Cultural village to revive traditional practices
Dumisani Ncube | Friday September 25, 2015 18:00
The rise of modernisation and technology has slowly eroded cultural practices from African society leading to young people adopting the western and pop culture.
Cultural events such as the Orange Letlhafula, Domboshaba Cultural festival, Dithubaruba Cultural festival and Son of the Soil, have shown that young people have less knowledge about the indigenous tradition, especially if they are shown.
With the on going construction of the cultural village that is being constructed at Sir Seretse Khama Junior Secondary School, the traditional arts and culture can be revived. The cultural village, which is open to student and young people around the community will have set up that has a number of cultural elements such as a hut, segotlo and artefacts.
After staging an impressive Cultural day Kgosi Gaborone was impressed by the Sir Seretse Khama JSS students and asked Ntlo ya Dikgosi to help them construct a cultural village at the school.
The project logistics committee member, who is also a teacher, Tlamelo Letlole, said the cultural village would help sensitse students on traditional arts and cultural values.
“We hope that they will grow up with those values and instill them to the next generation. That is a way of ensuring that our culture is not eroded,” he said.
He said the cultural village would boast traditional elements with different cultural influences.
“We will obviously have a mud hut that is painted with different colors, mind the colors are seasonal and they reflect the painter’s mood. Young people will learn all this at the cultural village,” he said.
The cultural village compound has a width of 400 meters and a width of 500 meters. The hut will be 2.5 meters in height, with a radius of four meters.
Letlole said that due to the different arts and cultural backgrounds, the teachings would only be the foundation and basic teachings that everyone can easily relate to.
Arts and cultural experts, who will include parents and also school staff, will take the students through the different lessons. The new age generation hardly knows about the traditional arts and cultural lifestyle, this can be noted from their less attendance at events Son of the Soil but they prefer attending urban musical festivals in numbers. At the recent Son of the Soil event some young people witnessed traditional arts and cultural elements and their meanings for the first time as they were told what they resembled.
Modernisation has also led to most young people focusing on cultural backgrounds of other places and practicing it.
Ntlo ya Dikgosi assistant secretary Esther Jean noted that the chiefs are not pleased by the moral decay which is currently taking place that is why they decided to help with the construction of the cultural village.
The school head Gloria Makhandlela who was all smiles said the initiative would bring great value on the education system, “social value is lacking on young people”. “I hope that this will have a strong impact on our children, back then elders would call young people to Kgotlas so they address them on cultural issues,” she said.
Chiefs from different areas will also visit the cultural village to engage with students and other young people.
The cultural village will be officially open on November 7, 2015 by His Excellency President Ian Khama.