From heritage conservation to heritage justice in Cape Town

Abstract

It is widely recognized that Cape Town remains a segregated city, with an affluent elite minority around the central business district and surrounding suburbs, and where the majority of its around four million residents live in the sprawl that makes up the rest of the city. Much of the focus of municipalities has been on how infrastructure can enable just and sustainable urban transitions, and we argue that heritage, seen as a core socio-cultural, material and metaphysical infrastructure, can play a role in this too. The value of working collectively, collaborating inclusively, and co-producing constructively, is now widely accepted as useful tactics for approaching policy making and implementation in local contexts. This article reflects on our (the authors) collaboration, paying particular attention to the co-production of a policy framing note entitled ‘Heritage sustainability and urban development: Valuing tangible and intangible heritage as drivers of placemaking’. We argue that there is a necessary and urgent shift from heritage protection and conservation to heritage justice located within a ‘southerning’ and intersectional feminist approach to action-oriented scholarship. We reflect on our approach to collaboration as deploying caring and care-full tactics of official activism within the City of Cape Town. Ultimately, we propose that these qualities of coproduction, rooted in a shared politics of heritage-based urban justice and sustainability can strengthen how heritage can be mobilized for action in municipalities.