‘Heritage amnesia’ is the real disease: cultural activist Vincent Mntambo

If heritage is only remembered on Heritage Day, it will eventually disappear.

This is a stark warning from cultural entrepreneur Vincent Mntambo, who says the country has grown too comfortable with September rituals.

“Heritage Month has settled into a rhythm of speeches, social media posts and once-a-year gestures. That is not nothing, but it is not enough. I would not say it is deliberately toothless. I would say it has become comfortable,” he said.

Mntambo is a founding patron of Classics on Turf, a live cultural experience that puts forgotten black composers and founders on centre stage.

Mntambo calls the crisis “heritage amnesia”, a habit of celebrating symbols while avoiding the hard work of restoration.

“We have confused celebration with restoration. We drape ourselves in symbols, sing familiar hymns and speak about a glorious past — but we do not confront the systems that allowed that past, and its architects, to be erased from public memory.”

When a country forgets its founders, it forgets its own capacity—  Vincent Mntambo

He described it as a deliberate pattern of forgetting that has real consequences for who is remembered.

”It is a structured forgetting that renders our own intellectuals anonymous while canonising foreign figures in their place.”

His example is Rev Tiyo Soga, South Africa’s first black ordained minister, founder of Indaba in 1862 to protect indigenous knowledge from colonial erasure, translator of Pilgrims’ Progress into IsiXhosa and composer of more than 30 hymns.

“For more than 150 years, we have sung his most famous hymn at funerals, in churches and at political gatherings without knowing his name.” Mntambo said. “That is not a gap in the archive. The information was there. It is a gap in our willingness to ask the question.”

Mntambo warned this kind of forgetting is how a nation slowly loses its memory, one September at a time. “The consequence is that you build on sand. When a country forgets its founders, it forgets its own capacity.” he said.

Kutlwano Masote, a musician and author of the National Arts and Culture Awards 2026 winning memoir, Imperfect Harmony, said that this labour cannot be left to historians alone, but must become a national conversation driven by the country’s storytellers.

Young people will always find new ways of engaging with the past. Sampling from the canon is not new, nor is it peculiar to South Africa—  Kutlwano Masote, musician and author

“The work of active recovery or self-rediscovery is not easy. It requires a deliberate engagement with our own past. That means reading and being interested in history. There are simply no shortcuts,” Masote said.

He said that is precisely why Classics on Turf exists, not to put heritage in a museum, but to put it on stage in a language young people can feel.

“That is why it needs to be placed at the centre of national dialogue. Broadcasters, theatre producers, musicians and other storytellers can play an active role here.”

Far from being intimidated by the archive, Masote believes young creatives are hungry for it.

“As for us at Classics on Turf, we see our role as catalysing this discourse by deliberately celebrating the men and women who have shaped our society in the way we know best, in a language that also invites all audiences, including our youth, ” he said.

“Young people will always find new ways of engaging with the past. Sampling from the canon is not new, nor is it peculiar to South Africa.”