The transition from apartheid to non-racial democracy in 1990s South Africa issued in a period of nation building that emphasized transparency, reconciliation, and healing. As part of the transition, South Africans completely revised their cultural heritage policy, departing from the racist practices of the colonial and apartheid eras that had excluded the cultural contributions of most of the country’s population by introducing a policy that presented responsible management of cultural heritage as a key tool in the democratic nation building process.
Nearly two decades later, the result is a fundamentally transformed heritage environment in South Africa, a compelling example of how one nation is dealing with its difficult and painful pasts. South Africa’s commitment to democratic heritage transformation has permitted a rewriting of the nation’s history, has exposed the challenges and rewards from the involvement of everyone in the identification and management of heritage, and has resulted in an atypical decision to leave some of the more difficult pasts in place to permit debate to persist, all lessons that are important for managing difficult heritage in nation building in South Africa and elsewhere in the world.
