19 Oct 2016

Dr Susan Keitumetse has been applauded for her insightful new book titled African Heritage Conservation and Management: Theory and Practice from Southern Africa.
Giving a keynote address at the book launch, Director of E.I.A. Projects Dr Alfred Tsheboeng said the book addresses the conflicts that arise from interpretations of the heritage that focus on acquired methodologies to the exclusion of indigenous knowledge and the resultant alienation of local communities from what should rightly be their heritage, and them its heirs.
He indicated that he enjoyed reading the book and learnt a lot from the various subjects that it presents.
“I much like the manner of presentation of the knowledge because it is without oversimplification and jargon filled equivocation that environment and heritage management pundits seem so fond of when they seek to impart domain wisdom in print,” he said.
He said this makes the book accessible and useful to those in academia and those in the practice of environment and heritage management.
Speaking on some of the things he learnt from the book, Dr Tsheboeng said heritage is a choice, a choice of what people want to save of their constructions (material culture) and nature.
“The decisions of what constitutes heritage worthy of saving derive from our present, a present shaped by acquired paradigms and epistemologies that are sometimes foreign to the heritage being reconstructed and to the communities whose residence within the cultural landscape being interpreted is as ancient as human antiquity itself,” he said.
The book will for a long time remain a useful resource for appreciating heritage conservation and management, national and multilateral environmental management instruments.
Dr Keitumetse works for the University of Botswana based at the Okavango Research Institute and the book retails for P600.ENDS