Salt River's Anwar Omar takes on a vital role at the South African Heritage Resources Agency

Salt River resident Anwar Omar has assumed a new role as council member of the South African Heritage Resources Agency(SAHRA) during the past month.

Mr Omar was nominated for this role by the Salt River Heritage Society (SRHS), which was established in 2018, where he was one of their founding members.

“The Salt River Heritage Society nominated me. I then had to submit my educational and professional credentials. After being shortlisted, my nomination went through a rigorous selection process and finally an interview with a panel of interviewees from SAHRA and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture,” he said.

He will serve a three-year term in his role on the Council of SAHRA.

He said his focus will be on the  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Stakeholder consultation.

“South Africa recently ratified the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, after more than two decades, so there is therefore much work to do to align South Africa’s regulatory framework with the Convention 2003,” he said.

Another area Mr Omar would like to focus on is community consultation, which he believes has been a neglected area of heritage conservation.

“It has become a tick box exercise whereby heritage practitioners implement the bare minimum to comply with the law and not really in the spirit of genuine and meaningful consultation,” he said.

Mr Omar is still a member of SRHS, though he says he would recuse himself from any matters if SRHS has heritage matters at a national level.

“We had a governance workshop where I explained my role at SRHS and sought guidance on the potential conflict of interest. It was determined that I will only be in a situation of conflict of interest when national heritage matters escalate to the council upon appeal,” he said.