While we will not forget that we come from Soweto, we will always remember that the township is a monument to dispossession, white racism and mass removals
Soweto and its devastating inequality, injustice, drnkeness, rape, theft, murder, over crowding, exploitation and dispossession is our History
We do not want to celebrate this History of dispossession, rejection and self hate
We want to take what we can from this bludgeoned existence that is our past
So what is our Heritage ?
We moved to Diepkloof in the early 1960s when my parents succumbed to the apartheid jackboot of forced mass removals in Sophiatown and Alexandra
They got tired of slum life and allowed apartheid to hurl them into the dry and barren Diepkloof matchbox house
We want and have chosen the love, warmth, kindness and family bonds that kept us united and sane u der dreadful conditions to be our Heritage
Our Heritage is the triumph of the human spirit where both my parents, who worked menial jobs, had the courage to wake up to go serve our oppressors
Our Heritage is the moral strength and spiritual resilience they showed in the face of this brutality that failed to break their spirits
They were very small and unimportant people who, respectively, were a messenger boy and tea-girl, as they were called in those days
But the Heritage they gave and left us was to be fearless and bold and have the courage to face and overcome small minds
And, Lord help us, we have come across many in the course of our growth and development.
We know our History.
Above all, we know our Heritage
Not all History IS Heritage
So what is YOUR heritage