Graves are sacred and must be treated as such, urges Alex poet

Refilwe Pieterse (37) is a young woman who thinks and behaves far beyond her age as she believes Africans must return to their roots and surf the cultural waves to embrace the good and discard the bad.

“In this way, we would be able to confront the many ills and challenges we face today and also see what works and what doesn’t. I really think we need to resurrect our old beliefs and reinforce them with new ones as we endeavour to stave off the problems that bedevil us today,” she told Alex News in an interview.

ALSO READ: Steve Kekana sings his final goodbye

The interview was on the backdrop of a recent show she pioneered to begin to celebrate ‘our yesteryear icons and find a way of doing some self-introspection in an endeavour to solve our current challenges before they all swallow us up.

She started this project of introspection by organising a remembrance of one of Alexandra’s legendary jazz music icons, Zacks Nkosi, who died in 1980. Known as The Rise of Zacks Nkosi – Veteran’s Voice, Pieterse said she sprang into action after realising how the graves of ‘our elders were being desecrated in the township’.

ALSO READ: Alex creative urges youth to use their limited resources to sustain themselves

“Some people dump rubbish over them, urinate on the graves and steal the tombstones and other sacred ritual items placed over them as part of traditional respect and symbolism. One of those tombs belongs to Zacks Nkosi,” Pieterse said.

Pieterse said there was a guy living in the abandoned caretaker’s house who refuses to respect the graves and when confronted, he allegedly told the delegation ‘these are just dead people that died a long time ago and don’t matter anymore. Don’t be surprised when you come back and find I have built a house over them’.

A panel discussion as part of the celebrations was to assert the sacred value of graves and to instil a sense of respect for the tombs. Zacks Nkosi used to draw all of us to his shows, mesmerise us with his melodies, and when he is dead we then rubbish him and his resting place.

“Is he really resting there? Why do we then call it a final resting place if we’re not going to allow this man to have that rest we thought we are giving him? Does he then lose value simply because he is dead? I deliberately named the remembrance The Rise of Zacks Nkosi – Veteran’s Voice to help stop the trashing of the graves of the very people who put our township on the map,” Pieterse added.

ALSO READ: Alex project to groom future business leaders

“Zacks Nkosi lived through all these tragedies of our apartheid past which were trying times but survived and made a name for himself and all of us as Africans and proved that despite the hardships, it can still be done.”

The panel discussion was run by Mme Ntshieng Makgoro, founder of the Olive Tree Theatre in Alex, and Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Obed Bapela helped feed the more than 500 that attended. Community builder Linda Twala also attended and so did a Madala Hostel music group called Ubuhle Bengoma.

ALSO READ: Music star celebrates his birthday with children of Refilwe Legae Home