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Struggle heroes to be honoured

Cape Town – A range of museums and monuments will be established and restored as part of a "national heritage route" in honour of the heroes and heroines of South Africa's struggle.

The Rocklands civic centre in Mitchells Plain where the United Democratic Front (UDF) was established on August 20 1983, is on the list of places that will be declared a heritage site.

These monuments and symbols that represent the courageous struggle against apartheid will also be erected as far as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zimbabwe in all the places where especially the ANC played a role in freeing the region of colonialism, said minister of Arts and Culture, Paul Mashatile, at an information session at parliament on Tuesday.

Mashatile revealed that more than R100m has already been set aside to honour fomer ANC leaders such as former president Nelson Mandela, the late Oliver Tambo and the black consciousness leader Steve Biko.

Reconciliation

Historical sites in neighbouring states will be identified and developed in the long term to become part of the heritage route.

"We are already at work establishing an interpretive centre and museum in Matola in Mozambique at a site where activists were wiped out in a massacre," said Mashatile.

The graves of departed heroes such as founding leader of the ANC, John Dube, will also be improved.

Other suggestions for heritage sites and monuments include Seweding in North West province where politician and writer Sol Plaatje lived as well as the Wesleyn church hall in Kimberley where the ANC was founded in 1912.

The project must assist reconciliation and national cohesion, thus not only ANC heroes will be honoured, said Mashatile.

Provincial MEC's will ask their communities to identify their heroes, "Many people played a role, like Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu and Helen Suzman," he said.

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