While statutory frameworks privilege tangible fabric, architectural significance and expert-led assessments, the Oude Molen case shows how intangible cultural heritage and living heritage are often marginalised, contested or rendered invisible.
This article examines Oude Molen as a contemporary heritage battleground, asking what heritage protection and safeguarding mean in a post-apartheid context shaped by unequal power, memory and spatial injustice.
Redevelopment proposal at Oude Molen
As the Western Cape Government advances redevelopment plans for Oude Molen, a 44.03ha site near Vincent Pallotti Hospital, Valkenberg Hospital, Maitland Garden Village and Pinelands, a profound heritage dispute has erupted. It is a dispute not only about buildings, zoning or density, but the very meaning of heritage in a democratic South Africa.
The fight over Oude Molen raises a broader question: Who gets to define heritage in post-apartheid South Africa and whose cultural continuity is recognised as worthy of protection? At issue is the Revised Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) submitted in November 2025 as part of the Western Cape Government’s plan for high-density mixed-use buildings with a 34% allocation for social housing.
The land hosts the Oude Molen Eco-Village, home to First Nations practitioners, horse trainers, agro-ecologists, artisans, educators, healers and social organisations collectively represented by the Oude Molen Eco-Village Tenants Association (Omevta).
These communities argue that the Revised HIA incorrectly claims there is no living heritage at Oude Molen, threatening more than 30 years of cultural, ecological and community practice along with older layers of significance. They warn that reliance on desktop research and limited archives risks mistaking silence for absence in landscapes shaped by dispossession.
Vertical vs horizontal interpretation of Unesco
The dispute at Oude Molen is not just political; it is conceptual and legal. At its core is the interpretation of Unesco’s 2003 Convention on intangible cultural heritage (ICH), particularly the phrase “transmitted from generation to generation”. How transmission is interpreted determines whose practices qualify as heritage.
The Revised HIA adopts a narrow, vertical interpretation, treating transmission as biological inheritance or long-established lineage supported by formal records. By contrast, Unesco embraces a broader, horizontal interpretation not confined to biology, where heritage circulates across communities, networks, mentorships, apprenticeships and ongoing practice.
Recognising horizontal transmission is crucial at Oude Molen, where revivalist and living traditions from First Nations continuity and therapeutic practices to equestrian, agro-ecological and community-learning activities thrive across diverse groups. How this interpretation is applied will decide whether these dynamic practices are legally acknowledged or erased, making ICH central to the dispute.
A broader, horizontal interpretation better reflects Unesco’s intent and one in which the lived heritage practices of the Oude Molen Eco-Village clearly fit.
Why Oude Molen matters
The OMP, within Cape Town’s Two Rivers Urban Park, is more than a parcel of land. Situated at the confluence of the Black and Liesbeeck Rivers, it is a layered cultural landscape where multiple, contested histories converge. The area forms part of ancient Khoe and San grazing lands and movement routes, later overlaid by colonial agriculture, shaped by racialised and unrecorded labour. Valkenberg Hospital, established in 1891, adds a further institutional layer reflecting a complex therapeutic history.
Today, Oude Molen is home to the post-1994, community-generated heritage of the Eco-Village whose agro-ecological, cultural and social practices constitute an active living heritage. This significance exists alongside a persistent archival silence, where the lives of the dispossessed were excluded from official records. This silence itself evidences historical erasure, demanding recognition through oral history and community memory. Its fate remains a litmus test for whether South Africa’s heritage framework can protect not just monumental history but the full, living continuum of place.
The Valkenberg continuity and archival silence
Valkenberg operated as a racially segregated psychiatric hospital. Patients’ agricultural and care labour shaped a landscape organised around healing, rehabilitation and land-based therapy. This logic continues today through the Eco-Village’s equine-assisted therapy, community health and agro-ecological practices reflecting a continuity of purpose.
Valkenberg’s archives, however, largely erase the people who animated this landscape, reducing patients to diagnoses and administrative records. This silence reflects broader colonial and apartheid systems of exclusion. Heritage does not disappear because it was undocumented; it endures through practice, memory and use. Any heritage assessment acknowledging the institution but ignoring lived experience remains incomplete.
Heritage Resources in SA Law
The National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) adopts an expansive understanding of heritage resources, including both tangible and intangible cultural significance. Section 2 defines “cultural significance” to include social, spiritual, symbolic and associative value, while “living heritage” includes oral history, performance, ritual, popular memory, skills and techniques.
Section 3 extends the national estate to include places, structures, cultural landscapes and sites associated with oral traditions, living heritage and social practices shaped by slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Section 3(3) clarifies that heritage value arises from social meaning, community association and historical patterns rather than age or architectural significance alone.
Implications for the Revised HIA
Against this framework, the Revised HIA’s finding that Oude Molen has no living heritage misapplies the NHRA. By privileging age, built form and documentary archives over social value, oral tradition and ongoing practice, it narrows the Act’s broad conception of heritage and mistakes archival silence for absence. The River Club litigation reinforced that heritage impact assessments must meaningfully identify and engage with both tangible and intangible heritage through substantive public participation.
The crux of the dispute: ‘Generation to generation’
The most contested issue concerns Unesco’s phrase “transmitted from generation to generation”. Western Cape Government consultants apply a vertical, genealogical interpretation implying biological inheritance over 50-75 years. Many post-1994 practices at Oude Molen are dismissed as too recent. Omevta advances a horizontal, community-based interpretation, consistent with Unesco’s intent, where “generation” refers to active transmission of knowledge and practice across cohorts rather than biological lineage. This reflects how living heritage functions globally, particularly in indigenous, African and post-colonial contexts.
Why Oude Molen qualifies as intangible and living heritage
Despite evidentiary shortcomings, Oude Molen meets ICH criteria. It demonstrates continuity in four key areas: therapeutic landscape, pre-colonial and colonial Khoe and San practices, agricultural traditions and a persistent purpose of care and community learning. Oude Molen is alive with stories and practices that continue to shape the community. Its value lies in ongoing knowledge and care.
Conclusion
The heritage dispute at Oude Molen transcends land, evolving into a question of custodianship in post-1994 South Africa. Can a living community shaping its identity today be recognised as the rightful guardian of its heritage? This contribution challenges the limited, vertical interpretation of Unesco’s “transmission from generation to generation”, demonstrating horizontal, living transmission.
Heritage traditions at Oude Molen include revivalist therapeutic practices, agro-ecology and Khoe and San cultural renewal. The precinct’s fate is a litmus test for the nation’s heritage framework. The question is whether South Africa will safeguard only brick and mortar monuments from the past or also the living culture being regenerated, right now, at places like Oude Molen. DM
Saaliegah Zardad is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on heritage, cultural landscapes and post-apartheid spatial justice. Her work engages with questions of intangible cultural heritage, living heritage and public decision-making in relation to contested redevelopment processes, including the Oude Molen Precinct.