Veteran’s heritage forgotten as braai ads flood Heritage Month celebrations

September brings a tsunami of braai ads, but Ditsong Museum's Regiments Room reminds us of veterans who shaped our history and heritage. September is Heritage Month, thanks to the public holiday on the 24th which will also give us a long weekend. But in typical South African fashion, brace yourself for a tsunami of ads enjoining you to braai. It’s as good an excuse as any and braaing is probably one of a couple of things that everyone does in this country, irrespective of their “heritage”. Thanks to Siya and Rassie, rugby is right up there, too, in terms of things we like to do together. They have done a wonderful job of taking something with a very exclusionary and hurtful heritage and turning it into what is today. This where the same retailers that will be offering you braai chops and wors in one part of their store will have cut-price T-shirts and other branded Bok merchandise flying off the shelves. Not all heritage projects are as successful, but they are all vitally important. Not for nothing is it said that, thanks to George Santayana, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The Ditsong National Museum of Military History opened the Regiments Room in May, a permanent collection of artefacts by 12 of the part-time units that were based in and around Joburg. The men – they were predominantly men – that served in them did so for much of South Africa’s history; throughout two world wars and, latterly, the Border War. Last Wednesday was the 60th anniversary of the start of that conflict. History is, typically, written by those who win the wars, but heritage allows a more nuanced view. It is easy to see the service of our part-time units and the regular force in its different guises from Union Defence Force to the SA Defence Force, as merely propping up one side (the wrong one). The truth is the war in Angola, the Border War, was a proxy war between the US and then USSR and the service those men provided – many dying in the course of it – changed the outcome of southern Africa in ways conveniently forgotten today. In less than six years after the war ended, Namibia became independent, Nelson Mandela was freed and South Africa had a transition to democracy that shocked the world – because the doomsayers had predicted a bloodbath. That’s the heritage those veterans left us. The question is what heritage we will bequeath the next generation?