Our heritage is more than memory: It is South Africa's bridge to Africa and the world - IOL

Heritage is often understood as something we inherit from those who came before us. It lives in our monuments, museums, archives, languages, traditions and places of remembrance.

Heritage is often understood as something we inherit from those who came before us. It lives in our monuments, museums, archives, languages, traditions and places of remembrance.

But heritage is not simply about looking backwards. It is also about understanding who we are, engaging with others and imagining the kind of future we want to build.

For South Africa, heritage has a particularly important role to play. Our history is deeply connected to the history of the African continent and to the wider global struggle for freedom, dignity and human rights. Our liberation journey, our transition to democracy and our constitutional settlement have generated experiences and lessons that extend beyond our national borders.

The Constitution itself captures this outward-looking ambition. Its Preamble speaks of healing the divisions of the past and building a united and democratic South Africa that can take its rightful place among the family of nations.

This is where heritage can become more than remembrance. It can become a form of cultural diplomacy. Diplomacy is often associated with governments, ambassadors, treaties and formal negotiations. Yet nations also communicate through their culture, history, people and institutions. A heritage site can create a different kind of diplomatic space, one where people meet not simply as representatives of governments, but as human beings seeking to understand one another. South Africa has a compelling story to share.

It also reminds us that heritage should not be presented as a collection of isolated national stories. African histories have always intersected. Our movements, languages, ideas, cultures and struggles have crossed borders long before the modern nation-state. For this reason, South Africa has an opportunity to use heritage to strengthen its relationships across the continent. Institutions such as Freedom Park serve as spaces where these connections are explored, documented and brought to life. Its mandate includes telling the story of Africa from an African perspective and working with African and international institutions towards this purpose.

Such work can take many forms: collaborative research, exhibitions, conferences, educational programmes, cultural exchanges, commemorative events, academic partnerships and heritage tourism. These activities may appear different, but they share a common purpose: creating opportunities for people and institutions to encounter one another through history and culture. There is also an important opportunity to strengthen African knowledge production.

For too long, African history has often been interpreted through external frameworks. While international scholarship has an important place, African institutions must also have the capacity to research, preserve and interpret their own histories and knowledge systems. To its credit, UNESCO recognises the importance of Africa's living heritage in strengthening cultural identity and shared values, while its current work on African World Heritage includes capacity-building and cooperation among heritage professionals. Heritage institutions can therefore become centres of knowledge, not merely repositories of objects and memories.

This is particularly relevant for young people. A young South African should be able to visit a heritage institution and discover not only where their country comes from, but how its history connects to the rest of Africa and the world. A young person from another African country should likewise be able to encounter aspects of their own history reflected in South Africa's heritage spaces. In this way, heritage can help cultivate a stronger sense of African identity without diminishing the diversity of individual nations and communities.

There is also an economic dimension. Heritage tourism can create opportunities for local communities, cultural practitioners, researchers, entrepreneurs and young people. International partnerships can expand these opportunities by connecting heritage institutions with tourism networks, universities, museums and cultural organisations across borders. Recent UNESCO-supported initiatives in Southern Africa demonstrate the potential of partnerships that connect culture and heritage tourism with sustainable development and community benefits.

But perhaps heritage's greatest diplomatic value lies in its ability to create spaces for difficult conversations. South Africa's experience of reconciliation does not provide a simple formula that can be exported to other countries. Every society has its own history and circumstances. However, our experience demonstrates the importance of confronting difficult histories rather than erasing them. The constitutional project was explicitly concerned with healing divisions, establishing democratic values and creating a society founded on human rights and social justice. These are conversations that remain relevant far beyond South Africa.

Shared histories between countries are a powerful reminder of humanity's interconnectivity. For instance, our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) drew inspiration from Chile's National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which was established by President Patricio Aylwin to investigate gross human rights abuses resulting in deaths and disappearances during the military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. Again, there are also some parallels between our own Freedom Park and Chile's Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights).

Our heritage is not simply a record of where we have been. It is a resource for understanding where we are and a bridge towards where we can go together. For South Africa, that bridge should extend across our borders, into Africa and into the wider international community. If we invest in heritage as a platform for research, education, cultural exchange, tourism and dialogue, we can ensure that our places of remembrance do more than preserve yesterday. They can help shape conversations about tomorrow. Freedom Park's vision of becoming a leading national and international icon of humanity and freedom speaks directly to this possibility. The responsibility before us is therefore not only to remember our past, but to make that memory useful, by using it to deepen understanding, strengthen relationships and contribute to a more connected Africa and a more understanding world.

Dr Hilton Fisher is the Chief Executive Officer of Freedom Park Heritage Site, which is based in Pretoria. He is the former Ambassador to Chile and Indonesia respectively.