Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape

From Southern Africa Info

Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape

World Heritage site

Year inscribed: 2007

Location: Northern Cape, 28 36' S 17 12' 14" E

Type: Cultural heritage

The Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape is made up of a terrain of dramatic mountainous desert covering an area of 160 000 hectares in the north-west part of South Africa.

The unique feature of the site - within South Africa and according to international terms - is that it is community owned and managed and that by a community that till recently had very little that they could call their own.

The area is characterised by the extreme temperatures, the communally run landscape affords a semi-nomadic pastoral livelihood for the Nama people, who are the descendants of the Khoi-Khoi people. The Khoi-Khoi once occupied lands across southern Namibia and most of the present-day Western and Northern Cape provinces of South Africa.

More than a century ago, the Khoi-Khoi were pushed north by the spread of farming from the Cape. Under South Africa's land restitution programme of recent years, the Richtersveld area was returned to the Nama people.

Today the Nama live in three small villages, mission settlements established outside of the proclaimed area: Eksteenfontein to the south, Lekkersing to the south-west, and Kuboes to the north.

The seasonal migration of the Nama between stock-posts with traditional demountable mat-roofed houses reflect a practice, once widespread over southern Africa, which has persisted for at least two millennia - the Nama are the last to practise such a lifestyle.

"The extensive communal grazed lands bear testimony to the land management processes which have ensured the protection of the succulent Karoo vegetation," the World Heritage Committee said in a statement. "This demonstrates a harmonious interaction between people and nature."