Why The Beloved Country

Rosabelle Boswell discusses why heritage should both interpret the past and forge the future

- Rosabelle Boswell

South Africans have come to associate Heritage Day in September with a good opportunity to gather around the braai (barbecue), eating boerewors (homemade flavoured sausage) and drinking beer. After all, Heritage Day is unofficially classified by some as National Braai Day. But heritage is much more than braai and beer. It’s big business worldwide and has become part of a global toolkit for interpreting the past and forging the future.

In the past 50 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has inscribed 1 073 sites on its World Heritage List (as at July 2017). Tourists from across the globe flock to these sites, earning major income for the nations concerned. A Global Heritage Fund study shows that 500 global heritage sites in the developing world are expected to generate over $100 billion (R1.2 trillion) a year by 2025.

Authors on heritage are also prolific, as the literature is vast. Global conferences on heritage and tourism host thousands of anthropologists, tourism specialists, historians, archaeologists and development professionals. The experts debate the meaning of heritage, its commoditisation in the contemporary world, the impact of globalisation on culture, and the loss of important monuments and artefacts through war, terrorism and colonisation. The presenters also debate the role of heritage in national political discourse, especially in emergent discourses in post-colonial states.

Sceptics among them argue that heritage has become that warm fuzzy blanket we use to nostalgically reflect on and evoke the past. We may look wistfully at statues of fallen war heroes and remember their contribution to peace, freedom and democracy, consolidating their place in history and collective memory. Heritage is also accused of inducing amnesia, encouraging a remembrance of certain things and a forgetting of others.