INTRODUCTION

“Our heritage celebrates our achievements and contributes to redressing past inequities. It educates, it deepens our understanding of society and encourages us to empathise with the experience of others. It facilitates healing and material and symbolic restitution and it promotes new and previously neglected research into our rich oral traditions and customs.”

This quotation from the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) encapsulates the spirit of the South African Heritage Resources Agency, (SAHRA), which has replaced the National Monuments Council (NMC). One of the most important elements of the legislation is the opportunity it will provide for communities to participate in the identification, conservation and management of our cultural resources.

SAHRA is a statutory organisation established under the National Heritage Resources Act, No 25 of 1999, as the national administrative body responsible for the protection of South Africa’s cultural heritage.

The Act follows the principle that heritage resources should be managed by the levels of government closest to the community. These local and provincial authorities will manage heritage resources as part of their planning process.

In order to develop the skills and capacities of communities, heritage resource agencies will promote education and training to encourage public involvement in the identification of heritage resources, with the recording of living heritage associated with heritage and oral history a crucial element, because much of the past is undocumented.

We present this information about SAHRA in order to create an awareness among the people of our country of their right to conserve what they consider to be valuable heritage resources, the mechanisms for doing this, and to recognise the exciting new possibilities that the Act creates for them.

The object of SAHRA is to coordinate the identification and management of the national estate. The aims are to introduce an integrated system for the identification, assessment and management of the heritage resources and to enable provincial and local authorities to adopt powers to protect and manage them.

A South African Heritage Resources Survey (SAHRS) will be established to coordinate a national strategy for the identification of heritage resources.

Issues relating to heritage resources and their value will be increasingly introduced into school curricula, with universities and technikons encouraged to increase heritage management programmes.

The national estate encompasses heritage resources of cultural significance for the present community and for future generations. It may include places to which oral traditions are attached or which are associated with living heritage; historical settlements; landscapes and natural features of cultural significance; archaeological and palaeontological sites; graves and burial grounds, including ancestral and royal graves and graves of traditional leaders; graves of victims of conflict; and sites relating to the history of slavery in South Africa.

The national estate includes movable objects such as those recovered from the soil or waters of South Africa; objects associated with living heritage; ethnographic and decorative art; objects of scientific interest; and books, documents, photographs, film material or sound recordings.

A place or object is considered part of the national estate if it has cultural significance because of its importance in the community, or pattern of South Africa's history, its possession of rare aspects of South Africa's natural or cultural heritage, its strong or special association with a particular cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.

TYPES OF PROTECTION

The well-known ‘national monument’ has disappeared and other formal categories of protection under the old National Monuments Council (NMC) have been modified. A new category of ‘national heritage site’ exists for sites of outstanding national importance.

In terms of general protections, the scope of the NHRA is wider with more safeguards against arbitrary decision-making. The linking of aspects of the national estate to the two main environmental impact assessment systems operating in the country makes the conservation system friendlier to development. This does not mean that developers may now disturb heritage resources, but that they are able to identify and deal with areas of risk more efficiently.

The system creates a situation whereby heritage resources authorities no longer operate in a vacuum, but from a position where it is informed by the feelings of a community regarding their heritage resources.

FORMAL PROTECTIONS UNDER THE ACT

SAHRA and members of the public must identify places with qualities so exceptional that they are of special national significance to be declared national heritage sites. These will be marked with a badge.

Provincial heritage resources authorities must identify places, which make them significant in the context of the province, to be declared provincial heritage sites and marked with a provisional heritage site badge.

Heritage Registers 

At the time of the compilation or revision of a town or regional planning scheme or a spatial development plan, a planning authority must compile an inventory of the heritage resources. As an interim measure, a permit will be required to alter or demolish any structure older than 60 years until the survey has been carried out.

Heritage Areas

A planning authority must, at the time of revision of a town or regional planning scheme, or the compilation or revision of a spatial plan, investigate the designation of heritage areas to protect places of environmental or cultural interest.

Specific moveable objects or collections may be formally declared as heritage objects if SAHRA considers it necessary to control their export. It does not restrict their sale or their ownership. A provisional list of objects has been gazetted and includes antiquities that have been in South Africa for more than 100 years; items of importance in South African history or to significant people; paintings and items of artistic interest that have been in the country for over 50 years. Archaeological and palaeontological material and meteorites are exceptions, as they may not be owned, bought or sold. SAHRA will register dealers in heritage objects and regulate trade in heritage objects.

GENERAL PROTECTIONS

In areas where there has not yet been a systematic survey to identify conservation-worthy places, a permit is required to alter or demolish any structure older than 60 years. This will apply until a survey has been done and identified heritage resources are formally protected.

Archaeological and palaeontological sites and materials and meteorites are the source of our understanding of the evolution of the earth, life on earth and the history of people. In the new legislation permits are required to damage, destroy, alter or disturb them. People who already possess material are required to register it. The management of heritage resources are integrated with environmental resources and this means that before developments take place heritage resources are assessed and, if necessary, rescued.

Wrecks in South Africa’s maritime cultural zone are a national competence and therefore protected by SAHRA.

Burial grounds and graves

In addition to the formal protection of culturally significant graves, all graves which are older than 60 years and not in a cemetery (such as ancestral graves in rural areas) are protected. The legislation protects the interests of communities which have an interest in the graves: they must be consulted before any disturbance can take place.

The graves of victims of conflict and those associated with the liberation struggle will be identified, cared for, protected and memorials erected in their honour.

Heritage resources management

Anyone who intends to undertake a development must notify the heritage resources authority and if there is reason to believe that heritage resources will be affected, an impact assessment report must be compiled at the developer’s cost. Thus developers will be able to proceed without uncertainty about whether work will have to be stopped if a heritage resource is discovered.

MANAGEMENT TOOLS

The incentives provided to those interested in the conservation of the national estate are more flexible.

Fines for unlawful destruction or other damage to heritage resources are more extensive, and other disincentives include community service, reconstruction of a heritage resource, or payment equivalent to the costs of disturbing or damaging a heritage resource and the forfeiture of equipment being used when committing the offence.

National heritage resources assistance programme - SAHRA will provide financial assistance in the form of a grant or a loan to community organisations or  individuals for any project which will promote heritage resource conservation.