Counter‐mapping Heritage: Memory and Significance in Places of Racialised Land Dispossession: The Case of Lower Claremont, Cape Town

Abstract

AbstractIn this study I investigate the use of counter‐mapping methodologies to identify memories and significance in landscapes of racialised dispossession in the city of Cape Town. I use oral history, a go‐along or walking interview and focus group workshop to test the counter‐mapping process. In doing so I trace the historical process of land and housing loss under apartheid as an extension of colonialism and its modernist project of racial separation, and the effects and affects on those dispossessed into the post‐apartheid period. I critically assess the official frameworks of heritage resource management, especially in the post‐apartheid period, which have continued to focus on the built environment and aesthetics, despite official attempts to incorporate consultation of communities, stakeholders and their values. I do so in order to highlight the need for transformation and inclusion in current heritage practice in order to address disparities in the practice. Counter‐mapping methodologies are presented in the research as potential tools to address these contentious practices. These contentions intersect strongly in areas included in the Heritage Protection Overlay Zoning (HPOZ) in the City of Cape Town.1 The research shows that the HPOZ is geared towards managing the built environment and give attention to contextual development issues. It is however, not able to deal with memories and intangible values of the dispossessed in places where it intersects with land dispossession. The study also presents how research participants understand their heritage, which at times strengthens the official framework, and at other times stands in opposition to and in contrast to the official framework. These significances are mapped using counter‐mapping methodologies. The study concludes that counter‐mapping methodologies are able to represent memory and intangible significance in places of racialised land dispossession, and that the methodologies have multiple uses for varying settings and purposes, which speak to a modernist vision in post‐apartheid's constitutional democracy that fulfills the promise of fairness and justice.