What will heritage preservation be in the future? | Nyararai

 Fig 1.Great Zimbabwe National Monument

My research proposal is inspired by my working experience as a Curator at Great Zimbabwe World Heritage Site in my home country of Zimbabwe. As a curator, some of my responsibilities have been to conduct condition assessment surveys and inspection of archaeological sites. Zimbabwe is richly endowed with dry stone structures which were a product of a phenomenon associated with state formation across southern Africa which archaeologists have named as the Zimbabwe culture.  

During the course of my work, I noticed that my organisation employed a classification system which dedicates resources and attention to aesthetically pleasing heritage sites. Under this classification system, sites are divided into three classes with class one sites being inspected four times a year, class two sites twice a year and class three sites once a year. The classification system although technically applicable has presented challenges to heritage conservation practices in Zimbabwe. This has been so because due to the scarcity of resources sites like Great Zimbabwe, popular for their aesthetic architectural style, have been receiving conservation priority at the expense of less significant sites across the country. 

Against this background as a heritage practitioner, I intend to undertake a research that will place back all sites onto the conservation agenda premised on their cultural significance and not on grand monumentality or aesthetics.  All Zimbabwe type of sites must be given equal conservation attention which calls for the rethinking of our existing classification system and its hierarchical format. My stay here in Hungary has also been an inspiration as it exposed me to similar situations which I find back home. On our recent academic visit to sites in Northen Hungary I realised that the problem of classification for resource allocation in heritage management is not perhaps confined to Zimbabwe only.

  

 Fig 2. Holloko

 At Holloko World Heritage Site I discovered that sites with aesthetical values, economical potential, etc are well preserved and maintained whilst the reverse is true for less magnificent sites such as Nograd castle.

Fig 3. Nograd Castle

 It is a question that has to be answered as to whether heritage managers should concentrate on economics of heritage consumption as a tourist products at the expense of  cultural significance of such sites.

Despite the fact that most Zimbabwean class three sites don’t have significant aesthetic values they have spiritual symbolism to the local people. I thus argue that most heritage communities value these sites not because of the aesthetically pleasing architecture but rather they regard their socio-cultural use as important precursor to all subsequent forms of grandeurs. I am hoping to continuously tap more information, ideas and insights from all the courses I am taking here at CEU. It is my conviction that my stay here is going to shape my thinking resulting in the formulation of new ideas that will treat heritage conservation as a knowledge production process that respect both significance and physical aspects of a site particularly drawing on the discursive nature of heritage conservation in Zimbabwe.