UNESCO adds two ‘Nelson Mandela sites’ to World Heritage List

These two sites are part of the 14 sites grouped under the title “Human Rights, Liberation and Reconciliation: Nelson Mandela Memorial Sites”.

UNESCO on Saturday added to its World Heritage List the site of an apartheid-era massacre and a village where Nelson Mandela grew up, among South Africa’s landmarks in the struggle to end white minority rule.

The massacre was the 1960 massacre in Sharpeville, Transvaal province, where police killed 69 black protesters, including children, a turning point that led the apartheid government to ban the African National Congress (ANC) that governs today.

As for the isolated village of Mqhekezweni in the Eastern Cape province, Mandela spent part of his youth there. In his autobiography A long way to freedomhe explains that this is where his political activism was born.

The 14 sites grouped under the title “Human Rights, Liberation and Reconciliation: Nelson Mandela Memorial Sites” also include the University of Fort Hare (Eastern Cape) where Mandela studied, and the Union Buildings in the capital Pretoria, where he was sworn in as the first president elected by universal suffrage in 1994.

“I congratulate South Africa on the inscription of these memorial sites, which bear witness not only to the struggle against the apartheid state, but also to Nelson Mandela’s contribution to freedom, human rights and peace.”said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.

Mandela, who died in 2013 aged 95, became South Africa’s first black leader four years after being released from prison. He had been deprived of his freedom for 27 years, including on Robben Island off Cape Town.

“Twenty-five years after Robben Island was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, this new inscription ensures that the legacy of South Africa’s liberation and the values ​​it embodies will be passed on to future generations.”continued Audrey Azoulay.

The addition of these sites to the World Heritage Register was decided at the ongoing UNESCO meeting in New Delhi, which also approved the inscription of three South African sites important for understanding human origins.

Located in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, they “provide the most varied and best-preserved evidence known of the development of modern human behavior, dating back 162,000 years”specifies UNESCO.