Heritage Day falls on Shabbat this year

SUZANNE BELLING

Heritage Day, which celebrates South African cultural diversity, falls this year on Saturday, September 24. Unfortunately – for observant Jews – it precludes the traditional braais held across the country.

Usually on this day, South Africans across the spectrum are encouraged to display their culture and traditions. This is in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people.

Wendy Kahn, national director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies told Jewish Report: “Unfortunately Heritage Day is on Shabbat so we can’t participate in the Heritage Day carnival as we did last year.

However, she said: “We are concentrating more on Heritage month with the 175-year exhibition [of SA Jewry] that was opened in Cape Town.”

Dr Dave Kaplan, who has rooms in Lyndhurst, says the schools in the neighbourhood usually mark Heritage Day on the Friday before the weekend.

“I just love that my little patients go to school in their traditional dress – Pedi, Zulu, North Sotho and Xhosa. That is what we need in this country – a little bit of good stuff.”

Kaplan said he would like to see Jewish children, too, in appropriate dress. They could wear yarmies, tzitzit, or even a tallit or tefillin. That is celebrating our Jewishness.”

Heritage Day is also known in certain circles as National Braai Day – not originally intended as such but the braaing came about from a 2005 media campaign.

Also, it was not originally intended to be an official South African public holiday. However, the Inkatha Freedom Party, with a predominantly Zulu membership, refused to sign the Public Holiday’s Bill that was being presented to Parliament because it omitted Shaka Day. A concession was later made to commemorate that day devoted to the famed Zulu king.

As Shaka was responsible for uniting the various Zulu factions into a nation, Heritage Day (appointed in place of the day commemorating the king) calls on South Africans to unite and also celebrate the diversity of culture of the “Rainbow Nation”.

As Nelson Mandela the iconic president of the first democratically-elected government of South Africa said in a Heritage Day speech: “When our first democratically-elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation.”