HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP) was launched in 1998 as a result of the World Heritage Committee decision to encourage countries in southern Africa to sign the World Heritage Convention and to nominate cultural heritage sites for the World Heritage list (Deacon 1997, 2006a & b). A meeting of cultural heritage managers in Harare in 1995 identified rock art as one of the legacies of the past that cross-cuts current political boundaries and is a powerful reminder of the sophistication of the belief systems of both hunter-gatherers and farmers in the sub-continent over the past 20 000 years or more.

After a survey of rock art databases in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa (Deacon 1997), each of the participating countries identified a rock art site that could be placed on their tentative list for possible nomination as a World Heritage site. The sites were carefully selected in order to cover the full range of styles and traditions in the region (Deacon 2002). From 1998, workshops were held in South Africa and Tanzania to inform those responsible for compiling nomination dossiers of the requirements and regulations. In 1999, 2001 and 2002, short courses were held in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana for the staff working at rock art sites either on the tentative list or already on the World Heritage list to assist them in documenting and conserving rock paintings (Deacon 2006a). These workshops and courses were held over two and three weeks respectively and were designed to supplement rather than replace the three-month courses offered by ICCROM's AFRICA-2009 programme and the one-year post-graduate courses in heritage management offered at universities.

By 2005, there were four southern African rock art sites inscribed on the World Heritage list: uKhahlamba and Mapungubwe in South Africa, Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe and Tsodilo in Botswana, and two had been nominated but needed more work (Chongoni in Malawi and Kondoa-Irangi in Tanzania). The nomination of / Ui-//aes or Twyfelfontein in Namibia was successful in 2007 and Kasama in Zambia is in the planning stage.