Boerewors and pap, suburb-style; shisanyama, kasi-style; tikka chicken, Bo-Kaap style. All these and many more are the images conjured of South Africans celebrating Heritage Day with their families, friends and neighbours.

More so than its official purpose to foreground the diversity of cultural communities and heritage that make up our nation – this will be for many how they spend the day.

It is to the braai that they return after attending events hosted by museums, cultural collectives, community centres and local authorities.

It is because of the very fact that the braai is so commonplace and yet so significant in the daily life of different cultural communities and their sense of heritage and history that Heritage Day in everyday language has become Braai Day.

Several commentators scoff at it, considering the trend a flimsy attempt to define common heritage in a nation so divided by its own and colonial history. Others take hold of it, claiming it as a worthwhile project to move beyond divided pasts.

The debate on the merits and failures of equating a national day and its commitment to celebrate differences to braaing, however, in itself illustrates the original problem of cultural heritage: to define what and whose it is, or more precisely, to decide who and what best represents any and every cultural community.

The argument that Braai Day trivialises the richness and nuance of different cultures is similar to the more formal argument of “cultural reduction”.

To do so is to select one or only a few characteristics or artefacts to describe the complexities of a whole cultural community, and thereby to reduce its many characters and histories to a select few – to be blind to the many faces and silence the many voices that together make up a cultural community.

The argument that Braai Day makes the national celebration a lived reality rather than a shapeless political project by offering a way to everyday citizens to appreciate diverse cultures is similar to the more formal argument for “cultural appreciation”, or better yet, “cultural embrace”.

To do so is to explore what is unique in the way that local communities express their sense of cultural self, thereby broadening the characteristics with which actual and original, and often novel, cultural identities are associated.

“Back to the museum and the cultural programme,” one demands. “Go to the streets and see real culture,” the other replies. The contest for the museum or the street to be the point of departure, however, represents a hidden struggle.

On the surface the debate rages against reduction and cultural appropriation – the careless adoption for yourself that which is the heritage of another – and for the appreciation and embrace of diverse and shared cultures.

Behind it all the struggle persists between the fundamental characteristics of one cultural community and the multitude of unique traits of diverse groups who are a part of the community for sharing similar attributes associated with that culture.

It is the struggle of which definitions of a culture is considered to be its truest representation, and which versions of that culture are seen as its watered-down parts.

It is the struggle of who really represents the “us” of a culture, as much as the “them” of another. It is the struggle of who must do more to become a better version of the “us” – a hierarchy of power gained and lost.

Rather, culture and heritage establishes an interconnected ecology of the museum and the streets, and everyone and every space in-between.

* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Cape Argus

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