South Africa reconsiders its historical heritage through memorials and street names — Daily Maverick

In South Africa, Heritage Month is accompanied by a discussion of how the country’s history is reflected in street names, memorials, museums and the return of cultural property. As Daily Maverick reports, public spaces feature sites of memory dedicated to figures of the liberation movement, human rights defenders and women politicians alongside monuments from the colonial period and apartheid era.

Return of cultural property

In 2025, the remains of representatives of the Khoi and San peoples were returned from Scotland to South Africa and reburied. Three sacred cultural artefacts were also returned from Switzerland to the Nkuna royal family.

The South African Heritage Resources Agency, Sahra, received about 74 million rand under a programme to protect and promote national heritage for the 2026/27 financial year. The Daily Maverick author links these processes to a departure from the simplified image of South Africa as a “rainbow nation,” a concept proposed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the democratic transition of 1994.

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Street names and sites of memory

In Pretoria, Church Street was divided in 2012 into four sections named after trade union activist Elias Motsoaledi, physician and activist W. F. Nkomo, activist Helen Joseph, and student activist Stanza Bopape. The square where a monument to Prime Minister Johannes Strijdom once stood is now called Lillian Ngoyi Square. The monument itself collapsed in 2001.

The former HF Verwoerd Hospital in Pretoria now bears the name of Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko. In Brandfort, house No. 802 in the Majwemasweu township, where Winnie Mandela was banished from 1974 to 1985, was restored and opened in December 2022.

Among the important sites of memory, the publication names the Constitutional Hill complex in Johannesburg, the Hector Pieterson Museum, Albert Luthuli’s house in Groutville and Nelson Mandela’s house in Soweto. South Africa also has 12 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Robben Island, the Cradle of Humankind and the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape.