This year marks Charlotte Maxeke’s 154th birthday. Yet, in Kliptown – a community she once championed – there is a collective hesitation to celebrate her role in the fight against injustice and colonial apartheid. The harsh realities faced by her people today suggest that her struggle remains unfinished.
Commemorating Maxeke must move beyond symbolism. It demands a radical reimagining of our public spaces and a confrontation with the colonial past that still shapes them. Heritage sites alone cannot end poverty, but they can boost local economies and strengthen national consciousness. They safeguard our collective memory, ensuring the struggles and triumphs of the past are not erased.
SA's cultural richness helped forge unity against colonialism and apartheid. While colonialism industrialised SA and connected it to the global economy, its scars are the deep, complex legacy we must acknowledge without glorification.
Culture is not static. It evolves. Transforming our heritage landscape is vital for broader social transformation.
Gauteng, and home to the “City of Gold”, Johannesburg, embodies this complex history. It rose rapidly during the global gold rush of the 1880s, offering both opportunity and oppression, a tension that still defines our spaces today.
As we look towards 2030 through the lens of the National Development Plan, we must recognise that heritage fosters social understanding, cohesion and, ultimately, growth.
Commemorating Maxeke this year should not be a symbolic act alone. It demands that we work to dismantle the colonial and apartheid legacy she fought against. Failure to radically transform our heritage landscape would betray her vision.
Imagine replacing Paul Kruger’s statue at the heart of Pretoria with one of Maxeke. Such a move would not erase history but rather reclaim and reframe it – honouring the humanity and dignity that Maxeke stood for. Continuing to celebrate figures like Hendrik Verwoerd while sidelining liberation heroes only entrenches old divisions.
Oliver Tambo warned in 1980 that racism is embedded in structures and attitudes and public monuments are part of that structure. Transforming them is necessary to dismantle racism at its roots.
Maxeke’s contributions to education and the church are living legacies, especially through her work at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Kliptown. Maxeke used her platform to empower women and push for social change.
While Vilakazi Street in Soweto has thrived, being the only street globally to boast two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, most heritage sites remain neglected. Revitalising them, starting with Kliptown where Maxeke lived and worked, would not only honour her memory but also uplift the communities she fought for.
Failing to transform our heritage landscape leaves a vacuum where history can be distorted or forgotten. This year, as we honour Maxeke, we must reassert her intellectual and political contributions to dismantling colonialism and apartheid.
Gauteng is already refurbishing the homes of heroines such as Maxeke, Margaret Gazo and Frances Baard – women who led critical Struggles for freedom. Preserving these sites ensures that future generations have living reminders of the leaders who paved the way for democracy. But much more is needed.
Amílcar Cabral once wrote that domination is sustained not just through material power but through the repression of a people's cultural and heritage. Maxeke understood this well. In honouring her legacy, so too should the future of our heritage landscape.
- Mabasa is an executive manager in the office of the deputy minister of mineral and petroleum resources
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