The MEC's  Herritage message for 2025.

RE : REMEMBER THE AFRICAN CLAIMS, THE AFRICAN GRIEVANCE.

As we  would be celebrating the National Herritage day in few days to go, let's never forget that ours is a struggle against forgetting a struggle of memory. Down the memory lane we were schooled that ours is not a struggle for the future of our political formations but ours is about the future of the South African people. With all done and said by our leaders before us, with all done and said by our Democratic government with the creation of democratic governing structures, tools or instruments for governing through the legislative policy environment  and the good successes of work done that's far by the people's government . The appreciation from some of us that we are a Nation whose History is a History of unresolved issues.

I rise with a plea that  let's acknowledge and accept that with all said and done we still have a long journey ahead of us as a Nation beyond the sectors we are coming from and assigned for by the people of this country in general and the people of this EC province in particular.

One amongst the fundamental and strategic task ahead of all of us across the narrow political prtisen views is the questions as we build from where our forbeares left us.

1. Is whether do we all subscribe to the fact that the elephant in the room is the Decolonisation of the African societies both in form and content. The sophistications, the thesis, the anti thesis and the synthesis all points to the fact that any effort whether of building an ethical Developmental state if that is not  at the center  addressing the African Grievance is further bound to create social and economic incoherence. If at the center of the battle of ideas in the lecture rooms and in the classrooms there's no appetite to resolve the  language and cultural differences which in most cases present themselves in the form of bullying there will forever the case for the African Grievance.

2. If the content of our schooling system doesn't appreciate that ours is for a curriculum  skills knowledge access, and  skills success first year and furmost through the learning programs before us we will forever be  economic consumers not economic producers and we will forever be job seakers not job producers and future economic driving force, therfore the case for the African Grievance will forever be there.

3. If  there's still sectors still for Developmental programs preserve whether consciously or not for the elite few  in our institutions of learning for example, the corporate investment faculties, Veterinarian Doctors faculties, just to mention few in our institutions there will forever be a case for the African Grievance. All these observations  if they remain sturbon as they are in the main they has a potential to undermine the  sterling work done that's far and compromise the cause for the African people.

They ussualy say Developmental agenda is forever incomplete, it requires resilience, delligence, loyalty to those you save, we may not be where we would have thought to be by now but surely we are not where we were yesterday we have been able to navigate through these trying and difficult times posed by conditions at times not of our choosing let's hold each other's hand stop self hate, stop self importance and self agrandisment and stop silo mentality and stop narrow political partizen ideologies look for a scientific based proven workable formular, recommit ourselves to the strategic shared vision of the Nation across racial lines, across cultural and religious orientations, across gender question and lastly across class queation /devide. 

We may not be Pan Africans  some  of us but we are Africans.

Let's celebrate the Herritage day as part of our Nation building project.

By Fundile Gade 

MEC of Education in the Eastern Cape