RE-IMAGINING BUFFALO CITY'S HERITAGE LANDSCAPE

Buffalo City Heritage Audit is a commissioned research report conducted by Gary Minkley, Langa Makubela and Ayanda Tyali on behalf of the South African Heritage Resources Agency

WEB ABSTRACT

The Buffalo City municipal area, encompassing the East London and King William’s Town urban centres, along with the adjacent rural and peri-urban areas, has a rich and varied history. And yet, the city’s 42 existing heritage sites are, with few exceptions, exclusively ‘white’.

More specifically, the vast majority of these sites are colonial, commercial or civic buildings, for example as the Anne Bryant Art Gallery and the Old Public Library in East London, and the Old Military Hospital and British Kaffrarian Savings Bank in King William’s Town.

Do these heritage sites speak to the majority of Buffalo City residents? And are they still relevant in a new, united city? Consider, for example, that many of the city’s declared sites in King William’s Town acquired their heritage status as a result of a very specific political context: the Ciskei homeland era, specifically the fears and insecurities experienced by whites during his time.

From the early 1970s, especially, the threat of the incorporation of Ciskeiwas a specific motivation for having various sites declared national monuments. To wit: “Monuments in Bantu areas. This region is much affected. The KWT Historical Society and the German Settler Association as well as Church bodies are worried about a number of buildings which will be affected by the consolidation of the Ciskei” (1974 Kaffrarian Museum, to the National Monuments Council).

As a result, many of the city’s existing heritage sites can be considered to be “national monuments of fear” – fear of a loss of white identity; fear of Ciskei Bantustan independence and the imagined decay of black rule; fear of losing their “South African” status; and, ultimately, fear of exclusion, marginality and decline.

And while many of these sites do indeed have important historical, architectural and cultural significance, this significance can be seen to be representations of colonial and settler power and achievement, and, simultaneously, of the violence, exclusion and marginalisation of other, indigenous and/or black histories.

Consequently, Buffalo City’s 42 existing heritage sites – far from being universal representations of shared history – are lingering white symbols of history and power which continue, in many instances, to reproduce a series of racist and exclusive meanings and symbols in the landscape of the city. This has grave and continuing consequences that do not serve reconciliation and unity, but rather that of difference, division and exclusion.

How, then, does Buffalo City begin to re-examine its heritage? And what is the process of addressing and correcting the city’s anomalous heritage landscape? Various options need to be examined:

• Should some of Buffalo City’s existing heritage sites be “de-declared”?
• How are new meanings given to these old monuments?
• What are the likely consequences if they are left to dominate the social and spatial landscapes of the new city?

Within this contextual framework, the Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER) was commissioned by the Buffalo City Municipality (BCM) to conduct the city’s first ever comprehensive heritage audit.

The audit set out primarily to:

• Review opinions at ground level, across all wards of the city, about people’s relationships to existing heritage sites, both Grade A monument sites as well as other sites people might identify or label as major heritage sites;
• Create an up-to-date, reviewed and detailed database of heritage sites in Buffalo City;
• Identify, motivate and grade potential new community heritage sites;
• To investigate meanings, understandings and relationships to heritage generally, while also testing perceptions of changes in heritage practice, from legislation through to impact; and
• Propose routes and programmes for building capacity, structures, knowledge and activities around heritage.

A total of 42 existing heritage sites were identified and surveyed, documenting the reasons why these sites were declared heritage sites, their current status, as well as whether these sites are identified as sites with public and/or tourist interest. [A full list of the 42 existing Buffalo City heritage sites, as well as a detailed discussion on each site, appears in the full research report HERE.]

Key findings related to Buffalo City’s existing heritage sites:

• National monuments in the city were primarily declared after 1969. Driven by a sense of the national register and of the conception of monuments as primarily urban, and part of the “historical and architectural core” of towns and cities, this core is fundamentally colonial and settler.
• These buildings are constituted as “universally valuable” through their architectural, historical and urban roles; their declaration as national monuments expands and extends these notions.
• Declared heritage sites are largely white; declaration of these sites was inspired largely by narrow, racialised white and/or settler politics.
• While many of these sites have important historical, architectural and cultural significance, this significance is a representation of colonial and settler power and achievement on the one hand, and the exclusion of other, indigenous and/or black histories on the other.
• The vast majority of sites are urban – a stark reminder that power lies in the city, while the rural areas are characterised as unchanging, hence backwards or primitive

In addition to reviewing existing sites, researchers and fieldworkers also undertook an extensive process of community consultation and interaction, in essence asking residents in all 45 wards of the new Buffalo City what they themselves considered appropriate symbols and sites representative of their city’s heritage.

Though most of the respondents were not familiar with the existing heritage sites, they were keen to participate in the declaration of new heritage sites in the city, with older respondents more engaged and active in suggesting new heritage sites. By contrast, younger respondents, especially scholars and students, reflected a very limited sense of engagement with issues of heritage and were disinterested, often claiming issues of heritage to be “irrelevant”.

The majority of respondents, however, were of the view that issues of new heritage sites are long overdue; that there should be monuments in the townships to commemorate their heritage and also benefit from spin-offs of tourism, linked to the heritage sites. There was also a strong sentiment that these issues cannot be raised under the current conditions of poverty and joblessness – that “only rich people can respond to issues of heritage”.

Key findings related to proposed new heritage sites:

• Perceptions around new heritage sites are heavily influenced by what came before, ie the previous, essentially white “heritisation of space”. This can be seen in the many proposals for the built environment – townships, locations, schools, office buildings, police stations, homes, churches, etc – to be identified as new heritage sites in the city. While the content and meaning attached to these new proposed sites differ radically from existing sites, they reflect the same understanding of heritage as falling within specific urban, built parameters.
• A strong autobiographical voice emerged in defining new or proposed heritage sites. This implies that memoir, reminiscence, confession, testament, case history and other autobiographical acts or cultural occasions pervade the culture of heritage.
• “Living heritage” is strongly shaped by the “living through” of the 1990s; what is “lived” is heavily influenced by the present and “living heritage” is more forcefully defined by the TRC and other national commissions and agencies
• There is a strong connection between history and heritage. New heritage practices and proposals need to commemorate and record public histories through imaginative sites and localities in the extended space of the city, in terms of what may be called restitutive heritage.
• What are the strategies for new heritage sites? Should they simply be added on the existing sites, or should there be a process of substituting some existing sites with new ones? Or, perhaps, both simultaneously. Both strategies of replacement and of “add-on” have implications. Add-on does not change existing “white” conceptions and meanings; replacement, however, means the moment of national significance already commemorated or recognised elsewhere potentially puts new monuments of exclusion in place.

Based on the comments and suggestions offered in the survey, a fully motivated list of 29 proposed new heritage sites, as well as an associated database and broad record of what particular communities recognise as key heritage sites, has been compiled. This will assist Buffalo City Municipality to structure, sustain, systematise and consolidate a process of heritage resource identification in the city where, currently, this process is haphazard, uneven and, in many cases, unrecognised at community level.

To see the full list of the 29 proposed new Buffalo City heritage sites, as well as a detailed discussion on each site, access the full research report by clicking HERE.