The challenge of community-based heritage projects in an emergent democracy: a case study

Abstract eng:
Mpophomeni is an apartheid-era African ‘township’ situated on an old Dutch immigrant farm outside Howick in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, South Africa. It is laid out in rational fashion, with small houses cheek by jowl and an absence of central civic space or secure public open space. Central to this contrived urban framework is an old stone farmhouse belonging to the period of the white settlers who occupied the original farm between 1840 and 1962. Known as Montrose House, it formed the centre of a viable and operating farm until its expropriation by the Nationalist Government in the early 1960s. After that, it operated as the Township Manager’s house and as a central depot for the Howick Town Council, under whose administration it loosely fell. With the new government after 1994, this property remained in the ownership of the Municipality and remained as an ‘official’ space. However, with the transfer of governance and the realignment of official priorities, as well as the lack of capacity of officials working for the Municipality, the house and the site have been subject to neglect. Furthermore, the discourse of landownership, coloniser and colonised has added to the complexity of the situation, compounded with poverty and crime. This paper will describe the building and its culturally layered history, before introducing the current project: the community-driven restoration and repair to the house in order that it can be transformed into an Eco-Museum for the local community and a central space in a proposed civic node. It will then elaborate on the repair decisions to the building and those ancillary structures on the site in the context of their situation and location, as well as the challenges of realistic and judicious repair in the light of lack of funding. It will enumerate the issues that are presented as a community-driven project located between the two necessary bodies being provincial governmental authority and local municipal structures. It will conclude by presenting possible reasons, located in current heritage discourse in South Africa, as to why this project is so at risk, despite it being the result of a community-driven imperative and not as a top-down imposed project common during the first few years of democracy in South Africa.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket