Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park: World Heritage Site:
The Ukhahlamba - Drakensberg Park has exceptional natural beauty in its soaring basaltic
buttresses, incisive dramatic cutbacks, and golden sandstone ramparts. Rolling high
altitude grasslands, the pristine steep sided river valleys and rocky gorges also
contribute to the beauty of the site.
The site's diversity of habitats protects a high level of endemic and globally threatened
species, especially birds and plants. This spectacular natural site also contains many
caves and rock-shelters with the largest and most concentrated group of paintings in
Africa south of the Sahara, made by the San people over a period of 4,000 years. The rock
paintings are outstanding in quality and diversity of subject and in their depiction of
animals and human beings. They represent the spiritual life of the San people who no
longer live in this region.
The San people are recognised as the indigenous inhabitants of the sub-continent. In
centuries past they inhabited practically the entire sub-continent, and are regarded as
"embodying the essence of southern Africa's deep past". Yet there is no monument
to the San people - other than their own art. Within the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Park there
are some 600 sites, collectively representing over 35000 individual images.
Remarkably, the rock art in the park is better preserved than any other region south of
the Sahara. The oldest painting on a rock shelter wall in the park is about 2400 years
old, while more recent creations date back to the late nineteenth century. Many of the
sites contain scenes depicting hunting, dancing, fighting, food gathering or ritual and
trance scenes of hunting or rainmaking.
The ecological integrity of the area has been preserved intact since the last San people
living there and the climate, vegetation and fauna have not changed. Uniquely, it is
possible to turn from rock paintings of eland, rhebok and other animals to look over
pristine valleys and to see these very species feeding, resting or moving about. |
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