Vredefort on World Heritage list
15 July 2005
The Vredefort Dome, the world's oldest and largest visible meteor impact crater, was named South Africa's seventh World Heritage site at Unesco's 29th World Heritage Committee meeting in Durban on Thursday.
The World Heritage Committee seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of "outstanding value to humanity". South Africa ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1997.
Internationally, there are over 788 World Heritage sites in 134 countries. Africa has 63 sites and South Africa now has a total of seven - three cultural, three natural and one of mixed cultural and natural heritage. Vredefort is a natural heritage site.
The other six South African World Heritage sites are Robben Island, the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, the Cradle of Humankind, the uKhahlamba Drakensburg Park, the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park and the Cape Floral
Kingdom.
The Vredefort Dome, spanning the Free State and North West, is the oldest and largest meteorite impact site in the world. It was formed an estimated 2-billion years ago when a giant meteorite hit the earth close to where the town of Vredefort is today.
The meteorite, larger than Table Mountain, caused a thousand-megaton blast of energy. The impact would have vaporised about 70 cubic kilometres
of rock - and may have increased the earth's oxygen levels to a degree that made the development of multicellular life possible.
Nation-building
"The awarding of the status is a proud moment for South Africa," said Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan.
"The Vredefort site is rich in the symbolic representation of our culture; it demonstrates the meeting between scientific and cultural philosophy and practice.
"At Vredefort, opportunities exist to engage in geological research and explore and understand more sensitively the rich culture of the Basotho, Batswana and Khoi-San and the early evidence of human cognitive and artistic endeavour their cultures boast", Jordan said.
"This demonstrates that heritage can be a tool for nation-building."
Rich biodiversity
Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk pointed to the rich natural diversity of the site.
"With
over 100 different plant species, more than 300 types of birds, over 70 butterfly species and a variety of small mammals, the site adds real biodiversity value to our goal of expanding the areas under conservation in our country," he said.
The economic and tourism potential of the inscription are also a priority. The Environment and Tourism department has allocated R18-million from its poverty relief programme for tourism and infrastructural development of the Vredefort Dome site.
"These funds will be used for the eradication of alien invasive vegetation, hiking trails and the construction of a tourism centre," Van Schalkwyk said.
Jordan emphasised South Africa's commitment to preserving world heritage.
"Representing the people of South Africa, we will set and maintain high standards for our heritage sites. The role of heritage is to help contribute to the eradication of poverty. We are, indeed, very pleased," he said.
South Africa's application for
the extension of Fossil Hominid Sites of Sterkfontein to include Mokapane's Valley and the Taung Skull Fossil Site will be discussed before the end of the World Heritage Committee meeting this week.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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