Keeping the past perfect

So frenzied was the attack on the authorities that professional government-bashers from Cosatu or the DA would have been cowed into inadequate blushes.

And the occasion seemed an unlikely one for such insurrectionary talk — National Heritage Council public hearings at the Hilton hotel in Durban recently.

The KwaZulu-Natal leg was the penultimate in a province-by-province tour designed to seek input from the public before developing the National Heritage Transformation Charter.

With the Reed Dance in Nongoma and the accompanying virginity testing still in the air, the Children’s Act drew most flak. And with the kitchen sink went the measuring glass: ‘Our children can get married and act as they want,” said one old woman, bemoaning the law’s alleged subversion of parental power. ‘Our children now get married and have children at the age of 12, that is because of our own government’s laws.”

‘The government is responsible for the spread of Aids because they have outlawed the virginity testing and are building these mjondolos for our children to have sex in. Our children are leaving our homes for the slums they are building,” said another, to rapturous applause and ululation.

These were responses to ‘cross-­cutting questions” on the agenda, including: ‘What, in your considered opinion, needs to be changed or transformed such that the [heritage and cultural] sector contributes to the Reconstruction and Development ­Programme?” and ‘Who, in your view, is best suited or qualified to bring about the proposed changes?”

One couldn’t help but pity advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa, the heritage council’s CEO. With the passing of the National Heritage Council Act of 1999, the body was mandated to ‘develop, promote and protect national heritage”, indigenous knowledge systems and language.

The public feedback sessions were envisaged as a platform from which to move towards an enabling environment for South Africa’s various cultures to coexist and flourish within a broader nationhood, and determine how heritage can be used to create jobs.

Nothing hurts more than being ­earnest about something no one takes seriously. But Mancotywa remains doggedly optimistic: ‘People were passionate because the Reed Dance happened recently and KwaZulu-Natal has always been very strong on matters of heritage and culture. We took it in a positive way, people needed to express their concerns,” he said.

‘Culture is very sensitive, and the public did display that in all the provinces. It touches on people’s identity. The understanding and appreciation of the identities makes a case for coexistence and nation building. It is the acknowledgement of the cultures that will lead the country to a unified destiny.”

He believes that, as South Africa shifts its focus to issues of heritage, these are exciting times that can be used to create a uniquely South African blend of modernity, traditionalism, constitutional imperatives and African value systems.

Is there a danger that modernising legislation could be overturned in the name of ‘culture”? Not necessarily, he says.

But he believes that the recommendations of the proposed charter ‘should not be ghettoised within the department of arts and culture”.

‘Heritage needs to get away from being purely about aesthetics. The charter needs to be put into the legislative domain because, in many instances, this is the first time that the heritage sector is making an input.

‘Matters of identity and values are very important to people, and the challenge is how to integrate heritage into the day-to-day lives of people.”

For Mancotywa the integration of modern and traditional health systems, the issue of linguistic dominance and usage in the public domain, and the matter of nuclear versus extended families are ‘exciting opportunities to engage each other”.

In the morass of last week’s hearing, there were one or two salient points. They included concerns about intellectual property rights over heritage and lack of transformation in a sector that is bound to be further exploited to create employment.

There was consensus that heritage allied with tourism was the most promising route to job creation in the sector, but there is a pervasive fear that culture will be debased and become a commodity.

‘We have to ensure a delicate balance between preserving and commercialising heritage,” agrees Mancotywa, ‘if you interpret and preserve heritage properly it will market itself. If you start the other way, that is dangerous.”

With culture controlled by government apparatchiks, most of whom cannot distinguish Solomon Linda from Linda Lovelace, isn’t this happening already?

‘We need a new consciousness among politicians; they may have to be educated to understand this ‘problem child’ called heritage. Social memory is extremely important … perhaps we have to shift guardianship and issues of funding out of the hands of politicians,” said Mancotywa.

The trickle-down benefits of tourism are not being felt at the grass roots, it appears ­– despite government figures indicating that of seven million tourists who visited South Africa last year, 26% participated in historical and cultural activities.

At the launch of the Tourism Black Economic Empowerment Charter in March, Environment Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk bemoaned the lack of transformation in the sector, which contributed 8,3% to the GDP last year. Van Schalkwyak said there was ‘still a long way to go” before an ‘equitable industry” developed.

Mancotywa hopes the charter will help to rectify this.

As the heritage charter hearings ended last week, he said that about 3 000 ‘heritage practitioners” had been given a platform to have their say. A national consultation will be held, possibly by the end of next month, to give the public another opportunity to comment on the draft charter before it reaches Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan’s in tray.