South Africa UNESCO world heritage sites

Eastern Cape province [capital = Bisho]

Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve in Humansdorp
The Baviaans is the ultimate destination to experience the best nature has to offer in its purest form and life as it was intended to be lived.

University of Fort Hare in Dikeni at Ring Road
It is the alma mater of well-known people including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Robert Sobukwe, Oliver Tambo, and others.

Mandela's upbringing home in Mqhekezweni at The Great Place
Mandela was raised by Jongintaba and his wife Noengland alongside their son Justice and daughter Nomafuis at the Great Place

Free State province [capital = Bloemfontein]

Vredefort Dome core area in Parys at Schoenmandrift Road
The Vredefort crater is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, more than 300 kilometres (190 mi) across when it was formed. What remains of it is located in the present-day Free State province of South Africa and named after the town of Vredefort, which is situated near its centre. Although the crater itself has long since eroded away, the remaining geological structures at its centre are known as the Vredefort Dome or Vredefort impact structure. The crater is estimated to be 2.023 billion years old (± 4 million years), with impact being in the Paleoproterozoic Era. It is the second-oldest-known crater on Earth.

Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein at 7 Johan Brits St
The Wesleyan Church in Waaihoek, Bloemfontein is the birth place of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) which was formed in 1912. Later, in 1923 the SANNC became the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC became the largest liberation organizations in the struggle for freedom and justice in South Africa.

Gauteng province [capital = Johannesburg]

Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre in Pretoria at Union Buildings, Meintjeskop
This 9-meter tall statue of Mandela is the country's tallest, strategically positioned to symbolically unite the two wings of the Union buildings with his outstretched hands. It offers visitors a powerful moment for reflection on Mandela's significant role in South Africa's history.

Liliesleaf Liberation Centre in Rivonia, Sandton at 7 George Ave
Liliesleaf is home to various exhibitions, largely covering the period from 1956, when the Freedom Charter was signed, to 1994, when South Africa became a free and democratic society.

Sterkfontein Fossil Hominid Sites in Krugersdorp at 4 Kromdraai Road
The Sterkfontein Caves were the site of the discovery of a 2.3-million-year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed "Mrs. Ples"), found in 1947 by Robert Broom and John T. Robinson.

Constitution Hill Human Rights Precinct in Braamfontein at 11 Kotze St
Constitution Hill is a living museum that tells the story of South Africa’s journey to democracy. The site is a former prison and military fort that bears testament to South Africa’s turbulent past and, today, is home to the country’s Constitutional Court, which endorses the rights of all citizens.

Annals of Orlando West Streets Soweto in Soweto at 7817 Xorile St
The homes of Walter Sisulu, Bishop Desmond Tutu and former President Nelson Mandela are celebrated in this historic suburb, and the 1976 Soweto uprising is very much present in the memories of residents and visitors alike.

Walter Sisulu Square in Soweto at Cnr Klipspruit Valley Road & Union Road Kliptown
It allows you to immerse yourself in history, glimpse the future, and experience the classic living of “ekasi” all in one visit, without a doubt. Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown will captivate, enchant, and inspire you, shining as a beacon of light that dispels diversity and prejudice, preserving and reinforcing the principles for which others sacrificed their lives.

Saps Sharpeville Police Station in Sharpeville at 3880 Zwane St
Sharpeville massacre, (March 21, 1960), incident in the Black township of Sharpeville, near Vereeniging, South Africa, in which police fired on a crowd of Black people, killing or wounding some 250 of them. It was one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa.

Sharpeville Memorialbi in Sharpeville at 3847 Seeiso St
It is very symbolic, blocks of stones representing each fatality spread over the complex, a fountain with thin jets of water representing bleeding wounds and a channel carrying the water through the centre representing blood flowing in the Street.

Phelindaba Cemetery in Sharpeville at Theunis Kruger St
The row of graves of the 69 people killed by police during an anti-pass protest at the Sharpeville Police Station on 21 March 1960.

Kwazulu Natal province [capital = Ulundi]

iSimangaliso Wetland Park in St Lucia at S27 50 20.004 E32 32 60
The interplay of the park's environmental heterogeneity with major floods and coastal storms and a transitional geographic location between subtropical and tropical Africa has resulted in exceptional species diversity and ongoing speciation. The mosaic of landforms and habitat types creates breathtaking scenic vistas.

Sibhudu Cave in KwaDukuza on R614
The Area is significant because it shows evidence of some of the earliest examples of modern human Technology, possessing a large collection of well-dated middle Stone Age deposits that are well preserved.

Ohlange heritage institute in Inanda at Ngubane Rd
On April 27 1994 Nelson Mandela cast his vote at the Ohlange Institute, a school founded by John Langalibalele Mafukuzela Dube - the first president of the ANC.

Maloti-Drakensberg Park in Drakensberg at Mkhomazi Wilderness area
The site has exceptional natural beauty in its soaring basaltic buttresses, incisive dramatic cutbacks, and golden sandstone ramparts as well as visually spectacular sculptured arches, caves, cliffs, pillars and rock pools.

Mpumalanga province [capital = Nelspruit/Mbombela]

Makhonjwa Mountains in Barberton on R40 Bulembu pass
The property represents the best-preserved succession of volcanic and sedimentary rock dating back 3.6 to 3.25 billion years and forms a diverse repository of information on surface conditions, meteorite impacts, volcanism, continent-building processes and the environment of early life.

Northern/Limpopo province [capital = Pietersburg/Polokwane]

Makapan Valley Fossil Hominid Sites in Mokopane at S24 9 31.00 E29 10 37.00
Makapansgat limeworks + Cave of Hearths + Buffalo Cave + Ficus Cave + Peppercorn's Cave + Rainbow Cave + Historic Cave + Cold Air Cave + Gutentight Cave + Murzel's Cave + Katzenjammer Cave are important palaeontological sites with the local limeworks containing Australopithecus-bearing deposits dating to between 3.0 and 2.6 million years BP.

Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape in Musina at S22 11 33 E29 14 20.004
Mapungubwe developed into the largest kingdom in the sub-continent before it was abandoned in the 14th century. What survives are the almost untouched remains of the palace sites and also the entire settlement area dependent upon them, as well as two earlier capital sites, the whole presenting an unrivalled picture of the development of social and political structures over some 400 years.

Northern Cape province [capital = Kimberley]

Khomani Cultural Landscape in Upington at Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park
The landscape includes landmarks of the history, migration, livelihoods, memory and resources of the ǂKhomani and related San people and other communities, past and present, and attests to their adaptive responses and interaction to survive in a desert environment. The ǂKhomani and related San people are formerly nomadic populations and among the last indigenous communities in South Africa. They developed subsistence strategies to cope with the extreme conditions of the environment and developed a specific ethnobotanical and veld knowledge as well as cultural practices and a worldview where geographical features embody symbolic links between humans, wildlife and the land.

Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape in Port Nolloth at S28 36 0 E17 12 14
This site sustains the semi-nomadic pastoral livelihood of the Nama people, reflecting seasonal patterns that may have persisted for as much as two millennia in southern Africa. It is the only area where the Nama still construct portable rush-mat houses (haru om ) and includes seasonal migrations and grazing grounds, together with stock posts. The pastoralists collect medicinal and other plants and have a strong oral tradition associated with different places and attributes of the landscape.

Northwest province [capital = Mahikeng]

The chocolate tablet breccia site in Scandinavia Drift at S26 55 12.00 E27 7 60.00
At the Vredefort Dome, the eroded central uplift of the largest and oldest known terrestrial impact structure, pseudotachylitic breccia is well-exposed, with many massive occurrences of tens of meters width and many hundreds of meters extent.

The stromatolite/basal fault plane site in Rooipoort at S26 46 25.00 E27 16 12.00
The serial nomination is considered to be a representative sample of a complex meteorite impact structure. A comprehensive comparative analysis with other complex meteorite impact structures demonstrated that it is the only example on earth providing a full geological profile of an astrobleme below the crater floor, thereby enabling research into the genesis and development of an astrobleme immediately post impact.

The pseudotachylite site in Riastuine AH at S26 53 46.00 E27 24 30.00
Some geochemical studies report pseudotachylite matrices in the Vredefort Dome to be similar in chemical composition to that of their immediate wall rocks, in particular where pseudotachylite is hosted by granitoid rocks.

Taung Skull Fossil Hominid Site in Taung at S27 37 10.00 E24 37 59.00
The Taung skull, also known as the Taung Child, was the first hominid to be discovered on the entire continent. Later named Australopithecus africanus, the significance of this fossilised skull remains unchanged since its discovery in 1924 in Taung, a small town in the North West Province.

Western Cape province >[capital = Cape Town]

Diepkloof Rock Shelter in Clanwilliam
Excavated for over 40 years, this site contains one of the most complete and continuous Middle Stone Age archaeological sequences in Southern Africa. This extremely well-preserved record has allowed scientists to reconstruct in detail the lives of our ancestors, the environment in which they thrived, and their adaptation over the course of the millennia to an evolving environment. In addition to the Middle and Later Stone Age deposits, the site also contains rock art dating back to San hunter-gatherers, Khoe pastoralists and the colonial period. The sequence of these rock paintings, at times overlapping, shows the long period during which the cave was occupied and used.

Cederberg Wilderness Area in Citrusdal
As a wilderness area, the primary activity is eco-tourism, including camping, rock climbing and hiking.

Winterhoek Mountain Catchment Area in Citrusdal
The Groot Winterhoek showcases an enormous array of fynbos species, which adorn its slopes with their colourful flowers and unique greenery.

Boosmansbos Wilderness Area / Langeberg -Oos/East Mountain Catchment Area in Breede River DC
Boosmansbos was proclaimed a wilderness area in 1978 to protect the area’s indigenous forest, including yellowwood, stinkwood, white and red alder, beech and candlewood. It is also a World Heritage Site, as it falls within the Cape Floral Kingdom and is home to several rare erica species, such as erica blenna, erica langebergensis and erica barrydalensis.

Limietberg Nature Reserve in Esterville, Paarl at 267 Main Street
Limietberg offers a number of beautiful hikes through steep kloofs and deep valleys. Du Toits Peak, at 1 996m, is the highest point within the reserve. Visitors can also visit the many historical sites along the trails, including ancient rock art, a disused manganese mine and the graves of convicts who helped build the Bainskloof Pass.

Prison in Cape Town on Robben Island
The symbolic value of Robben Island lies in its somber history, as a prison and a hospital for unfortunates who were sequestered as being socially undesirable. This came to an end in the 1990s when the inhuman Apartheid regime was rejected by the South African people and the political prisoners who had been incarcerated on the Island received their freedom after many years.

Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town on Tafelberg Road
The national park’s most unique feature is its fynbos vegetation that is displayed here better than anywhere in the world. The Cape Floral region of the national park is one of the richest floral regions in the world. Over 70% of the flowers are endemic to the Table Mountain.

Cape Peninsula in Cape Town
The Peninsula's vegetation types form part of the Cape Floral Region protected areas. These protected areas are a World Heritage Site, and an estimated 2,200 species of plants are confined to Table Mountain range - which are at least as many as occur in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Jonkershoek Nature Reserve in Stellenbosch on Jonkershoek Road
The Jonkershoek mountains are home to Leopards, Caracals, Klipspringer, Baboons, Honey Badgers and Mongooses, however, all but the baboons are very secretive. Birdlife includes kingfishers, black eagles, fish eagles, spotted eagle owls, sugarbirds, orange-breasted sunbirds and protea seed eaters.

Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve in Grabouw at Suicide Gorge
This area and the other ranges to the south are considered the hub of the Cape floristic region with the most biodiversity in the entire fynbos biome.

Kogelberg Nature Reserve in Grabouw at Highlands
Located in the Kogelberg Mountains, along the mountainous coast on the eastern edge of Cape Town, this 3,000-hectare (7,400-acre) nature reserve protects a significant portion of Kogelberg Sandstone Fynbos. Among the enormous range of plants in this local vegetation type are hundreds of species of Erica, a wide range of Protea species and a great many plant families which are endemic. The Kogelberg mountains are known as the heart of the Fynbos, and have a floral diversity per unit area that is greater than anywhere else in the world.

De Hoop Nature Reserve in Overberg at -34.43567050284843, 19.761467656233087
The vegetation De Hoop Nature Reserve is part of the world's smallest and most threatened plant kingdom, known as the Cape Floral Kingdom. The reserve also contains one of the largest areas of the rare lowland fynbos.

Pinnacle Point in Mossel Bay at 21st Avenue
This archaeological complex includes around 50 caves and shelters located on the South African central coast and with evidence of human occupation.

Groot Swartberg Nature Reserve in Oudtshoorn
The reserve is most famous for the trail of the same name, the three-day hiking route that takes hikers into the heart of unspoilt mountain fynbos via caves filled with San rock art with overnight huts at Ou Tol and Bothashoek and views of the Cape fold mountains.

Towerkop Nature Reserve in Ladismith
Its importance is not only the year-round rainfall that supplies clean water to towns close by, but also the mountain fynbos species, particularly the endemic protea, the Protea aristata. There is also a one-of-a-kind sub-alpine plant community that lies between the Towerkop and Seweweekspoort peaks that requires conservation. The reserve is also fantastic for bird spotting.

Gamkapoort Nature Reserve in Laingsburg at S 33 15 29.6, E 21 37 56.6
The Gamkaberg Nature Reserve, now a World Heritage Site, was established in 1974 to conserve a small, remnant herd of endangered Cape mountain zebra. They numbered just five in 1976 but, fortunately, focused conservation initiatives, involving resettling of animals into private and national nature reserves, helped their numbers increase.