity and remembering that one day could become our testament to later generations.
l Dr Slamat is the senior director for Community Interaction at Stellenbosch University. He also serves on the executive committee of the Stellenbosch Heritage Project.