To address this challenge, heritage institutions must embrace what can be described as an ontological turn – shifting from an object-centred understanding of heritage towards a functionalist and people-centred approach. The question should no longer be, “How do we preserve heritage objects?” but rather, “What role does heritage play in society?”. Heritage must be understood as a living relationship between people, places, memories, knowledge, and identity. Its value lies not only in what it is, but in what it does for communities.
The recently opened Kgodumodumo Dinosaur Interpretation Centre in Golden Gate Highlands National Park offers an important example of this possibility. The centre was established to protect and showcase the region's globally significant fossil heritage while creating an immersive visitor experience that combines palaeontology, archaeology, geology, and cultural heritage. It also explicitly recognises the importance of celebrating indigenous Basotho cultural heritage alongside scientific knowledge.
The significance of this centre extends far beyond dinosaur fossils. It demonstrates how heritage institutions can become spaces where different forms of knowledge meet. Conventional scientific knowledge helps us understand the geological age of fossils, species evolution, and prehistoric ecosystems. However, local knowledge offers something equally important: an understanding of how communities have historically related to the landscape, how places acquired meaning, and how cultural memory has shaped people's attachment to the area. When local communities are invited to contribute their histories, stories, languages, place names, and cultural interpretations, heritage becomes richer and more inclusive. Together, these knowledge systems create a fuller understanding of heritage than either could provide independently. This intersection is also crucial for strengthening community ownership. People are more likely to value and protect heritage when they see themselves reflected within it.
Reimagining heritage institutions requires a new relationship
This is particularly important in South Africa, where heritage has a vital role to play in healing the wounds of colonialism and apartheid. The National Heritage Resources Act recognises heritage as a vehicle for empathy, healing, symbolic restitution, and nation-building. Such healing can only occur when people are active participants in heritage processes rather than distant observers.
Reimagining heritage institutions for a new era therefore requires more than new buildings, technologies, or exhibitions. It requires a new relationship between heritage and society, one that recognises communities as producers of knowledge, custodians of memory, and partners in conservation. The South African government's recent ratification of UNESCO's 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is therefore a commendable step towards this reimagined future of heritage. By joining the convention in 2025, South Africa formally aligned itself with a global commitment to protect living heritage, including oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, indigenous knowledge, and cultural skills passed down across generations. For a country seeking to reimagine its heritage institutions, the convention provides an important framework for recognising that communities are not merely beneficiaries of heritage management but are its primary custodians and knowledge holders.
The value of this approach is already evident at Basotho Cultural Village in the Eastern Free State, which remains one of South Africa's most compelling examples of people-centred heritage practice. Unlike conventional museums that primarily display objects, the village allows visitors to experience heritage as a living and evolving way of life. Through storytelling, language, architecture, music, food, dress, indigenous knowledge, and everyday cultural practices, heritage is presented not as something frozen in the past but as something continuously created and transmitted by communities. In this setting, the most important heritage resources are not the buildings or artefacts themselves, but the people who embody and share cultural knowledge.
Importantly, the relationship between the Basotho Cultural Village and the Kgodumodumo Dinosaur Interpretation Centre illustrates how different knowledge systems can complement one another. The interpretation centre provides visitors with scientific explanations of the region's fossil wealth and prehistoric landscapes, while the cultural village offers insights into the historical and contemporary relationships between people and place. Together, they reveal that understanding heritage requires more than scientific evidence alone. Local knowledge, oral histories, indigenous place-making practices, and cultural memories add layers of meaning that cannot be found in fossil records or archaeological data.
Most importantly, both sites demonstrate how heritage institutions can strengthen community ownership. When local communities are recognised as knowledge holders rather than merely beneficiaries of heritage projects, heritage becomes something people identify with, protect, and promote. In doing so, heritage becomes a living resource that connects past, present, and future while contributing to local development, cultural pride, and social cohesion.