Heritage tourism in a city of legends
Since the end of apartheid, much has been made of the Eastern Cape as the home of the founding fathers of African nationalism and of the great intellectual traditions stemming from the early mission stations, which produced the constitutional traditions of the ANC. The province has embraced this history and called itself the ‘home of legends’, and yet it is still the prehistoric coelacanth fish – which remains an abiding pre-occupation at the East London Museum – that prevails in the city’s memorialisation of its own past. In 2019, as part of an ongoing collaboration, the Buffalo City Metropolitan Development Agency (BCMDA) asked the HSRC to help re-evaluate its museums and heritage infrastructure to boost tourism. By Prof Leslie Bank and Mark Paterson
At a conference in Ecuador in 2016, the United Nations launched its Habitat III global initiative on the future of cities. In preparation for this event, it called for papers on the current state of cities and new initiatives for sustainable development.
An interesting finding was that culture, heritage and the creative industries accounted for more than 20% of the global urban economy, which, in turn, made up more than 80% of the total world economy. Cities that developed a distinct sense of place and were able to promote a positive sense of belonging, culture and identity, it was found, were more likely to succeed economically and socially than those that did not
As part of a master plan to address declining tourism in the region, the Buffalo City Metropolitan Development Agency (BCMDA) requested help from HSRC experts in the field of place-making and city development to review the heritage sector and assist the city with finding its unique identity, a project which began in February 2019 and is ongoing.
The colonial legacy and the coelacanth
When the HSRC team arrived in Buffalo City in April 2019 to assess the museum sector, it found that the East London Museum was running a special exhibition in its foyer on the discovery of the coelacanth, a prehistoric fish which was found off the coast of East London in 1938. In the late 1930s, when the frontiers of natural science were expanding and fascination with evolutionary thinking was at its height, such finds were seen to be of enormous scientific importance globally, pointing to previously hidden evolutionary genealogies and lines of species development. Accordingly, the coelacanth became the main attraction at the museum.
However, times had moved on and the fishy throwback to the age of the dinosaurs is no longer as culturally significant, notwithstanding its zoological interest. In this context, the East London Museum’s ‘temporary’ coelacanth exhibition, which had been in place for more than a year during the HSRC’s visit, may be viewed as indicative of a wider crisis in the cultural tourism and heritage sector in the city-region.
The museum’s main challenge was that it had remained trapped by its own history. The overriding narrative that defined its displays had remained a colonial discourse of social and natural evolution, anchored by the coelacanth in the natural history section of the museum but also shaped the presentation of human history of the city-region.
Dioramas showed the traditional culture of the Xhosa people and other tribes, rendered in a way which emphasised the ‘timelessness’ of African cultural traditions as if these were features of the natural Eastern Cape landscape rather than aspects of its human history. By contrast, the ‘real history makers’ were the 19th century German and British settler pioneers, presented as having brought ‘progress’ and modernity to a troubled frontier.
Since democracy, a combination of chronic underfunding and some laissez-faire policies in the heritage sector had left this institution frozen in time just as the contemporary city-region urgently needed to redefine its place in the country and the world.
Home of Legends: The Steve Biko Centre
In contrast to the East London Museum, the Steve Biko Centre in King William’s Town represented a beacon in the city-region’s heritage sector. Built in the Ginsberg township as a modern, multi-purpose facility in 2012, it became popular for visitors, but it also adopted an activist role within the local community.
Featuring a conference facility, a restaurant, an auditorium, a museum and a shop, it was visited daily by locals, domestic tourists and international guests. The centre was also in touch with the local community, with a range of initiatives including a business incubator to support local entrepreneurs and free open-air feature films with positive, black-empowerment themes.
The centre’s focus on the history of Steve Biko and black consciousness in South Africa was the context of a broader history of globalised, transatlantic interactions between South Africa, Africa, the US and the Caribbean. It had established an intellectual profile and function in the area, with book launches, public lectures and a community library.
At the time of the assessment, the centre wanted to launch a community radio station and expand the suite of community projects under its auspices. However, there was tension between the institution and the larger heritage sector in the city and the province, with the centre’s leadership complaining of poor communication with, and limited support from, officials, and inertia in the sector.
Although multi-functional as a tourist destination and a place of education, connection and empowerment for locals, the Steve Biko Centre did not hold the attention of visitors for a whole day, unless they were specifically interested in black consciousness, the researchers found. Another drawback was that its shop had limited merchandise, and although it had a few attractive Steve Biko t-shirts on display, it had none in stock, with little prospect of new supplies arriving soon.
A number of tours organised internationally and out of Johannesburg had placed the centre on an itinerary exploring the region’s black history, but there had been few efforts on a municipal or provincial level to integrate the facility into local heritage offerings. It was also found that this disconnection was symptomatic of a broader lack of coordination in the local heritage sector.
Reworking the old and connecting the new
In discussions about heritage and tourism opportunities in Buffalo City, it has been argued that too much emphasis was placed on the old cultural heartlands and not enough on the city region. Disillusionment with the management of the city and the state of democracy in South Africa in general had fostered the politics of nostalgia, which could regard the pre-colonial past through rose-tinted spectacles.
The HSRC researchers believe the city region’s heritage does not have to be viewed this way; nor does there need to be such a sharp divide between the rural and the urban in the popular versions of history. For example, the East London Museum could re-contextualise its material, modernising its narrative to make it more relevant to the lived experience of contemporary residents of the city, both black and white.
It is critical that Buffalo City uses its rich, diverse history and beautiful physical location on the Wild Coast to bring new focus to its story. Connecting the Steve Biko Centre with other innovative projects in the neighbourhood and restructuring the East London Museum are good starting points to help the heritage sector re-emerge as a powerful educational resource for the city and the region, to stimulate job creation and to drive tourism.
Author: Prof Leslie Bank, acting executive director of the HSRC’s Economic Performance and Development research programme