SEPTEMBER marks Heritage Month in South Africa. This is is when we celebrate our country’s rich and diverse cultural heritage. This is year’s National Heritage Month is celebrated under the theme ‘Celebrating our cultural diversity in a democratic South Africa’. 

I am excited to announce that the City and the Province have been chosen as the host of the 2023 Heritage Day event that will be led by the Presidency on 24 September at the KwaMashu Princess Magogo Stadium. The Presidency couldn’t have chosen a better venue to host this year’s celebrations than eThekwini as we are a rich and ethnically diverse City. We can proudly commit that as the host city, we will pull out all the stops to make sure that the event is a major success and is incident-free. 

I am happy that this year’s theme will shine the spotlight on South Africa’s rich and diverse cultural heritage which incorporates African, Asian, and European cultures and traditions. It will also focus on South Africa’s rich and diverse cultural heritage and its immense contribution to our social, economic, health, and scientific well-being, especially for rural, township, and peri-urban communities. We are also going to use this month to intensify our social cohesion agenda as we are striving to emerge as a social cohesive City. 

We can’t shy away from the fact that inequality within our society has widened the gap between the poor and the rich. It is for this reason that we should work towards finding a common purpose in our quest of closing the gap between the poor and the rich. As government, we should play a strategic role towards achieving social cohesion and this should be backed up by bold policies that will assist in addressing socio-economic challenges.