We need to recognise others’ cultures

THE opinion piece in The Herald of October 10, “What about society’s responsibility towards repeat offenders”, refers.

I am a National Arts Festival (NAF) addict and I have attended almost every year since its inception.

It is not only about the shows one sees and the music one listens to, it is about the changing face of South Africa.

The festival has gone from an English language festival to yuppies with nose rings and hippie clothes, to the total inclusion of every South African, no matter the colour or class.

The NAF is the third largest festival in the world!

This year a couple of plays brought home the realisation of the difference in our cultures and the largely inferiority complex that we white South Africans have heaped upon the original inhabitants.

One play talked about the children in a household, rejected by the stepfather as they were “not of his blood”. I found it quite shocking and thought-provoking.

Not only have Europeans expected the original inhabitants to live up to a Western culture, but they are given little in-depth schooling and understanding of our culture, and we in turn have taken no cognisance of their culture.

From my point of view, the mining industry caused a terrible breakdown in the family unit.

Miners left homes, wives, children and their cultural identities to live in horrible residences, only to see their kith and kin once a year.

This divided families and the men usually had other women closer to hand.

We now see this dichotomy in their world today, where family life is extremely disconnected.

There are women who have too many children with no husbands or father figures to guide the young, and not much discipline.

The young have lost their sense of self, and added to this is the shocking schooling they receive in the majority of the township and rural schools.

And we wonder why they turn to crime. Maybe part of it is the inferiority feeling or the excitement of the moment, but largely it is the only way to make a living.

Rape I abhor and those who perpetrate it should be more severely punished, but what example do they have, when our head honcho behaves in such a disgusting fashion?

In Pankay Mishra’s book, Age of Anger, he talks about the inferiority complex that the Germans had in the 19th century, leading eventually to World War 2.

We need to be very careful how we move forward and in my opinion the education of our children needs to be far more informed and not use parrot learning, which is quite useless.

We all need to learn the varied cultures that we have and not think that what the Europeans have is correct.

We all need to come down from our perches and extend the hand of friendship and equality to all we meet, and help where we can.