Heritage Day and the Future
Guest Editorial by Michael Shackleton
Heritage Day in South Africa is celebrated this week to mark the contribution that South Africans of all cultures and backgrounds have made to the building up of our young nation.
At present the emphasis is on our “young nation” because, although all love this country, we are grouped into communities with diverse histories, loyalties, cultures and languages.
We have not yet fully coalesced into a common interactive people with one proud national identity. We are indeed the rainbow nation but, like the colours of the rainbow, ours show themselves in distinct parallel lines that do not always share the same space comfortably together.
Heritage Day confronts us with the reminder that the biography of each cultural and linguistic identity is a history that cannot be erased. There are good values and bad in what has become the inheritance of everyone who lives in this wide and wonderful land.
This day’s celebrations must accordingly acknowledge that South Africa’s plurality has been peppered with injustices and crimes of inhumanity. At the same time we know that society is never static. Human activity is not biologically ordered as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it searches endlessly for meaning and intelligibility.
Therefore, in order to realise the words of the preamble to our Constitution that South Africa belongs to all who live in it united in our diversity, we have to acknowledge that we need one another in order to take delight in our diversity and make it work for us.
Respect for the traditions of others is essential. It is easy to dismiss the ways, dress or beliefs of groups that appear to be so unlike one’s own. When one can be interested in these other traditions, and see their worth as part of our inheritance as a nation, then we are on the way to a sense of solidarity.
There is already an intercultural shift moving in our parishes, schools and institutions. This is not merely the sort of mixing seen among crowds in St Peter’s Square where individuals of all nationalities and cultural types rub shoulders while they pray the Angelus with the pope. In this situation there is respect for the other but it is transitory.
In our local Church we see how the Denis Hurley Centre in the archdiocese of Durban is already encouraging cross-cultural and religious dialogue with everyday South Africans of all backgrounds. Mutual respect and courtesies are being exchanged in the interests of the needy and in order to redress the hardships of discrimination. This kind of cooperation cannot but build up confidence in one another and simultaneously in the country as a whole.
Parishes are similarly engaged in bringing disparate communities together to worship and share in a single parish life. Our schools provide excellent opportunities for young folk to value one another’s cultural heritage and to jointly provide assistance to the lesser privileged.
We are not blind to the way so many still have little hope of achieving the standard of living they would like to have. Large numbers are challenged by poverty, poor education, unemployment and hurtful prejudices.
The Catholic Church and Christians of every denomination along with every other religious or cultural group, can contribute immensely to spurring our people on to want to know more about each of the other bright colours of the rainbow nation, not only our own.
When each can see the values that the others can offer, and mutually work with them, the ugly side of our nation’s scandalous poverty gap can be addressed and tackled with the good of the nation and its heritage in mind.
It would be of no credit to this generation if, while we vigorously seek a common identity and mutual respect now, we do not have a long-term plan to carry on the good work to the benefit of future generations.
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