September marks the annual Heritage Month in South Africa. The theme for this year’s Heritage Month is ‘Reclaiming, restoring and celebrating our living heritage’.
Heritage Month recognises aspects of South African culture which are both tangible and intangible: creative expression such as music and performances, our historical inheritance, language, the food we eat as well as the popular memory.
The Liberation Heritage of South Africa is characterised by peoples’ identification with particular spaces and places shaped by historical events and collective memory.
Various heritage sites and infrastructures in South Africa are named after the liberation struggle icons, e.g.:
- The Sol Plaatjie Municipality in the Northern Cape
- The Nelson Mandela Museum in the Eastern Cape
- Luthuli House in Gauteng
- Shaka Zulu Airport in KwaZulu-Natal
- Tshwane Municipality in Gauteng
- Steve Biko Memorial in the Eastern Cape.
The Liberation Heritage is part of our Cultural Heritage of South Africa
- Liberation Heritage is about the preservation of the history of the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and other oppressive and repressive systems in our society.
- Government calls on all sectors to use our liberation heritage as a vehicle to foster social cohesion, nation building, economic development and inclusive citizenship.
- Our liberation heritage was forged in the theatre of struggle that shaped the new South Africa, and can be actively used to contribute to the revival of social and political consciousness across the country.
- We call upon all South Africans into action to promote a national identity that is self-conscious of its liberation heritage which will in turn serve to promote unity in diversity among all sectors of South African society.