It’s difficult celebrating Heritage Day when you have nothing to celebrate. It is an awkward time of the year for people like me: born free. This past week, South Africans celebrated dressed in colourful cultural attire at events across the country. I had a braai in my backyard with my daughter and my cat. In my defence, I didn’t braai because the weather was perfect for an outdoor activity or because I enjoyed it eating braaibroodjies. I had a braai because I had to; it was my insignificant way of celebrating Heritage Day. Unlike my fellow South Africans, I didn’t…
It’s difficult celebrating Heritage Day when you have nothing to celebrate. It is an awkward time of the year for people like me: born free.
This past week, South Africans celebrated dressed in colourful cultural attire at events across the country.
I had a braai in my backyard with my daughter and my cat. In my defence, I didn’t braai because the weather was perfect for an outdoor activity or because I enjoyed it eating braaibroodjies.
I had a braai because I had to; it was my insignificant way of celebrating Heritage Day.
Unlike my fellow South Africans, I didn’t have special makeup, beaded jewellery or colourful skirts to wear.
If I wore the cultural attire of the Zulus and mixed it with elements of the Sepedis and a little bit of Xhosa, I would be labelled a wannabe.
Not only did I not own a Voortrekker dress with a doily-like hat, but I wasn’t sure if that was my roots or something I was comfortable wearing – or celebrating for that matter.
Besides, I have always considered those dresses too hot to wear, especially in the middle of spring. I am also not convinced that wearing camouflage T-shirts with PT-shorts and Crocks was the alternative attire for Heritage Day as an Afrikaner.
The hundreds of steps to the Voortrekker Monument do feel far removed from the long walk to freedom, even if Afrikaners there baked and sold the meanest milk tart.
I wasn’t about to sell my soul to the Oranje, Blanje sugar-coated motives served up there. I am unsure if that was my heritage and if I wanted to celebrate it.
I realised this after my domestic worker asked me where my heritage clothes were. It took me a few minutes to figure out what she was referring to.
Growing up in an Afrikaans household, Heritage Day meant braai day next to the pool, dressed in rugby jerseys and dancing langarm to a Kurt Darren tune blaring in the background.
That memory recently cracked when I learned Afrikaans was not a white language, as I was ignorantly made to believed most of my life.
This left me confused about what to celebrate on Heritage Day. Everybody knows SA has a sensitive history, which could be why I “forgot” my so-called heritage, or why I am afraid to explore my roots.
I certainly don’t want to belong to forefathers who orchestrated hate crimes such as apartheid. To be honest, I am also not sure whether I came from a generation of farmers, either.
The whole khaki suits and mielielande aren’t for me either and if I did wear something like that, I would be fooling myself because I have no idea what farm life was about.
But Afrikaners are plesierig when it comes to dishing up food: a Sunday lunch with meat, rice and vegetables is a tradition, followed by a malva pudding and the omnibus of 7de Laan on SABC 2.
Afrikaners are always up for a braai on a Saturday with Klippies and Coke – and biltong while watching their favourite rugby team playing at Loftus.
But, surely, we have more to celebrate than boerekos and sports? Is it time to write a new history for the rainbow nation because I can’t be the only one who feels I don’t belong, or doubt the clan they were supposedly born out of?
After two decades of democracy, there is little positive and uplifting to celebrate in South Africa as a South African. Instead, Heritage Day has become a reminder of the empty promises of a bright future with a rainbow nation.
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