SPEECH DELIVERED BY MR DANNY GOULKAN ONBEHALF OF ADV.
SONWABILE MANCOTYWA AT THE LIBERATION HERITAGE ROUTE RESEARCH
AND INTER-GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS WORKSHOP HELD AT THE ST
GEORGE HOTEL, PRETORIA ON THE 25 MARCH 2014
Programme Director
Delegates
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
I would like to extend a word of appreciation for all who have made time to join us in our
deliberations here today. This workshop is about receiving the details of the progress we are making
in researching stories and sites about the evolution of the South African liberation struggle. This
probe into the past through the liberation heritage route is drawing attention to the remarkable and
painful journey to freedom which was characterised by deep human sacrifice. The evidence of this
rich liberation heritage has served to inspire and invoke memories which remind our country and the
world about the universal importance of freedom and human dignity. The LHR is a commemoration
and resurrection of the ideas and values which propelled generation of freedom fighters to pursue
the national liberation struggle. Liberation heritage has been an undervalued national inheritance.
The NHC, provincial governments, municipalities and civil society are actively elevating this typology
of heritage. In this country, wars of resistance, great battles, skirmishes and the popular offensive of
mass activism have characterised the resolve of the people to free themselves from the yoke of
colonialism and apartheid.
The Liberation Heritage Route is an identity project. It engages with historical silences, overlapping
and often complex relationships between identity, memory, heritage and the cultural landscapes.
Within the heritage sector it presents an opportunity to remove heritage matters from the periphery
into the mainstream of a developmental state. As Robert Angera once said “In the arts we get a
second chance, possibilities, prophetic mission, another eye, an intimation of possibilities that are
suppressed and denied”
The LHR contains the ingredients to re-assert the uniqueness of the South African human
experience, in an effort to make this country a better place to live for all its citizens.
Across space
and time, generations of peace-loving South Africans took the historical oath to rid this country of
oppression, exploitation and repression and to restore the dignity of the majority of her people.
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With mounting levels of consciousness freedom fighters fought relentlessly for the liberation of the
oppressed.
The central importance of memory is that it reminds us of the good and the bad.
Through the
dominance of the apartheid regime in the day to day lives of the majority, the state was able to
utilize excessive force, brutal force, detention and assassination to instil fear on the freedom
fighters, but they remained relentless in their resolve to fight for total emancipation, not on the
terms of the regime, but they were propelled by the ideal of freedom and democracy based on the
will of the people.
The conceptualization of the LHR was aimed at revisiting significant, unique-and-never-to-berepeated experiences which made an indelible mark in the national effort for freedom. Through the
LHR the country is provided an opportunity to reflect on the long road to freedom, to share
perceptions on the then diverse social, political, class and economic contradictions.
Available research and other historical material provides evidence that this is a country that gave
Africa and the world great thinkers and leaders such as John Langalibalele Dube, Pixley kaSeme,
Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Charlotte Maxeke, Ruth
First and countless other principled and effective leaders of our freedom. Powerful and influential
in the context of South Africa they always enjoyed social proximity to their constituencies and
always carried popular mandate in the execution of their tasks for a free country.
Various ideologies and political philosophies were developed to ensure that oppressed South
Africans reclaim their citizenship by determining their destiny through selfless efforts which led to
detention, life imprisonment, exile or death. Such work to refine the most relevant ideology had a
profound effect on the different generations to whom we owe the freedom in South Africa. An
earlier generation of African Intellectuals made their contributions to retain core African values, and
to defend the history of the Africans which colonialists sought to erase permanently. Through the
LHR the South African government seeks to preserve these experiences.
This repertoire of
knowledge is of such immense importance, as it captures, for durability, this originality of thought
that emanated from eminent and ordinary South Africans. The confrontation with colonialism and
imperialism triggered a sustained wave of producing gallant fighters with deep theoretical
grounding, who were ready to undertake the most difficult tasks of the South African Revolution.
The heroic efforts of our people need to be recorded across the length and breadth of the country,
and the NHC initiated what was conceived as a national effort to preserve this memory, providing an
opportunity for freedom fighters and South Africans across the spectrum to share their experiences,
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their untold stories and the unparalleled human experience. The LHR is implemented within the
context of mainstreaming the memory of South African people. Apartheid colonialism sought to
ossify critical thinking and thereby emasculating the consciousness of Africans and destroying our
cultural identities.
The struggle against forgetting is sustained to unearth those aspects and core values of the
liberation struggle which have not found expression in the mainstream historical narratives, and
those stories which have been neglected during the post-apartheid era of reconstructing and
regenerating the important elements of our road to freedom.
A full account of all the patriotic
movements of sacrifice and bravery is needed in order to stitch together all these stories to make a
compelling case for the World Heritage listing of the LHR.
It is the desire of the NHC to ensure that cultural heritage preservation is transforming conventional
thinking within the state. In 2011, the National Cabinet of South Africa took the following resolution
with regard to the Liberation Heritage Route:
(a) the DAC / NHC develops a conceptual framework which the LHR will become an integral element
thereof. The framework must be based on existing historical and cultural research;
(b) the Minister of Arts and Culture must convene an Inter-Ministerial Committee consisting of
Minsters of Science and Technology, Basic Education, Public Works and Cooperative Governance
and Traditional Affairs.
(c) the IMC must consider a pilot project which must put emphasis on establishing a strategy to deal
with infrastructure and the development of heritage tourism facilities as one of the main focuses
for the strategy.
This is evidence that the management of the legacy of the liberation struggle is gaining momentum
within the state. Provincial Executive Councils and Municipalities have pondered on the strategic
importance of the LHR and have unconditionally endorsed this cultural heritage project. The InterGovernmental Relations and Protocol document seeks to provide a framework to cement and
sustain these commitments. It outlines roles from the local state to national government. In playing
our role as a state organ, the NHC inaugurated a new phase in the LHR Provincial Chapters through
the appointment of LHR Provincial Coordinators.
LHR Provincial Co-ordinators have been engaged to ensure that liberation heritage matters and the
liberation heritage route specifically are mainstreamed in the planning regime of provinces and
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municipalities, and that they implement different pre-planned activities necessary to advance the
cause of liberation heritage, keeping the NHC head office informed of developments in the
provinces, create and sustain provincial and local chapters, facilitate the adoption and
implementation of the Inter=Governmental Relations guideline document and related policies.
The LHR Provincial Coordinators have been appointed specifically to explore the possibilities of the
design of a public policy strategy for the LHR in provinces and municipalities. They will be expected
to work towards the positioning of the LHR as a strategic heritage project, which has immense
relevance in fiscal planning, infrastructure planning, spatial planning, economic development
planning, heritage development research and management of inter-governmental and inter-sectoral
relations.
Considering the amount of positive interest it has generated from the provincial
governments and municipalities, it has become important to redefine the LHR within the context of
public policy discourse in these multi-jurisdictional contexts.
The LHR has been profiled as a strategic resource for socio-economic development and growth. The
practical implementation of the project seeks to unlock value from the rich liberation heritage and to
harness that value for socio-economic development. That line of action will enhance the socioeconomic prospects of the LHR in multi-jurisdictional areas.
The LHR, through consultations across South Africa, was found to be having full meaning to many
South Africans. The inestimable value attached by our compatriots have given the LHR a big push as
we sought to extend ownership to as many people and communities as possible. The nature of the
relationship between the work on the LHR and the people of this country is of vital importance.
Such relations are asserted by ensuring that ordinary South Africans, who are carriers of the memory
of the liberation struggle are given opportunities to narrate their experiences. Without asking for
eloquent and intelligent narration, the Human Sciences Research Council, the University of Fort
Hare and many other researchers on the LHR were able to receive the most amazing, painful, deep,
authentic and accurate accounts about their experiences, the role of their communities and their
political organizations in the liberation struggle.
These are also benefits of a democratic, peaceful, socially inclusive and open society. Through the
LHR the state has a mutually reinforcing relationship with society.
We are building on the
relationship to advance the most compelling storyline about our road to freedom. The people are
indeed invaluable to the project. Through the work of the LHR Provincial Coordinators, we are
scaling up our work to mobilize people to come forward to narrate their stories and to identify the
important spaces, where it happened and who was there. The role of the Provincial Coordinators is
to grow interest in the LHR and to develop viable patterns for community level participation. Sitting
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between the family and the state, the civil society arena can make its contribution in the public
sector programmes. Strong civil society does necessarily translate into increased public policy
discourse and influence.
The African Liberation Heritage Programme, that initiative which was inspired by the work of the
Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and implemented during the era of
the African Union is a continental effort to research, document and preserve the country-specific,
common and shared liberation heritage, which captures the trans-national and regional
revolutionary alliances which increased the fighting capacity of the liberation movements. The LHR
is the South African Chapter of the African Liberation Heritage Programme.
The National Heritage Council has been spearheading the Liberation Heritage Route within South
Africa and interacting with professionals and veterans in neighbouring countries with respect to
the Liberation Heritage Route. South Africa as a state party to the World Heritage Convention has
set aside some resources to facilitate the inscription of a set of properties under the new typology
of Liberation Heritage Routes which has already been included in a tentative list.
In addition to the fact that South Africa’s international relations stance reflects an emphasis on
common a common African approach on multilateral matters, common consensus is that the
Liberation Route can never have a complete narrative without reference to the abundant evidence
of its broader African link. South Africa’s liberation is part of Africa’s broader liberation.
The LHR also sustains commentary on the international solidarity enjoyed by the South African
National liberation struggle. The activities of the international community demonstrated a global
shift towards the importance of the human rights movements, peace and democracy. Those
struggles deconstructed ideologies of racial superiority in many countries and communities across
the world. As part of its narrative the LHR focuses on the scattered archives of the liberation
struggle and the role of the anti-apartheid movement across the world.
Imperialism, with its concomitant colonial subjugation wrought havoc, not only in terms of military
conquest but also intellectual conquest. Colonialism “conquered” and “subjugated” knowledge
systems that informed the history of indigenous communities. Colonialism sought to deny Africans
of their knowledge, usurping our power to try to and exert their hegemony over Africa. Through
the LHR the South African government seeks to reverse those losses, utilizing the memory of the
liberation struggle to produce multiple layers of knowledge spirals.
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In conclusion, the Minister of Art and Culture, the Board of the NHC attach immense value to the
LHR and to the government and social partners that are committing towards the development of the
LHR. Indeed we owe it to our children and to succeeding generations, to spare no effort in retracing
the millions of footsteps which paved our path to freedom.
I thank you.
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