Community Custodians have been tasked with preserving the rock art throughout the Drakensberg region and are doing a stellar job!
South Africa (11 April 2025) – The Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park is considered an international heritage treasure, partly because of the many fine examples of ancient rock art. Since many sites fall beyond the park’s formal protection, lying within traditional authority areas, the neighbouring communities of the amaZizi and amaNgwane are critical in the preservation of South Africa’s earliest historical legacy.
A partnership between the government and an environmental conservation NGO led to the formation of the Rock Art Monitoring Project, now entering its fourth year, where community custodians are tasked with the monitoring of rock art sites in traditional authority areas, close to the national park. The Social Employment Fund (SEF), a mass employment programme championing projects for the common good, pays the community custodians a stipend while they monitor and maintain the sites; and the African Conservation Trust (ACT), an NGO with deep conservation experience and well-established networks within the communities, provides custodian training and support for the project participants.
“We identified 130 rock art sites which are regularly monitored, according to a schedule. Custodians assess each site, recording the state of it and any necessary interventions. Plants damaging the rock face in the wind, grass growing into the shelter, and graffiti are noted, and reported to Amafa, “says Carl Grossmann, founder and Chairman of ACT.
The KZN Amafa and Research Institute provided initial custodian training in acceptable methodology, as the Drakensberg images are viewed as significant due to unusual elements like the use of a shaded polychrome technique to depict finely detailed humans and animals, and advanced skills like the foreshortening of figures. Together with Lesotho’s Sehlathebe National Park, the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park comprises the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; designated so due to the existence of the largest and most saturated collection of rock art sites in sub-Saharan Africa, and the environmental diversity, important plant species and endangered animals of the region.
Grossmann says more than 700 individual site assessments have been conducted by 20 community custodians to date, and he maintains the initiative, which extends the longevity of the images, is tangentially a valuable tool for educating people about their importance.
At the uMhwabane Shelter, also known as the Busingatha Shelter, Bawinile Mtolo, amaZizi Site Coordinator said the San people ‘wrote their history on the rocks’. The shelter is named for the depiction of a snake on the cave walls, which is now difficult to see, and which residents believed to reside in a pool below the cave.
“Our rock art tells us about the history of who was there before the amaZizi people came, and how they were living. As community custodians, we pass that knowledge and history on to the new generation, so they can know about the history of the area,” says Mtolo.
In conjunction with holding the 4000-year legacy of the hunter-gatherer San people, the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park is vital for the country’s water production, forming a watershed for critical drainage basins. The Soil Erosion Rehabilitation Project, a second SEF programme implemented by ACT, sees participants create anti-erosion barriers in the most severe gullies, to prevent soil entering rivers and dams, preserving the nation’s water quality.
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