Khoi Chief Kutela commemorated
ABOUT 350 traditional leaders commemorated the life of Khoisan chief Dr Richard Kutela in an official Freedom Day celebration yesterday.
Chiefs from across the province – men donning animal skins and women wearing red, green, blue and white dresses – attended the ceremony at the City Hall.
The assembly discussed issues closest to Chief Kutela’s heart – human rights, land ownership and service delivery. He died last month.
Marius Fransman, in his keynote address, challenged attendees to start a national dialogue against the “frame of a colonial and apartheid state”, which he said had been built upon, rather than torn down, since 1994.
“Can we honestly say we are ready to take up the warriors of the 1 500 spears and do justice to their legacy?” he asked, the crowd answering with a rousing cheer.
“Can we truly build a developmental path on such a structure or should we dismantle it? Did we compromise too much at the altar of reconciliation?
“Has this province in particular been sensitive to the historical legacy of apartheid social, spatial, racial, religious, cultural, class and ethnic identity engineering, and done anything to address it?
“What has this province done to affirm the culture and heritage of all our peoples, especially the Khoi and the San?”
The memorial service and lecture took place inside City Hall, where Nelson Mandela stood in February 1990 declaring: “Today the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security.”
Fransman said: “But reflecting on events over the past 12 months, the very objective of a non-racial and united-indiversity nation is under threat unless we do not tackle head-on the issues of exclusion, albeit economically, socially and culturally”.
Representatives from the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA, including Boesman and Griquas in addition to Khoi and San, took the stage on Freedom Day to discuss the importance of their ancestry.
“We are here to embrace everyone, to respect everyone,” said High Commissioner of the Griqua Royal House Aaron Martin William Messelaar.
“Khoi sisters, Khoi brothers, stand together with the other leaders here today.
“We are the southern sunrise of the click. We are the bones and the sticks,” said Khoisan artist Amanda hois Stone.
“This is a new day. This is a new beginning, and we must hold on to Dr Kutela’s legacy.”
“As we laid this great leader, this great visionary to rest, we were aware that Dr Kutela’s dream of reclaiming our ancestral land has not been realised,” said Fransman.