There could never be any Heritage Day celebrations as long as the majority of black South Africans remained landless in their own country, the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party have said.
While the country observed Thursday as Heritage Day, the party reiterated its long-standing position that the country’s black majority should reclaim its land from the minority white landowners without paying any compensation for it.
“There is no heritage to celebrate as long as black people remain landless and are excluded from the mainstream economy,” the EFF said on Thursday.
“A concrete move towards a heritage founded on justice necessitates the return of land to the country’s majority blacks,” the party added in a tweet.
The EFF also called for all colonial and apartheid statues in the country to be dismantled as well as the need to remove “Die Stem (the apartheid anthem) from the national anthem.”
The new South Africa’s national anthem combines the former apartheid regime’s anthem known as “Dei Stem van Suid-Afrika – The Call of South Africa” and the Africans’ anthem titled “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika – God Bless Africa.”
According to the party of Julius Malema, as things stood in the country, black people remained “servants and tenants of a white minority. And a genuine celebration of heritage can only be achieved when the injustices of the past are corrected.”
Calling “on all black South Africans to reflect on our collective dispossession and displacement,” the party said that “a genuine celebration of our heritage can only be achieved if the injustices of the past are corrected.”
The party, therefore, urged black people to reflect on their history and the current painful realities they face “beyond the wearing of traditional outfits as a sign of their heritage.”
NM/as/APA