ABSTRACT
Since the advent of a democratically elected government in South Africa in 1994, the state agency for heritage management, the National Monuments Council (NMC), has been required to redress the imbalance in the list of officially recognised heritage sites, namely those heritage sites declared as National Monuments in terms of the National Monuments Act (Act No. 28 of 1969, as amended in 1989.) This list has been heavily criticised as being largely composed of white colonial buildings or structures, generally neglecting those heritage sites of relevance to the majority of South Africans (Frescura 1992). In redressing this imbalance, there is a tendency towards the identification, interpretation and commemoration of heritage sites that are symbols and expressions of the recent political change and which promote the concept of a new South African identity and nation.
