Paul Mashatile, the deputy president, has urged businesses, communities, and families to work together to combat the rising problem of drug usage and substance misuse, especially among youth.
Mashatile spoke on Wednesday (24 September 2025), during the Western Cape’s Bridgeton Sport Grounds’ Heritage Day festivities. He claimed that the government was concerned about the prevalence of drug addiction among minors, particularly because it causes young people to be stigmatised as “amaphara” (parasites). According to him, drug misuse has taken over the country like a devil. “It is our collective duty to fight against alcohol and drug misuse and collaborate to end comparable behaviours in our communities,” he stated.
In order to combat crime, racism, tribalism, gender-based violence, femicide, and other societal evils that impede the nation’s advancement. Mashatile said the nation must also unite. According to him, to be able to usher in a new postcolonial period, museums must be decolonised and Africanized via a people-centered process of knowledge generation and co-curation. Moreover, for our museums to effectively address the sensibilities, aspirations, and difficulties of the twenty-first century and beyond, we must embrace a dramatic shift in viewpoint inside these institutions.
“As heritage institutions around the world are evolving into development engines in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, this is an opportunity for a strategic shift.” Mashatile asserted that it was the duty of South Africans to protect and promote their culture both domestically and internationally.
He claimed that this was significant because heritage organisations fostered cultural identity, promoted harmony, and provided financial opportunities in industries like the arts and tourism. He stated that in order to guarantee the relevance and accessibility of heritage institutions, the nation needs to rethink and revitalise them. To create a socially cohesive society founded on democratic ideals like equality, freedom, human rights, and civil freedoms as guaranteed by our constitution, we must highlight the importance of heritage in our national endeavour.
Also to create a socially cohesive society founded on democratic ideals like equality, freedom, human rights, and civil freedoms as guaranteed by our constitution, we must highlight the importance of heritage in our national endeavour. “Our heritage embodies the very essence of our nationhood and the resilience of a people united in their diversity, so we are obligated to do so.” Galleries, theatres, archives, concerts, artwork, athletic codes, storytelling, indigenous games, and museums are all examples of how our cultural history is expressed in this unity in variety.
Africans’ cultural heritage practices were disrupted and destroyed by colonialism and apartheid, which broke up communities through forced removals, shattered families and ancestral lands, and established a subpar educational system centred on Bantu education, he said. He said that it was imperative to restore the dignity of African people. “It (apartheid) repressed African cultures, imposed segregation, and encouraged the disparaging use of the term ‘Bantu’ to dehumanise and undermine the identity of Black Africans.”
Edited by Matlala Kgaugelo
