Clean South Africa Asks: “Is This Going to Be Part of Our Heritage?”

This Heritage Month, Clean South Africa Foundation is asking South Africans a simple but uncomfortable question:

What are we leaving behind for the next generation?

Heritage Month is a time to celebrate who we are. It is a time to celebrate our cultures, traditions, languages, identities and the history that has been passed down to us.

Across South Africa, people will proudly wear traditional clothing, gather with family and friends, share food, music and stories, and celebrate what makes us South African.

But there is another part of our heritage that we need to think about.

Heritage is not only what we receive from the generations before us. It is also what we do today and what we pass on to those who come after us.

This is the idea behind Clean South Africa Foundation’s Heritage Month campaign.

The campaign features South Africans proudly wearing traditional clothing, standing among piles of litter.

The images are designed to make us stop and think.

At the heart of the campaign is one question:

“Is this going to be part of our heritage?”

The question asks us to think about whether the litter we see around us every day could become part of the South Africa we leave behind.

“We are proud of the heritage that was passed down to us. But we also need to ask ourselves what we are passing down,” says Clean South Africa Foundation. “Our children should inherit our languages, traditions, music, stories and culture. They should not have to inherit the litter we leave behind.”

The campaign is not about blaming our cultures or traditions. It is about using Heritage Month as a moment to look at ourselves and the country we are creating.

We often accept litter as part of everyday life. We see it on our streets, outside schools, around taxi ranks, in parks and in our communities.

But what happens when something we see every day becomes something the next generation grows up believing is normal?

That is the question Clean South Africa Foundation wants South Africans to consider.

Keeping South Africa clean is not only the responsibility of government, municipalities or waste collectors. It starts with all of us.

Every one of us plays a part in the country we live in.

This Heritage Month, Clean South Africa Foundation is asking South Africans to celebrate the heritage we have received, while thinking about the heritage we are creating.

What will our children inherit from us?

Or will they also inherit the litter we chose not to pick up?

Because heritage is not only about the past.

We are creating it today.