Pretoria - The late composer and choral music educator, Shalati Joseph Khosa, will today be honoured at a Heritage Day celebration at Mtititi village, outside Malamulele.
Communications Minister Faith Muthambi will attend the Heritage Day event at Mtititi.
This year’s celebrations aim to put at the forefront the living human treasures and legends who, based on their immense contribution to the arts, culture and heritage landscape, are the custodians of indigenous knowledge.
Living legends are persons who possess knowledge and skill to give expression to form living heritage.
Living heritage is cultural expressions and practices that form a body of knowledge and provide continuity, dynamism and meaning of social life to generations of people as individuals, social groups and communities. Living heritage represents knowledge and information sustained through memory and transmitted orally or by practice from one generation to the next.
Minister Muthambi said every community has living human treasures who possess a high degree of knowledge, skills and history pertaining to different aspects of diverse living heritage.
Khosa who died in 2013, aged 77 is known for his composition which to date total in excess 300 songs for schools, church and adult choirs.
Some of his popular songs are matimba ya vuhimbeleri, in praise of brotherly love, Limpopo, mintirho ya vulavula, among others.
The Minister will wrap up her heritage day celebration at the Spring Jazz Festival at Magoebaskloof near Tzaneen.
In South Africa, September marks the annual Heritage Month which is used to celebrate and promote the varied cultural heritage of the nation.
This year marks 20 years since Heritage Day was created in 1996. The day will be commemorated under the theme, “Celebrating our Human Treasures by Asserting our African Identity”.
The national Heritage Day celebrations, which will be addressed by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, will be held in Kimberley today. - SAnews.gov.za
