It is my humanistic allegiance that we understand and know things for what they are my fellow brothers.

I thus feel obligated to educate where I feel capacitated, and learn where I feel that I fall short. Let us talk heritage for a minute. IN IT’S STRICTEST DEFINITION:

heritage is an inheritance: meaning it is something that is received or left with from a predecessor or former owner.

Out of ignorance and possibly lack of understanding, the people of my pigmentation have reduced heritage to solely culture and tradition.

We have cultural heritage of course, but that is not heritage wholesomely. If you are made to believe so, you’re being robbed in day light.

Heritage is a tree with several branches; of which non is more important than the other.

It is like a puzzle, it is only recognised as heritage in its wholesomeness; when all the pieces are put together. THE PIECES OF THIS PUZZLE ARE:

Cultural heritage, Natural heritage, Indigenous heritage and Historical heritage.

Any other known piece; not mentioned above will in some way or the other overlap with the above mentioned.

Did you pickup the trend in the aforementioned? (We will discuss it later as we go along).

Firstly; we must establish that, a people without a heritage, are doomed to be a missing link in humanity. They are prone to be assimilated by other cultures and/ groups, in the process losing what dearly makes them a people as a collective and distinctly; resulting to loss of identity. “Loss of identity” is in itself an article, I will not go through it in this opinion piece.

Moreover we have seen this befell our fellow brothers; the Khoisan. The Khoisan resided in South Africa thousands of years before the Bantu people (I will not go into their destruction any further in this article).

It is however important to note that the Khoisan people of South Africa are absorbed under a general umbrella identification of coloured people; which in my opinion is very much insultive.

They are desolate and have lost their identity. The few that still preserves their exclusive identity is not given its much deserved respect as a people with their own distinct identity.

Back to the trend. The trend I hoped that you would have picked up there; is the relationship or common factor that exists between “those” pieces of a puzzle that make up what heritage is wholesomely.

The relationship is in the fact that non of those pieces is existent independent of land.

Our very heritage and identify is inalienable with the land. Our culture, natural entities, indigenous heritage and history. The reason our heritage is washing away is simply because we cannot preserve it, we cannot see ourselves in it, WE ARE LANDLESS!

The intangible and tangible value of our heritage is thus sadly washing away. While on the subject, that is not a mistake.

The white settlers knew exactly that the important element to colonize a people is to dehumanise them, take away what makes them, and indoctrinate them to deem themselves inferior and worth no identity.

IT WAS A CALCULATED MOVE! I cry and yearn for the restoration of a BlackChild.

“All the issues that we face are connected. Worldwide, ecosystems are being destroyed, and indigenous peoples are losing their homelands and their entire way of life.“~ Ocean Robbins

“I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet. –“Edward James Olmos

“If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land — you lose your culture, you lose self.”— Richard Gere

“When European explorers ‘discovered’ lands on the other continents, there were already people living there. All too often the explorers took the land away from the native or indigenous peoples and either killed them or suppressed them. In many cases, the native languages and cultures were suppressed and the natives were forced to adopt Western ways. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a thing of the past — many indigenous peoples and their cultures are still threatened today.”–Robert Alan Silverstein

“For Indigenous people, the goal for our land is definitely about protection, but it’s also about use. We see ourselves as so integrated with our territory that our protection is tied to our use and our use is tied to our protection. We use the resources on our territory to live.”

— Rebecca Adamson

In conclusion. We need to decolonise our country and take back our land, this institutionalized colonialism needs to fall. We need to see ourselves in our architecture.

We shouldn’t take it for granted that we feel like visitors in our own land. Everything in this colonial system does not identify to our values and society’s belief systems. WE NEED TO ASK QUESTIONS!:

Why is it that our history is not taught in depth in school; instead we are taught about the French revolution and western heroes?!

I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO CELEBRATE!

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