ABSTRACT
The African Liberation Heritage (ALH) typology illustrates Africa's history of conquests, domination, resistance, armed struggle and freedom. Most African countries, embarked on liberation struggles to gain independence from colonialist, who had partitioned and divided Africa among themselves as if it was not habituated. Struggle (s) are defined as the actions against colonialism, including apartheid (racial system of governance) in Africa. In specific terms, it is used to refer to different responses of African States to attain independence and freedom. These responses created social memories associated with tangible (e.g., battle sites, graves, archives, camp sites, etc.) and intangible heritage values now called Liberation heritage. However, there are narrative exceptions for Botswana and Ethiopia's liberation history. Though Botswana did not necessary wage a war against the British, Sir Sereste Khama was imprisoned and exiled by the British, events that precipitated negotiated solutions. Therefore the term struggle (s) is used to refer to different responses of African States in order to attain independence. This process of gaining independence from colonialist by Africa created social memories associated with tangible and intangible aspects of the liberation struggles, now embraced as ALH. ALH is thus a common and shared new heritage typology in Africa, with some sites now listed as World Heritage, (e.g., Robben Island, South Africa). However, the criteria and evaluation framework applicable for inscribing such sites of social memory and recent conflicts (e.g., genocide sites of Rwanda) as World Heritage remains unclear and there are increasing debates on this matter. Prior to these discussions, UNESCO and AU launched the ‘Roads to Independence- African Liberation Heritage Programme’ (ALHP). ALHP desires to develop a scientific framework for handling ALH in its diversity. Within the ambit of this pioneering ALH framework, there is renewed interest in further inscribing more such sites as World Heritage. However, this is suffering from the definition of what is scientific value by the World Heritage Convention, political contestations on what and how to memorialise ALH and the social challenges making liberators and the public question ruling governments on the fading aspirations and dreams of the struggles. Countries like Angola and South Africa are inscribing ALH as part of implementing the Global Strategy that has been in place since 1992 aimed at address imbalances and underrepresentation of African sites on the World Heritage List. Within this evolving complex context, this chapter discusses ALH typology as a local to universal process, in which both scientific values of the WHC and the perceived global contribution of ALH from an Africa perspective. The discussion makes a recommendation on how ALH, based on the combination of its local and regional dimensions in the Africa region, as well as a common human characteristics expressed in different forms in different places across the world. This demonstrates that, while the African struggles are peculiar, they are not necessarily the only ones. This equally means that other parts of the world that underwent such struggles in Asia and South America can align with this African experience and thinking. These struggles, in their varied manifestations, should be universalised as World Heritage, including reviewing criteria and evaluation framework used by UNESCO and setting it into the broader territorial context and needs of Africa from a development perspective. The chapter concludes that ALH typology remains important in the history of Africa, but at the same time it is also contested, emotive and challenging to universalise without creating both national and international political tensions.
