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Used
with permission of the author:
Author: Steuart Pennington
Co-founder and Partner
steuart@sagoodnews.co.za
SOUTH AFRICA - The Good News project
http://www.sagoodnews.co.za
20 November 2007
This article appeared in SOUTH AFRICA - The Good News, 21
September 2007.
“I’m going to spend Heritage
Day reconnecting with my Dutch family,” said a friend of mine as
we chatted at the Primedia ‘1 000 days to 2010’ event. I was
somewhat confused - and it showed. “You see in 1976 I spent six
months in solitary confinement (for printing anti-government
T-shirts), I couldn’t do it again so I escaped to Botswana and
then went into exile in Holland. I married a Dutch girl and had
two children. Sadly when I came back in 1991, they didn’t
accompany me; they have a Dutch heritage and no connection with
South Africa at all. So I came home after 15 years and started a
new life! Nevertheless - they will always be part of my
heritage.”
According to the Oxford Dictionary,
heritage has to do with what we inherit as well as things of
cultural or historic value that are worthy of preservation
Monday 24th September is Heritage
Day.
What is our heritage in South
Africa, what have we inherited and what is worthy of preservation?
The answer depends largely on how
far back one is prepared to go to determine what we have
inherited. The story above tells of an exile heritage, a
person whose life has been substantially informed by several years
in exile, meeting in secret, worrying about South Africa’s
Security Force surveillance, attending Communist bloc-supported
training camps and planning a revolution. A large group of South
Africans have this heritage.
Then there are those who spent a
similar amount of time incarcerated as political prisoners in
jails around the country, mostly in Robben Island. Much of this
time was spent without access to information regarding political
developments, in solitary confinement and in torture rooms with
very few prisoner privileges. This prisoner heritage was
also experienced by a large group of South Africans.
There was another group of
anti-government South Africans who were not jailed but who were a
thorn in the flesh of Nationalist Party politicians. Politically
they aligned themselves to the Progressive Party led by the
remarkable Helen Suzman as they extolled liberal values and
guardedly criticised the ruling party. These people would probably
lay claim to a liberal heritage as well as, in part, the
change of regime in 1994.
Finally, there were those who
supported the National Party and what it stood for during its 46
years of rule. When the Union became a Republic in 1961, these
supporters believed that the divine right to govern, to separate,
to classify was bestowed on ‘His people by the Almighty’.
These people might be quiet today regarding their nationalist
heritage but that’s what it was – in their social,
economic and political lives – race-based nationalism.
The four categories above represent
those people who probably had strong political views and were, in
all likelihood, politically active. But many of us weren’t, that
doesn't mean we didn't have strong beliefs, or strong convictions,
or a point of view. We may have been black or white, rich or poor,
disenfranchised or franchised. We participated in our own ways
with different levels of intensity, but we were there, our
heritage was significantly influenced by the course of events in
this country – an experiential heritage if you like. We
may have identified with one of the above four groups - but we
were not necessarily active in them.
(This list of ‘heritage
categories’ is by no means exhaustive but is intended to
illustrate why so many of our public holidays are viewed in
different ways by different sections of our population.)
So when we celebrate Heritage Day
who will be there and what will we be remembering? Our pre-1994
Heritage? Will many of us want to go that far back? Will we pop in
to the Apartheid Museum to remind ourselves of that dark chapter
in our lives while lamenting what some of that time meant for some
of us?
Monday 24th September will probably
be characterised by the coming together of large numbers of exile
and prisoner compatriots, and people whose experience
is much the same, as they celebrate the freedom won in 1994 and
the signing of our constitution in 1996. But will the same events
be attended by our liberal and nationalist
compatriots – and the people who share experience with them?
Probably not. And least of all by those who present themselves as
modern post-1994 neo-liberals. They will probably argue that there
is nothing to celebrate as they wrestle with their own
disconnectedness. Oddly I think some of our nationalist
compatriots will attend; many are proud of what this country has
achieved and have forsaken the racial ideology that formed part of
their nationalism. No doubt much of our liberal media will carry
cartoons ‘celebrating’ our heritage of crime, corruption,
HIV/Aids, unemployment etc. as if this is all that we have
inherited over the past 13 years!
It’s a pity that we are unable to
celebrate Heritage Day the way the Americans celebrate
Thanksgiving Day or Independence Day exemplified by “My country,
right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be
set right” (US Senator Carl Schurz in 1872) and to demonstrate
the same level of unity.
How we celebrate Heritage Day is
important because it has as much to do with what we perceive as
being of value and worth preserving as it has to do with how others
perceive us. We are seriously challenged with the building of
a national brand that truly reflects our national character. Are
we able to show who we are, as a nation, what we stand for and
where we are going?
As British government advisor (specialising
in the field of nation branding) Simon Anholt says, “A
nation’s reputation is not built through communications, and it
can’t be changed through communications…it is the quality of
marketing done by all the country’s stakeholders and the
consistency between the messages they send out about the place
that builds a positive, famous, well-rounded national reputation.
So it is essential they work together….if they are telling the
same powerful, believable, interesting story about the country,
then the country will start to achieve some control over its
international image.
“And that’s not all, what
really makes the difference is when a critical mass of the
businesses and organisations in the country become dedicated to
the development of new things – new ideas, new policies, new
laws, new products and services etc. When these innovations seem
to be proving a few simple truths about the place they come from,
reputation starts to move, the place produces a buzz, people start
to pay attention, and prepare themselves to change their minds.”
In other words, we need to walk the
talk before we communicate it!
My sense is that Heritage Day must
confront the challenge of building a national reputation. This
will best happen if we focus on the heritage that we are building
post ’94, particularly for the generations that follow and those
who are watching our country. A heritage based on our ‘new’
South Africa; the victory over oppression, the achievement of
universal human rights, the defeat of the scourge of poverty, the
de-racialising of our diversity, our industrial innovation,
spectacular tourism offerings, the building of a new Africa and
the culture of ubuntu. Only then will the exiles,
the prisoners, the liberals, the nationalists and
the experientialists have, at least, some common ground -
acutely aware of their own pre-1994 heritages, but expressly
prepared to put them aside in the interests of building something
of future value, worthy of preservation, as they tell proudly of
the remarkable story that is South Africa.
As branding guru Scott Bedbury said
on a recent visit to South Africa: “A country’s brand is
defined by what is said by anyone, anywhere, at anytime.”
Happy Heritage Day!
Steuart Pennington is devoted full time to the SOUTH
AFRICA -The Good News project and he's primarily responsible
for product content development. Steuart owns Good People
Management (GPM) which specialises in enhancing strategy delivery
for corporates and he continues to publish books about management
practice. He holds a BA.Hons from Rhodes, a PDM from Wits
University and a Certificate in Management from Oxford. Stuart
believes that we "don't describe the future we see … we see
the future we describe." He can be contacted at +27 (0)11
463 5713, steuart@sagoodnews.co.za
or http://www.sagoodnews.co.za.
Short summary
Building reputation starts with action that carries a message out to
the world.
Keywords and relevant phrases
Apartheid, attitude, awareness, beliefs, belonging, celebrate,
communication, connections, constitution, convictions, corporate
culture, culture, development, diversity, economic values,
empowerment, equity, experience, freedom, groupthink, heritage,
history, human rights, ideology, information, innovation, national
brand, national character, national reputation, nationalism,
network, perception, political values, population, poverty,
preservation, pride, race, reputation, social values, stakeholder,
ubuntu, unemployment, unity, values.
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