Liberation Heritage Route

I find this nomination lacking any real credit for unique value to the world. Yes, Mandela was a great man, apartheid was bad (and still exists here) and one could argue that it had impact on the world and not just within South Africa. However, just like India's attempt to inscribe the Gandhi sites, these are memories of history that do not belong on the world heritage list.

So nevertheless I stopped by the Apartheid museum at the capture site on the way to Durban and their museum is still not open until May 2019. Entrance is free to see the small exhibition and the Mandela sculpture at the end of the Long Walk to Freedom. I didn't find it very exciting but I donated to support them. Fact is that the location has little to nothing to do with the capture site already shows that the inscription would be odd.

I see there are many other sites included in the nomination but I am not interested in them, and if they are ever inscribed (to my own disbelief) I will be glad to have “ticked” it off in 20 minutes.

Human Rights, Liberation Struggle and Reconciliation: Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites is the full name of a South African Tentative Site covering 13 groups of sites related to the anti-apartheid struggle. They cover locations ranging from the Sharpeville Massacre site to prominent institutions for missionary education which “produced Southern African leaders who presented a synthesis of Western and African values”. It needs a good understanding though of South African history during the past 100 years to get a full grasp of what’s included and why. But I was willing to be educated.

As I had another long drive ahead of me – 440km between the WHS of iSimangaliso and Drakensberg – I decided to visit two of these anti-apartheid sites along the way. I first hit the town of Groutville for the ‘Chief Albert Luthuli Home & Museum’. The museum is already signposted from the highway. Fortunately so, as my TomTom navigation did not recognize any street adress in Groutville. The town is definitely not one on the itinerary of European tourists, crossing South Africa from (white) tourist enclave to another. Groutville is 99.6% black. To me it felt like a town in the Deep South of the USA.

Before I prepared this trip I had never heard of Albert Luthuli, but he was an important predecessor of Mandela. Luthuli was president of the ANC in the 1950s and 1960s, and advocated nonviolent resistance against apartheid. It earned him the Nobel Peace Prize already in 1960. The house where he lived …