Chair, for Heritage Day our Iziko Museums are encouraging South Africans to see things differently, to gain a fresh perspective on our diverse cultural heritage. As the nation celebrates the lives and achievements of heroes and heroines, and as we are made aware of diverse topics in which to actively engage with our legacies, our history and heritage, we will also be able to hear a precolonial archaeologist discussing the all but forgotten freedom fighters, the Khoisan.
The struggle was not only to gain political freedom and regain cultural dignity and respect for the environment, but to have a legacy to pass on to their children.
In every age, there are multiple challenges facing our communities and cultures. Nuclear development, for example, is threatening to permanently scar areas with exceptional heritage qualities. Duynefontein, Bantamsklip and Thyspunt, identified for proposed nuclear power stations, are excellent natural heritage landscapes and make a substantial contribution to the character of the region. Together with the archaeological material, they represent a largely intact precolonial cultural landscape.
In the words of one researcher, Bantamsklip was planted as a Khoisan women's kitchen - with waxberry here, soap plants there, herbs in another place - thus giving an insight into their lives that we would not get in any other way. The former Prime Minister of Japan says the biggest reason why he changed his views on nuclear power was that they could not afford to take the risk of accidents happening that could make half the landmass of Japan uninhabitable. Just last week, Koeberg had an unplanned shutdown due, they say, to either mechanical or instrumentation failure.
Errors and accidents happen, not to mention unsolvable nuclear waste problems! The age-old struggle for survival itself is not honoured in the building of nuclear plants, which put land and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of our heroes at risk in the years to come. Thank you.