Poet, performing artist and language activist Bulelwa Basse was recognised on Friday at the Western Cape Government Service Excellence Awards 2025 for her community work through her non-profit company, “In Heritage We Stand”. 

Basse was among three individuals honoured in the Best Resident Performance category at the awards. Her work blends education with artistic expression to uplift township youth, where she has reached several learners across five Cape Town high schools.

The 10th Annual Service Excellence Awards honoured outstanding public servants and expanded the Western Cape Government’s recognition system to include residents and provincial municipalities, promoting a broader culture of service excellence across the province.

Speaking of the recognition, Basse said she was simultaneously elated and speechless by the experience.

“I’m actually speechless at the moment because I’m still reflecting on the journey. It hasn’t been an easy one.

“Community work is one of the most underrated and unrecognised contributions, whereas it makes a fundamental contribution towards the development of society, and primarily because of this, I’m especially elated by the fact that my work has been recognised, because many community development practitioners have really gone unnoticed,” Basse said on Sunday.

Basse explained that the start of her community work began with witnessing her late maternal grandmother, Nobahle Priscilla Jacobs Basse, in action.

“This work, I started when I was still young, in my grandmother’s house, in Langa township. My grandmother was a mother to the community. Her house was literally the house where the community would go to if they required any assistance, whether monetarily or to serve, any social ill which was confronted by the community.

“So I’ve suckled this work from my grandmother, and I’ve watched her demonstrate what community development is and what service to community is about,” Basse said.

Basse said that for the government to recognise her work, and the premier’s office specifically, means that there is hope for civil society.

“It means that we, as civil society, can begin to collaborate with the public sector, as well as the private sector, to develop not only our black African communities, and not only nodal areas, because this is not only townships, but it’s nodal areas. It’s also rural areas.

“It means that if we can partner and collaborate with the public sector and the private sector, we can contribute toward the nation-building narrative.”

She explained that what has motivated her to keep going since she started in 2006, and then registering “In Heritage We Stand” as an NPC in 2022, was that she has always been creative and has been motivated to improve the lives of those around her.

“I’m an artist, I’m a writer, I’m a performing artist. I’m an art and culture practitioner who also endorses the preservation of heritage.

“Hence the name, ‘In Heritage We Stand’. It is about championing all of our cultures and all of our heritage as Africans.”

With her NPC, she has gone into schools in the Langa, Gugulethu and Philippi Crossroads areas where she not only works with South Africans, but all Africans.

“You know, it’s almost like being a teacher, in the sense that teaching is a thankless job, but it’s within the legacy of the work that makes it purposeful, and lends itself to the impact that you now see in the form of an award.

“For me, the award is the cherry on top. The real meaning of the work is in the legacy. And the legacy is within the impact of the work, in how communities are transformed by the work.

“This legacy that I am writing, because a legacy is written, and it is written through living the legacy, and for me to live the legacy, simply means to continue to serve South African communities.

“My only hope is for the baton to be passed from one generation to the next to pay it forward,” Basse said.

Basse hopes that this spotlight will lead to further investment and funding in the NPC and the work that it does. 

“Community development work is the toughest work under the sun, and I think that civil society could do a far greater work of impact if corporate South Africa, as well as the South African government, begin to identify ways in which it can contribute to the development and furthering civil society’s work.

“My only request at this point is, for inasmuch as we appreciate the accolades, civil society really requires the support of corporate South Africa and the South African government, in identifying ways they can propel the process of community development…and I’m willing to be a conduit for that conversation to begin to take place.”

Those interested in assisting can contact inheritagewestand@gmail.com or call 063 813 9327.

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za

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