As South Africa celebrated Heritage Day yesterday, the Economic Freedom Fighters called for the scrapping of Die Stem from the national anthem. The EFF labelled Die Stem "a song of oppressors, racists and mass-murderers", and said it was not in keeping with South Africa's anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles.The hybrid national anthem consisting of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, Die Stem and its English equivalent came into being in 1997 to accommodate various groups in the newly inclusive country.The EFF said yesterday: "Die Stem is a heritage of oppression and indignity. Nkosi Sikelel' must be sung in the same way our people did when they were praying for a land free from oppression during colonial and apartheid years. National anthems are songs of collective pride and we cannot be proud of the songs of mass-murderous regimes."By contrast, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa used his Heritage Day address in Limpopo to promote a common heritage, one shared by all, irrespective of race."On Heritage Day we recall that the contours of our nation bear the wounds and scars of migration and slavery. When we recall the pain and suffering of Afrikaner women and children - and of many African families - in concentration camps at the turn of the 20th century, we say their pain is our pain, and their loss is our collective loss," Ramaphosa said."We do not deny the contradictions of our past. We are the children of settlers and the children of natives. We are the children of oppressors and the children of the oppressed. But we are united today by our rejection of past injustices and by our determination that never again shall one be oppressed by another," he said.The chairman of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, argued that adopting Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika as the sole anthem of South Africa presented a different dilemma."We have a complaint that we are currently looking into from people of African religion. They are saying [Nkosi Sikelel'] is based on Christian values and norms. They are saying Yehla Moya is about the holy spirit linked to Jesus Christ, and their problem is that as [followers of] African religion they do not affiliate to Christian values."So there is that issue already on the table that it is not just about Die Stem. Even the main part, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, has its own challenges," Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said."In 1651, we had our religion here in Africa that was not necessarily Christian. If we look at where we are and where we come from, we need to begin to acknowledge that this discussion . needs to take us back to what we know and who our forefathers believed in, uMveli Ngqangi (Higher Being) and all those other things. The story didn't start in 1652 with Christianity coming into the country."We had our own belief systems and this should be reflected in the national anthem ." she said.The EFF further called for the removal of all colonial-era statues, the renaming of the Kruger National Park and a speedy resolution to land reform and restitution. Without these things, Heritage Day celebrations could be described only as hollow, it said."The EFF condemns the celebration of Heritage Day without resolution of the land question. Our cultural heritage must not be marshalled to put our people to sleep as they continue to live like visitors in the land of their birth. We sing on the land, we paint on the land, we dance on the land and we speak on the land; a people without land is a people without a future. Heritage must not be used to keep our people as prisoners of our towering past, but as a testimony of our today and a foundation for the future," the party said.Spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said: "The EFF thinks about the general transformation of the whole of society. Economically free people cannot be proud of symbolic oppression in the economy of cultural abductions. Remember statues, music and all those things have an economic element."..