Apartheid was not only about denying people their right to vote and their dignity.

Its other plan, successfully implemented, was to undermine the cultures, religions and languages of the indigenous people.

African religion was relegated to a non-scientific, nonsensical religion inferior to Western ones, especially Christianity.

Part of achieving freedom was understood to mean that we would embrace what had been denigrated by apartheid: our cultural, religious and linguistic rights.

The birth in 2002 of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission), a Chapter Nine institution, gave hope to many cultural, religious and linguistic communities that their rights would be respected, protected and promoted.

What I have observed as chair of the commission in the past 12 months is that there are serious cultural wars being fought in SA.

In the current South African context the cultural wars are the struggles between conflicting value systems defined by those with power over those who are considered to be powerless. In essence, the powerful determine what is acceptable or not for cultural communities.

The powerful decide what is in the best interests of these cultural communities and their children. They choose what is to be embraced and what is to be discarded, what is to be respected or disrespected.

What has brought me to this conclusion?

The Freedom Charter says all people shall have an equal right to use their own languages and to develop their own folk culture and customs. It adds that the aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace.

The constitution guarantees the cultural, religious and linguistic rights of all communities, but these may not be exercised in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights.

These two commitments, the Freedom Charter and the constitution, should have been enough to protect cultural communities, but they are not. Instead, there is the emergence of "abolitionists" who are bent on denigrating many African cultural practices.

The most stark example of these cultural wars is demonstrated in the statement issued by the ANC Women's League on February 24 after its national policy conference in December resolved that the cultural practice of ukuthwala (arranged marriage) constitutes an injustice to women and girls and must be abolished.

It also argues that the custom of virginity testing of young girls exposes the girl to rape, incest, abuse and sexual violence and must also be abolished.

This is a total misrepresentation of what ukuthwala stands for. The CRL Rights Commission, the National House of Traditional Leaders and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA have repeatedly explained that ukuthwala happens only among consenting adults who both want to get married and whose lobola negotiations have broken down.

The league insists on its own definition of ukuthwala to push forward its agenda to abolish cultural practices.

It is unfortunate that the league is warring against the only cultural practice that empowers young women to marry for love.

The most sensible thing for the women's league to do would be to ensure that the criminal justice system deals speedily with the paedophiles and rapists who prey on children and women and then hide behind culture.

The league's justification for the abolishing of the custom of virginity testing is misinformed. Abolitionists erroneously assume that the Reed Dance, driven by iSilo samaZulu (the king), promotes rape, incest, abuse and sexual violence against the girl child.

This is the height of the cultural war against cultural communities and young people who are only trying to do the right thing by delaying their sexual debut.

We need to be bold enough to interrogate who is setting the agenda on culture.

As we move beyond 20 years of freedom we must all begin to fully inform ourselves about cultural practices before we express our opinions on such issues.

We must also condemn and abolish those cultural practices that are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, but protect those that are of benefit to the nation.

Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva is chairwoman of the CRL Rights Commission.