Heritage Month 2026: Reimagining our Heritage - Building an Entrepreneurial Future

Dear TUTzens – Staff, Students, and Alumni

September is the month when the nation pauses and celebrates its rich cultures and colourful traditions – from what we wear to what we eat, from how we work to how we dance, from how we walk to how we talk – how we communicate with one another to how we communicate with our natural heritage.

A more appropriate national theme for this month could not have been found. The theme is: Reimagining our heritage institutions for a new era. This theme is an invitation for us to use our formidable heritage in order to shape our future. It is also an invitation to join hands in eradicating the obstacles that prevent many South Africans from enjoying and accessing the heritage treasures of our country. Among such obstacles we include poverty, unemployment, inequality and gender-based violence.

At TUT, the future we want is clear. We are building an entrepreneurial future of work. We are building a cohort of graduates who are future-ready. For us, therefore, the foundational heritage is the 22-year-old institution, stitched together from three erstwhile institutions and now making a huge difference in the South African Higher Education Sector.

At TUT we shall celebrate every language, every culture, every gender, every ethnicity, every race and every religion that is represented today and historically in our student body and in our staff members.

But we are also inheritors of the cultures, the traditions and the landmarks, the heritage sites (formal and informal) that make up the heartbeat of this beautiful country that is enveloped between two oceans at the southernmost tip of the African continent – stretching from Cape Town to Musina. Our ambition is to use our national heritage to leverage the greatness that is in us as TUTzens – so that we keep moving from good to great.

Though we may not be physically present, TUTzens will digitally join our fellow South Africans on Heritage Day – 24 September 2026 – in Oudtshoorn, Western Cape Province, when the President will be addressing the nation on the theme: Reimagining our heritage institutions for a new era.

Wishing all TUT staff and students an excellent Heritage Month.

Prof Tinyiko Maluleke
Vice-Chancellor and Principal