Safeguarding Cultural Heritage as a Strategy for Development in the 21st Century

Batswana communities have always relied on cultural frameworks for economic development and Tswana norms and values have established acceptable standards for sustainable livelihoods. As such, individuals and families were (and still are) expected to activate and maintain cultural systems in order to earn a living. The cultural economic system is organized around the head of the family (father or mother), the ward head or headman (kgosana), and the chief (kgosi) who leads the community's food production and development. The cultural process followed a calling (pitso) principle where community members and the chief would invoke ancestors to mark the commencement of the ploughing season. In this way, the chief authorized the ploughing season, thereby safeguarding the community's culture. As a result, developmental strategies that ignores cultural principles, values, and norms, risk being viewed as totally inappropriate by the community. This study posited that lack of reference to indigenous knowledge systems and processes render modern developmental methods and institutions ineffective. It is based on a review of professional experience, and informal conversations with custodians of culture on methods of promoting culturally appropriate developmental processes in Botswana. It also adopted a social work perspective that encourages agents of change to pay attention to cultural processes when facilitating development programmes. Lack of reference to cultural systems was reported as one of the factors that destabilize communities and threatened social development levels in Botswana.