Heritage Cases

Section 32 of the National Heritage Resources Act , No. 25 of 1999, stipulates that no heritage object may be removed from South Africa other through a customs port of entry and the relevant export permit issued under subsection 19 or a certificate of exemption issued under subsection 32 must be produced to a customs officer before removal from South Africa is affected or allowed. In addition, a Customs Officer who has reason to believe that a person is attempting to import an object in contravention of the Act may withhold the object concerned and such object must be kept in the custody of SAHRA until such time, not exceeding six months, as an investigation into the provenance of such object is completed. Section 50 of the Act stipulates that each Customs and Excise Officer and each member of the South African Police Services is deemed to be a heritage inspector. This means that Customs officials an Police Officers must establish links with SAHRA in order to fulfill this role. A memorandum of understanding towards this end would be the way forward in this regard. It is against this background that SAHRA initiated a meeting with customs to discuss the critical role that Customs has to play in the movement of heritage objects out and into South Africa and ultimately draft a memorandum of understanding between SAHRA and customs. This meeting took place on 5 December 2012 at the SARS offices in Brooklyn Pretoria. The recommendations following this meeting was that: a) A memorandum of understanding between SAHRA and SARS needs to be drafted. b) An agreement at a Ministerial level between Department of Arts and Culture and Department of Finance should be entered into. c) Link SARS IT system with SAHRIS. This will allow SAHRA to issue permits for exports and simultaneously, customs would be able to access the permit for verification. d) SAHRA to provide Customs with a list of objects that should not me exported without a permit issued by SAHRA e) SAHRA will provide training for Custom Officials. Such training will start at the Cape Town International airport, O.R. Tambo International Airport, Durban Port of Entry as well as Lebombo Port of Entry. f) Customs will provide SAHRA with a list of custom officials at these ports to be trained by SAHRA g) SAHRA to identify hot spots where illicit trafficking is happening