Our Heritage: Keeping Our Stories Alive
By: Dizindaba Staff Reporter
September is Heritage Month in South Africa, a time for communities across the country to celebrate the cultures, languages, traditions and histories that make our nation unique.
This year’s Heritage Month is celebrated under the theme “Reimagine our heritage institutions for a new era.” The theme encourages South Africans to look at heritage in new ways and to consider how museums and other heritage institutions can remain relevant in a changing society.
Heritage is not only about old buildings, monuments and artefacts. It is also about our languages, our names, our music, our food, our traditions, our family histories and the stories told by our elders.
For many communities, particularly in townships and rural areas, much of this knowledge is passed from one generation to another through oral traditions.
Museums must tell our stories
Museums are important custodians of memory and knowledge. Traditionally, they have collected, preserved and displayed objects that tell the story of our past.
But museums can also become places where communities actively participate in telling their own stories.
Technology provides new opportunities to preserve and share heritage. Digital archives, social media, podcasts, videos and virtual exhibitions can help make our history accessible to younger generations and people beyond the walls of a museum.
Our languages are our heritage
For communities such as the isiXhosa-speaking community, language is an important part of cultural identity.
When we preserve isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana, Tshivenda and South Africa’s other indigenous languages, we are also preserving the knowledge and worldview carried by those languages.
Our elders have stories that may never appear in history books. Their memories, photographs, songs, traditions and experiences are part of our collective heritage.
This Heritage Month, families and communities can play their part by recording these stories, speaking our languages, preserving old photographs and teaching children about where they come from.
Heritage belongs to all of us
Heritage is about remembering the past, but it is also about shaping the future.
Our heritage can contribute to education, tourism, creative industries, community development and local economic opportunities. Most importantly, it helps people understand who they are and where they come from.
As South Africa celebrates Heritage Month, let us not only visit heritage sites and museums. Let us also look within our own homes and communities and ask:
What stories are we carrying? What traditions are we preserving? And what will we leave behind for the next generation?
Our heritage is our memory. Let us preserve it, live it and pass it on.
