African Archaeological Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1997
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Taking African Cultural Heritage Management into the q~venty-First Century: Zimbabwe's Masterplan for Cultural Heritage Management Gilbert PwitP
For a long time, cultural heritage management programs in Zimbabwe, and perhaps elsewhere in Africa, have been concerned mainly with the preservation and conservation of archaeological monuments primarily from a technical point of view. Often such programs had a specific site focus. In Zimbabwe, for example, the major concern has been to preserve the larger and more spectacular of the stone wall enclosures, with most of the energies being expended on the site of Great Zimbabwe from as far back as 1914 (Ndoro, 1994). For the greater part of the time, however, conservation and preservation at such monuments were usually ill informed and largely unscientific, even though well meant. At Great Zimbabwe, for example, major restorations of collapsed stone walls were carried out on different parts of the site, all of them unsystematic and approached from the misinformed interpretation of the site as a product of exotic populations rather than of the indigenous people. At other similar sites, modern materials such as cement were used to stabilize the walls. By modern conservation standards and, more importantly, ethical standards, most of what was done was outrageously inappropriate, as not only were foreign materials introduced into the original structure, but also the intervention measures were not reversible. An additional problem with these early efforts was the failure to address fully the questions of the aims of the conservation and for whom the monuments were being preserved. The programs were undertaken in a colonial context in which the local communities were not seen as relevant because this particular aspect of their cultural heritage was seen as not belonging to them (Garlake, 1982; Pwiti, 1994). This was a state of affairs that obtained not only in Zimbabwe, and not only with History Department, P.O. Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, ZimbabWe. 81 0263-0338/97/06(•)-0081512.50/0 © 1997 Plenum Publishing
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regard to cultural heritage management, but to archaeological research as a whole on the African continent (see papers in Robertshaw, 1991). Following independence, many African nations realized the potential value of knowledge of the past in nation building and the importance of the restoration of cultural pride, which had been seriously eroded by colonialism. Archaeological research was encouraged, alongside the expansion of museums and development of monuments as centers of education about the past. However, many research programs remained scientific and academic in their orientation, and only a few publications were produced for popular consumption. Museum displays remained largely unchanged from the colonial period and presentations of major monuments remained targeted at the foreign tourist market. In Zimbabwe, Ndoro (1994) has commented on how, until recently, presentations at the Great Zimbabwe monument and site museum constructed for its interpretation continued to reflect a bias toward the foreign visitor. Guidebooks continued to be in English, while display captions in the museum included only two other offlcial local languages, Shona and Ndebele, almost 10 years after independence. Little was done to make the local communities part of the Conservation efforts. The sum total of all this is that even though it has long been realized that archaeological research and cultural heritage management have a place in national cultural and economic development, there seems to have been a lack of clear direction, aggravated by lack of funding to translate this awareness into action. It was partly to rectify these shortcomings, as well as in response to the government's call to parastatals to become self-supporting, that the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe came up with the Masterplan for Cultural Resource Conservation and Development (Collett, 1991). The Zimbabwe National Museums and Monuments Masterplan represents an unprecedented and comprehensive effort in the postcolonial era to provide a national conservation strategy, to involve local communities, to address both local and domestic tourist concerns, to make monuments a local educational resource for the young, and to generate revenues. Essentially, for cultural heritage managment, the plan involved the selection of monuments throughout the country, which have then been ranked in terms of their potential to generate revenue as well as their significance for local and international tourism and their educational value. Depending on these criteria, the level of development required at each monument has been determined. Presentation has then been planned with this in mind, i.e., sites which are popular with both foreign and local visitors are necessarily presented and developed accordingly, while sites which may be remote and therefore of largely local significance are developed and presented largely for local consumption. The development programs have been designed in
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such a way that they consider local sensitivities and cultural needs as an important part of the effort in order not to alienate cultural heritage management from the people to whom it belongs. As is well-known throughout Africa, one of the major problems of managing the cultural heritage is that poverty surrounds the very contexts in which heritage management for cultural and other developmental purposes seeks to make an impact. The development and presentation of cultural heritage must therefore be made to have tangible benefits to people rather than being seen simply as yet another venture for the foreign tourist. For this reason, the Zimbabwean model includes income-generating and employment opportunities for local communities. For example, local stone masons who used to be casual laborers are now engaged and involved in the conservation of stone walls as specialists in their own right. A n o t h e r strategy to earn the support and involvement of locals for heritage management is curio sales. Some categories of curios have been withdrawn from the site museum shops and left to local people to sell to visitors so that they may obtain an income for themselves. As noted above, one of the major constraints in heritage m a n a g e m e n t in Africa has been the lack of funds to finance the programs, given that most nations suffer from chronically depressed economies. In such situations, governments tend to channel the limited national resources toward what are felt to be "developmental" areas whose benefits to the populations are more immediately visible. The Zimbabwean solution to this problem was to hold a "donor's conference" for heritage management development in 1992. Various donors were approached to attend the conference, where they were familiarized with Zimbabwe's needs in terms of funding, equipment, and personnel training. Donors then made pledges toward assisting in any one of these areas of need. The conference was a resounding success and the inputs from the various donors are expected to carry Zimbabwe's heritage management programs into the twenty-first century.
REFERENCES Collett, D. (1991). The Archaeological Heritage of Zimbabwe: A Masterplan for Resource and Conservation and Development, National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe. Garlake, R (1982). Prehistory and ideology in Zimbabwe. In Peel, J. D., and Ranger, T. O. (eds.), Past and Present in Zimbabwe, Manchester UniversityPress, Manchester, pp. 1-19. Ndoro, W. (1994). The preservation and presentation of Great Zimbabwe.Antiquity (68) 260: 616-629. Pwiti, G. (1994). Archaeology,prehistoryand education in Zimbabwe. In Stone, P., and Molyneaux, B. (eds.), The Presented Past, Routledge, London, pp. 338-347. Robertshaw, P. (ed.) (1991).A History of African Archaeology, Thames and Hudson, London.
