Date: 14/08/2005
Source: SAPA
Title: Creecy: African Cultural Music and Dance Association Symposium
Address by Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture MEC Barbara Creecy at the African Cultural Music and Dance Association Symposium at the Jabulani Amphitheater, Soweto
Thank you Programme Director
His Majesty the King,
Mayor Amos Masondo,
The leadership of the church,
Fellow speakers,
Respected Elders,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of Premier Mbhazima Shilowa and the Province of Gauteng, thank you for the invitation to share a perspective with you in the context of the "Izimilo-Namasiko" initiative for moral regeneration through indigenous African culture.
It gives me particular pleasure as the MEC for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture to represent the Gauteng Provincial Government at this event. Culture and the arts are vital to the life-blood of people. It feeds our hearts, our minds and souls. This is as necessary a need for human being as is food for the stomach - quite apart from the fact that culture also thoroughly infuses the meeting of our material needs.
In a context such as ours where the cultures of the majority of our people has over generations been suppressed, denied and distorted, the imperative of cultural development is even more important.
We are a society ruptured from our indigenous historical experience, and this I believe cannot but leave us ruptured too, as a people and as individuals - deep down in the depth of our souls.
Ask any victim of apartheid forced removals and they will tell you the meaning of this, for the experience I believe is not dissimilar and the parallel is instructive.
It means that you are cleaved apart from historical belonging, from historical formation and development; that you are uprooted, displaced and dislocated - no least spiritually; that you are in a state of exile and do not even know it; fragmented; alienated; torn asunder; suffering loss of values and soul
Little wonder then that in the sprawling Group Area and barren Bantustan ghettoes of our country, our people gave witness of an increase in alcohol and drug abuse, in violence and gangsterism; of racial and intra ethnic and religious tension; of the loss of values of sharing and caring; of sharper divides between rich and poor.
I believe we need to understand the need for regeneration in the context of the impact of colonialism and apartheid and its still prevailing legacies. Because the sense of belonging and validation we must experience in socially cohesive community, is perhaps the key to healthy, happy, caring, constructive relations.
Even in the most decrepit urban slums in pre-forced removals South Africa, there was a sense of shared, integrated, cohesive community; of caring and sharing that underpinned the daily lives of communities, protecting and nurturing the people of those communities and their relationships one with another. This is the witness borne, in our own Province, by the historical residents of Marabastad, Sophiatown and Fietas as it is of the people of District Six and Cato Manor.
In this regard, just as an aside, I think that the way we organise and relate to space is also relevant to the promotion of socially cohesive and integrated communities.
It is such a disconnection from historical belonging, as a result of colonial subjugation, that attunes me to a relationship between regeneration and indigenous culture and the suggestion that, in historical terms, the brutal disconnection we have suffered from indigenous cultural development contributes to the expressions of breakdown in social life that the "Izimilo-Namasiko" initiative seeks to address.
Let us take language as an example
A father said to me that he struggles to get his young children to practice a concept of respect for elders through referring to them in the third person, even when these elders are being directly addressed, because the English language he says, does not naturally allow for it or promote it - as might say Zulu or Urdu.
So through language we communicate profound concepts, values and ways of seeing the world. How much diminished are we I ask, as a result of predominantly engaging our world in languages and reference points brought to us on the back of colonial conquest and assimilation?
Given the historical balance of power in the world, this domination at the expense of indigenous languages may be inevitable, but that should not stop us critically engaging its implications for the nature of our society, its discourse and practices.
Are we about putting one another down or helping one another up
Are we about stabbing one another in the back or about Ubuntu?
If one looks around at media billboards today, driven by market share and the bottom line, they laud - actually sell as noble -scandal, conflict, jealously, power abuse, violence, infidelity.
In the context of globalisation, this seems to be fallout that is driving our values today.
In this context, the work of the African Cultural Music and Dance Association is important. You help us through your varied programmes to reconnect with and reclaim our indigenous roots so that we may indeed reclaim our very selves.
The concept of umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu for example, is age old and highly relevant to South Africa today.
Its values has pervasive practical application, including for our democratic practice I believe, challenging among other things such concepts of democracy as rigidly conflictual two party systems or, the denial of individual human rights to any person in settings that are autocratic, whether private or community.
"I am because you are".
Can we deny this to anyone at all? On whatever grounds at all?
I believe that in the concept of Ubuntu we may even have a profound approach to non-racialism and the development of a shared national identity that fully appreciates its cultural diversity.
I take from this that you can only know yourself through knowing others, even to the point, or especially to the point, of stepping outside of yourself so that you may be able to look back on what defines you with renewed appreciation.
And who can deny that in the process, as we know only so well in South Africa, that you become infused with and embrace as your own, other cultural modes and expressions so as to make a whole new diversely integrated you, ironically, rooted perhaps even more in your own cultural identity precisely because of engagement, interaction and sharing with diverse others. So you know yourself only through others, diverse others.
It is interesting to note that there is a precise echo of this in other cultural traditions, underscoring the potential and scope for inclusivity rather than exclusivity in our drawing on indigenous traditional philosophies.
In Islam, Allah is said to have created us differently so that we may know one another, not despise one another. And we are well familiar with the English and Afrikaans concepts of "Eendrag maak mag" and "No Man is an Island".
This discussion of this one example, by itself, offers the richness of the contribution that indigenous outlooks may make to the development of our national life today.
The work of the African Cultural Music and Dance Association is important especially because the vast treasures of our indigenous culture are not being sufficiently mined for their contribution to the making of a free and democratic South Africa.
Let our approach be to mine our indigenous cultural treasures so as to enrich the provisions of our constitutional democracy and deny to none: "I am because you are".
Siyabonga.
For more information contact: Nomazwe Ntlokwana
Tel: (011) 355 2578
Cell: 083 507 8068
Issued by: Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture, Gauteng Provincial Government 14 August 2005
Source: SAPA
Source: SAPA
Title: Creecy: African Cultural Music and Dance Association Symposium
Address by Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture MEC Barbara Creecy at the African Cultural Music and Dance Association Symposium at the Jabulani Amphitheater, Soweto
Thank you Programme Director
His Majesty the King,
Mayor Amos Masondo,
The leadership of the church,
Fellow speakers,
Respected Elders,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of Premier Mbhazima Shilowa and the Province of Gauteng, thank you for the invitation to share a perspective with you in the context of the "Izimilo-Namasiko" initiative for moral regeneration through indigenous African culture.
It gives me particular pleasure as the MEC for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture to represent the Gauteng Provincial Government at this event. Culture and the arts are vital to the life-blood of people. It feeds our hearts, our minds and souls. This is as necessary a need for human being as is food for the stomach - quite apart from the fact that culture also thoroughly infuses the meeting of our material needs.
In a context such as ours where the cultures of the majority of our people has over generations been suppressed, denied and distorted, the imperative of cultural development is even more important.
We are a society ruptured from our indigenous historical experience, and this I believe cannot but leave us ruptured too, as a people and as individuals - deep down in the depth of our souls.
Ask any victim of apartheid forced removals and they will tell you the meaning of this, for the experience I believe is not dissimilar and the parallel is instructive.
It means that you are cleaved apart from historical belonging, from historical formation and development; that you are uprooted, displaced and dislocated - no least spiritually; that you are in a state of exile and do not even know it; fragmented; alienated; torn asunder; suffering loss of values and soul
Little wonder then that in the sprawling Group Area and barren Bantustan ghettoes of our country, our people gave witness of an increase in alcohol and drug abuse, in violence and gangsterism; of racial and intra ethnic and religious tension; of the loss of values of sharing and caring; of sharper divides between rich and poor.
I believe we need to understand the need for regeneration in the context of the impact of colonialism and apartheid and its still prevailing legacies. Because the sense of belonging and validation we must experience in socially cohesive community, is perhaps the key to healthy, happy, caring, constructive relations.
Even in the most decrepit urban slums in pre-forced removals South Africa, there was a sense of shared, integrated, cohesive community; of caring and sharing that underpinned the daily lives of communities, protecting and nurturing the people of those communities and their relationships one with another. This is the witness borne, in our own Province, by the historical residents of Marabastad, Sophiatown and Fietas as it is of the people of District Six and Cato Manor.
In this regard, just as an aside, I think that the way we organise and relate to space is also relevant to the promotion of socially cohesive and integrated communities.
It is such a disconnection from historical belonging, as a result of colonial subjugation, that attunes me to a relationship between regeneration and indigenous culture and the suggestion that, in historical terms, the brutal disconnection we have suffered from indigenous cultural development contributes to the expressions of breakdown in social life that the "Izimilo-Namasiko" initiative seeks to address.
Let us take language as an example
A father said to me that he struggles to get his young children to practice a concept of respect for elders through referring to them in the third person, even when these elders are being directly addressed, because the English language he says, does not naturally allow for it or promote it - as might say Zulu or Urdu.
So through language we communicate profound concepts, values and ways of seeing the world. How much diminished are we I ask, as a result of predominantly engaging our world in languages and reference points brought to us on the back of colonial conquest and assimilation?
Given the historical balance of power in the world, this domination at the expense of indigenous languages may be inevitable, but that should not stop us critically engaging its implications for the nature of our society, its discourse and practices.
Are we about putting one another down or helping one another up
Are we about stabbing one another in the back or about Ubuntu?
If one looks around at media billboards today, driven by market share and the bottom line, they laud - actually sell as noble -scandal, conflict, jealously, power abuse, violence, infidelity.
In the context of globalisation, this seems to be fallout that is driving our values today.
In this context, the work of the African Cultural Music and Dance Association is important. You help us through your varied programmes to reconnect with and reclaim our indigenous roots so that we may indeed reclaim our very selves.
The concept of umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu for example, is age old and highly relevant to South Africa today.
Its values has pervasive practical application, including for our democratic practice I believe, challenging among other things such concepts of democracy as rigidly conflictual two party systems or, the denial of individual human rights to any person in settings that are autocratic, whether private or community.
"I am because you are".
Can we deny this to anyone at all? On whatever grounds at all?
I believe that in the concept of Ubuntu we may even have a profound approach to non-racialism and the development of a shared national identity that fully appreciates its cultural diversity.
I take from this that you can only know yourself through knowing others, even to the point, or especially to the point, of stepping outside of yourself so that you may be able to look back on what defines you with renewed appreciation.
And who can deny that in the process, as we know only so well in South Africa, that you become infused with and embrace as your own, other cultural modes and expressions so as to make a whole new diversely integrated you, ironically, rooted perhaps even more in your own cultural identity precisely because of engagement, interaction and sharing with diverse others. So you know yourself only through others, diverse others.
It is interesting to note that there is a precise echo of this in other cultural traditions, underscoring the potential and scope for inclusivity rather than exclusivity in our drawing on indigenous traditional philosophies.
In Islam, Allah is said to have created us differently so that we may know one another, not despise one another. And we are well familiar with the English and Afrikaans concepts of "Eendrag maak mag" and "No Man is an Island".
This discussion of this one example, by itself, offers the richness of the contribution that indigenous outlooks may make to the development of our national life today.
The work of the African Cultural Music and Dance Association is important especially because the vast treasures of our indigenous culture are not being sufficiently mined for their contribution to the making of a free and democratic South Africa.
Let our approach be to mine our indigenous cultural treasures so as to enrich the provisions of our constitutional democracy and deny to none: "I am because you are".
Siyabonga.
For more information contact: Nomazwe Ntlokwana
Tel: (011) 355 2578
Cell: 083 507 8068
Issued by: Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture, Gauteng Provincial Government 14 August 2005
Source: SAPA
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