Cape Town - The Salt River Heritage Society's (SRHS) Heritage Street Festival highlighted how murals and artistic expression can be used as a medium for the preservation of heritage and memory, but also to create and awaken social awareness around key issues across generations and communities.
The Heritage Street Festival 2023 took place on Saturday, with the backdrop of the murals painted on the homes of neighbours depicting and memorialising pivotal figures – from and linked to Salt River – in the Struggle for liberation and social justice.
The programme commenced at the “Freedom Fighters Mural” at the Corner of Pope and Kingsley Road, featuring unionist Gadija Isaacs, political activist Zuraya Abass, veteran journalist Karima Brown, and poet and playwright Gladys Thomas.
The SRHS was launched on Heritage Day in 2018 with its first programme the Salt River People’s History Timeline inviting former and current residents to record their own historic milestones and in which photographs were digitised.
SRHS chairperson Lutfi Omar said following the Covid-19 pandemic, the society undertook its Community Arts Programme, using murals and public art to memorialise events and people within the community.
Omar said the vision was to see this expanded and developed into heritage tourism in which residents were able to conduct tours allowing them to share their own stories and generate employment.
“What we’re trying to celebrate is the values and the traditions that the community also has. The main value which we feel in the heritage society is solidarity. The highest form of humanity is solidarity and the care for others, and that is what this community is about,” Omar said.
Last Tuesday, the SRHS received the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sports Cultural Affairs Awards in the category “Contribution by a Conservation Body, Heritage Organisation or Museums Towards the Promotion of Local History, Heritage or Renaming of Geographical Features.”
Mowbray resident Anthea Houston said: “I always come and support the SRHS’s activities because I think what they’re doing in the community is necessary. In many of our communities, we have to document our own history, tell our own stories if we want our contribution to be recorded and remembered.
"And this area is changing rapidly and the people who live here, many have been here for generations, others are newcomers into our city and into the community and if we don't want that thread of who are and how this place was made into what it is, to be lost then we have to capture it.”
The dean of St George’s Cathedral, Father Michael Weeder, provided context on artist Ronald Harrison, whose most famous work depicted ANC leader Albert Luthuli as Jesus crucified and titled “The Black Christ” in the 1960s.
The image is now memorialised in a mural across from the church it had first been exhibited, St Luke’s Church in Salt River.
The political work served as artistic dissent of the apartheid regime but also the widely held belief that Jesus was white. Harrison was arrested, tortured and the painting banned.
Harrison’s niece, Desiree Philips said: “The family wants to say thank you very much to the SRHS for acknowledging our uncle and for leaving his legacy here for many generations to see.
"It is very meaningful that it is right opposite his home church, where the painting was first exhibited and also where he was buried from and I'm sure he is very happy as to where you have put his wall today.”
The final stop was at the “The Dome of the Rock” mural on Addison Street, a mural by Nawawie Matthews and assisted by Tasneem Chilwan and Nazeer Jappie showing the Palestinian struggle from 1897 to present day.
Mathews said: “We named this wall ‘The Wall 4 All” where we want to create dialogue, where we want to encourage youth to get involved in activism because art has the power to ignite change and this installation is a call for action.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign spokesperson Usuf Chikte said: “Palestine remains a litmus test for one's stand on social justice but how can you speak of Palestine without speaking of our own problems.”
He linked this to recent cases involving a Grassy Park woman who had killed her bed ridden sister as the toll of being the sole carer and provider had become too much; the four children electrocuted amid the Cape storm in Cape Town, the murders of children by their own mothers due to extreme poverty in the Eastern Cape; and deaths inside pit latrines.
“Palestine reminds us about social justice and despite the fact that the apartheid legislation is abolished, its legacies still remain… Great speeches are not enough. Invoking the names of heroes and heroines is not enough. We need to reorganise ourselves and hit the streets.
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za