Heritage emphasis causes division

Celebrating culture

I HAVE two grandchildren at school and well-meaning teachers have no doubt during September, with Spring Day and Heritage Day, all been eager to inculcate values in their pupils that epitomises the spirit of the “new” South Africa.

The promotion of different cultures can cause untold harm to our children.

I was tearfully asked by my granddaughter what she had to wear on Heritage Day as she wasn’t aware of a culture.

While thinking about an answer to this serious problem, hate once again welled up in me towards those who created the apartheid-cultural myth.

What do I say to a six-year old or even a 12-year-old?

Can I adequately explain this?

Children are unfortunately told that if they do not wear cultural dress they’ll be disciplined in some way or another (this may merely be to ensure they wear some form of cultural dress) or, alternatively, if they do not have a culture they should wear “jeans and a white top”.

This is demeaning in the extreme, even if said in jest.

Is this not teaching children at a very early age that there are differences among people?

This action by teachers can leave long-term psychological scars.

This practice is however mostly prevalent in the former Model C schools.

The social system that spawned tribalism and thus culture is a social formation that relates to a developmental stage in human society. This is not exclusive to Africans. Surely the Norsemen, the Germanic people, the Grecians and all other peoples of the world went through this developmental stage, probably even later than the Africans.

However, this has only been maintained in Africa for the purpose of dominance and exploitation by European colonisers.

The classical example is of the Zanu-Zapu wars of liberation.

In South Africa we have Zulus, Xhosas, Vendas, etc.

In Kenya and the rest of Africa there are numerous tribes.

For historical reasons related to oppression and exploitation, the Africans have been divided and ruled, and led to believe in this myth. Why the myth? In 2004 Livingstone Mqotsi wrote an essay entitled Tribalism is an archaism and a divisive myth.

In 1958, Mqotsi obtained an MA degree at Wits University in cultural anthropology which also involves the study of psychology.

He stated that evidence showed that the concept of present-day “tribes” was a myth that had been developed into a fully-fledged mythology by the advocates of “race” differences.

These ideas emanated from those who promoted the ideas of “white Western civilisation”.

Let me say without fear of contradiction that there is no such thing as Western civilisation created by the Europeans alone.

There is only human civilisation to which all men all over the world contributed.

What is being entrenched is further division among the peoples of Africa and particularly in South Africa with its history of apartheid.

Surely this is only creating further division among South Africans?

Why don’t we build the South African nation and celebrate a South African culture?

Hamilton Petersen, Uitenhage