It’s Heritage Month. In 1995, our new democratically-elected government declared the 24th of September as a national public holiday to celebrate and embrace our heritage. As Nelson Mandela noted in 1986, “our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation.” And so we celebrate Heritage Day on the 24th September every year.

But, sadly, we have few leaders today who embody Madiba's vision for an inclusive and generative notion of heritage, and we do not see that commitment to recognising the immense value of heritage resources in public decisions all around us.

Let’s examine the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning (DEADP) decision to grant an Environmental Authorisation (EA) to the River Club on 20th August 2020 to build their mega-development Century City on the Liesbeek.

Heritage Western Cape (HWC) issued their final comments on the developers' Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) on the 13th February 2020. The comments noted that the application lacked recognition of the intangible heritage of the site and failed to develop appropriate heritage indicators to celebrate the heritage value of the open riverine character of the area. Rather, the HIA attempted to retrofit its assessment to an already pre-determined development proposal - a proposal of bulk and scale inappropriate for the site. As such, HWC concluded that the HIA had failed to meet the requirements of the National Heritage Resources Act.

DEADP simply ignored their comments, allowed the developer’s heritage consultant to have the final word in explaining why HWC were wrong and why he, as a consultant paid by the River Club, should be considered right. Amazingly, DEADP, who are supposed to be an independent authority, simply took his word over the views of the competent heritage authority in this matter, Heritage Western Cape. So, the applicant was also allowed to be the judge of what was acceptable or not.

Naturally, HWC have appealed the EA.

There were two grounds on which they appealed:

Firstly, they pointed out that the applicants placed inappropriate emphasis on recent history and tangible remains. For example, the HIA made the false claim that the River Club “site has its origins in the 1920s” which reflected an erroneous emphasis on recent history and tangible remnants.” By accepting this, DEADP ignored “the large body of information which was put before it as to the intangible significance of the site as being at the confluence of the three rivers. This confluence is of great significance to a wider representation of the first nations than just the First Nations Collective, on whose inputs the applicants most heavily rely.”

Moreover, “… the insistence that there must be tangible traces of historical events … sets an impossible requirement that is inconsistent with international heritage practice. It is not necessary for intangible heritage resources to be expressed in tangible traces in order for them to be considered to be of heritage significance.”

DEADP simply accepted this distorted version of heritage from the developer’s consultants without considering the extensive evidence to the contrary, particularly the importance of the open riverine valley as representing highly significant intangible heritage.

The second ground related to the fact that DEADP did not follow the requirements of the National Heritage Resource Act. HWC are the competent authority to assess whether the Heritage Impact Assessment submitted by the applicants complied with the Act. In both their interim comments in 2019 and in their final comments on 13 February 2020, HWC noted that the HIA was inadequate and explained in detail why that was the case.  The applicant’s heritage consultant did not respond to these concerns, blustered that HWC did not give enough detail and simply continued restating a set of findings which HWC had found to be without basis.  As a result, HWC noted in their appeal that there was “no true evaluation of HWC’s concerns” and the developer’s consultant’s comments were simply “a further restatement of the views of the applicant.” Rather than being responsive to feedback, the applicant’s expert’s “views on the matter appears to be intractable.”

Despite the fact that HWC are the competent heritage authority and DEADP have no heritage expertise, which is why the law instructs them to consult HWC, DEADP went ahead and allowed the developer’s heritage expert to submit a further report, which DEADP then used as grounds to bypass HWC objections. Describing this “blanket acceptance” by DEAP of the developers’ report as “unlawful”, HWC noted that the HIA and the EA therefore failed to comply with the law.

What is clear it that it was not HWC refusing to clarify its views but the River Club’s heritage experts who refused to respond to very clear concerns expressed by the competent authority and other IAPs. It is clear that it is not for the heritage consultant paid by the River Club to pronounce on whether his report does or does not comply with the NHRA. To quote his own words, “any disinterested observer” will see that it is the heritage consultant who has obdurately refused to hear that the absence of heritage indicators responding to the heritage resource as open space is a problem he cannot solve by retrofitting a heritage assessment to suit a pre-determined development application. It is the developer’s HIA consultant who, with each iteration, merely re-stated the initial findings of his first HIA – and that is why HWC concluded the EA is an unlawful decision.

So, while it is heritage month and we are meant to celebrate our rich and varied cultural heritage in ways that will help build our new nation, what we see in the River Club EA is heritage captured and subjugated to vested interests, in ways that help to advance a mega-development for the private benefit of a few at the expense of preserving the environment and Khoi heritage as a public good.

The anonymous graffiti artist who painted a stencilled image of Madiba on alongside a stretch of Victoria Road near the Kramat of Sheikh Noorul Mubeen thanked Madiba but also lamented that “We Miss you.”  How true. Madiba would never have let this perfidy proceed, where heritage can be subjugated by public officials to benefit an elite few at the expense of the presentation of the rich and varied cultural heritage of our nation.