True heritage is owning your own piece of land

Land is our identity, it enables us to belong, to express our culture, writes

Tshepo Diale.

September 24 is celebrated each year as Heritage Day. The central discourse around the day is our shared culture, diversity and traditions in context of a nation that belongs to all. But can we celebrate heritage without land?

The burning land question is actually not a land question. It is more about symbolism, history and inequality than about land to live and farm on.

Land is our identity, it enables us to belong, to express our culture and produce bread. Land is our heritage – the mineral wealth, the seas, the animals. It is worth working for, worth fighting for, and worth dying for because that is the only thing that lasts for ourselves and our descendants.

It is only through the collective ownership of land that we would truly share a collective identity, self-worth and become a truly reconciled society.

There is no heritage without land. Until it is returned, our heritage will continue to be in flux to be cheated into a braai day celebrated in various packs across the country.

Most, if not all, black South Africans feel justifiably strongly about the great injustice done to their ancestors by the descendants of the white arrivals centuries ago by taking most of the land for themselves.

Agricultural land has shifted from being about identity, history and heritage to more of a business commodity, a means to create wealth, job and food security – and that is true of land as a whole.