Navigating between the sacred and the profane: Mohokare sacred sites, spiritual tourism and the challenges in the formal heritage sector

After the democratic election of 1994 in South Africa, many Basotho who were dispossessed of their ancestral land west of the Mohokare River in the Free State Province of South Africa in the late 19th century returned to reclaim the land through spiritual journeys to sacred sites of Mantsopa, Mautse, Motouleng and Witsie's Cave. This was the beginning of the contestation between farm owners and pilgrims, even between pilgrims themselves, thus creating complexities that came to characterise Mohokare Valley sacred sites as sites of ownership contestation, criminality, and hybridity. This study attempted to find empirical solutions to the sacred and profane tensions created by the inheritance of a colonial approach to heritage and land administration in South Africa that displaced Afrocentric customs, values, and experiences. The study integrated Afrocentricity and Decoloniality with elements from Postcolonialism to develop the Afrikana-Decolonial Theoretical Framework. The theoretical framework was further enhanced by Afrikana-Participatory Action Research (APAR) as research methodology that encompassed Afrocentric Research Methods and Participatory Action Research chosen because of their liberating and emancipatory potential to bring about change in the lives of local communities. This approach borrows spirituality and communalism from Afrocentricity, places Africa as the locus of engagement, takes hybridity from Postcolonialism as the condition that characterises sacred sites and pilgrimage, and approaches the process of decolonisation of African gnoseology from a decolonial perspective. This is interpreted from a broader perspective, extending back to the Atlantic Slave Trade and making local communities partners in this project. Given the nature of APAR, the research culminated in an Integrated Management Plan (IMP) designed to institutionalise Mohokare Valley sacred sites as spiritual tourism sites with beneficiation intended for all participants. The IMP was first tested on the Witsie's Cave Provincial Heritage Site as the action case study. It was adapted for the rest of the Mohokare sacred sites as part of an ongoing process in line with APAR.