The application of participatory management has had varied success in the field of heritage management depending on the context in which it has been applied, and the evidence from some heritage sites in sub-Saharan Africa reveals mixed results; some far from satisfactory. Most of the goals -particularly those aimed at involving local communities in decision making in heritage resources -still remain unfulfilled and at best experimental. This contribution deals with these issues within the context of case studies drawn from different areas of the subcontinent. The case studies demonstrate that the discourse of community participation is sometimes overly ambitious in its intents and, from a practical point of view, is not easy to apply. This is because communities are neither universal nor homogenous. Furthermore, many professionals pay lip-service to the whole concept of participation because the interests of local communities and those of professionals do not always coincide. Also, in some situations, the historical and socio-political environments militate against the concept. Therefore, given the varied context and range of management systems, as well as types of cultural heritage on the sub-continent, one cannot be prescriptive; the local situation should determine the nature of participation and/or levels of engagement needed.

'Any study of Great Zimbabwe has to rely a great deal on re-examining and re-assessing the work of early investigators, the men who removed all the most important finds from the ruins and stripped them of so much of their deposits ' (Garlake 1973: 14

The southern African recent past is replete with examples of elite settlements, some of which were occupied sequentially, and by different rulers. Shona, Venda and Tswana traditions identify the many dry stone walled capitals with former kings who ruled during different reigns. This historical reality is often not factored when considering the issues of political centres and urbanism in the Iron Age. The resolution of radiocarbon dating produces an aggregate time that conflates the chronology of capitals or elite centres when they may not have been contemporary – ‘the suck in and smear’ phenomenon described by Baillie (1991). This article combines historical and archaeological information to develop an alternative explanation for the existence of hundreds of elite Zimbabwe settlements, some of which were synchronous according to the radiocarbon chronology. The main indication is that rather than suffering from a glut of elites, southern African urban and political centres are associated with individual leaders of competing polities which may not have been part of unified hierarchical and sequential structures. The archaeology of the region stands to benefit from understanding the dynamics of politics, power and leadership in this way.

Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however, and in this study they have been combined with the limited stratigraphic information and with datable imports to provide a Bayesian chronology of the site and its structures. Construction of the stone walls probably began at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century AD, reaching its peak in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although occupation continued up to at least the sixteenth and probably into the seventeenth century AD. These results indicate that occupation at Great Zimbabwe must have overlapped with that at Mapungubwe, and argue for a polycentric model of sociopolitical complexity in this region of southern Africa during that crucial formative period.

The most accessible points of call for most African populations with respect to primary health care are traditional health systems that include spiritual, religious, and herbal medicine. This review focusses only on the use of herbal medicines. Most African people accept herbal medicines as generally safe with no serious adverse effects. However, the overlap between conventional medicine and herbal medicine is a reality among countries in health systems transition. Patients often simultaneously seek treatment from both conventional and traditional health systems for the same condition. Commonly encountered conditions/diseases include malaria, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, tuberculosis, and bleeding disorders. It is therefore imperative to understand the modes of interaction between different drugs from conventional and traditional health care systems when used in treatment combinations. Both conventional and traditional drug entities are metabolized by the same enzyme systems in the human body, resulting in both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics interactions, whose properties remain unknown/unquantified. Thus, it is important that profiles of interaction between different herbal and conventional medicines be evaluated. This review evaluates herbal and conventional drugs in a few African countries and their potential interaction at the pharmacogenomics level.