HEARTED EFFORTS BY THE MOGOGELO COMMUNITY TO PROTECT TRADITIONAL SITES BY MEANS OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION FORUMS: A REVIEW REPORT

ABSTRACT

Traditional values, especially those regarding ancestral graves, crafts, beliefs, songs, dances and languages, are part of Africa's oldest heritage. These existed prior to knowledge of sustainable development or any legal framework to enforce conservation. Development was, in the past, community-centred without constraints to these antiquities. Current legislation acknowledges the necessity of stakeholders’ consent, that is, the consent of community residents. This was the case with the development of a photovoltaic solar energy project in the Mogogelo community in the North West province in South Africa, where environmental practitioners were required as legislated to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Among these specialist studies was the Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA). This article is based on the interest shown by the community and the standoff that arose over the allocation of the project site and the conservation of traditional values. Using a public participation process as a social forum, this report highlights the degree of traditional knowledge and legislative awareness within the community about its right to protect heritage resources.     

CAMEROON: A COUNTRY UNITED BY ETHNIC AMBITION AND DIFFERENCE

This paper attempts an answer to the question: What keeps Cameroontogether despite widespread instability in Africa, despite theturbulence of the subregional environment in which it findsitself, and despite its own internal contradictions? The mainargument is that the politics of regional and ethnic balance,the chronic lack of vision as a country, the lack of real commitmentto democracy, the propensity to vacillate on most issues ofcollective interest, together with an infinite ability to developsurvival strategies, have acted to counter all meaningful attemptsto pursue common interests and aspirations. All that appearsto unite Camerooni ans is a common ethnic or regional ambitionto preserve their differences under the delusion of maximizingopportunities. However, as the ‘national cake’ diminisheswith the worsening economic crisis, corruption, mass miseryand ethnicity, making it more illusive for the bulk of smallpeople to claim the same benefits from their connections withthe big—or the not so big—men and women of power,one can legitimately wonder just how much longer the systemcan continue to deflate the disaffected.     

THE PEARL OF KHORASAN,A HISTORY OF HERAT BY C.P.W. GAMMELL

Radek Sikorski, former foreign minister of Poland who travelled to Afghanistan and Herat in the 1980s, writes an extended review of a new history of Herat.