An important concern in our research for the past three years concerns the role of cultural heritage (especially intangible cultural heritage) in deepening development, inclusion and economic empowerment. Our view is that cultural heritage is not merely for celebratory or representational purposes, but that cultural heritage can be leveraged to assist communities that have long experienced marginalization, poverty and negative stereotyping. Cultural heritage in our perspective, is not merely to achieve the UNESCO goal of 'peace in the minds of men'; intangible cultural heritage (ICH), is an important tool of restitution, and a means of publicly re-presenting the identity of First Nations Peoples in South Africa and Namibia. At the same time, ICH is a vital tool for the leveraging of resources for marginalized groups, especially in contexts where there is significant scope for new forms of development and where the government pays only celebratory attention to the place of heritage in the national space. Bearing these points in mind and invoking the principle of 'multiperspectivity', we present and discuss anthropological field research findings on intangible cultural heritage in South Africa and Namibia.