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Composers Maps and Documents World Heritage Sites
Explorers and Adventurers Monarchs Writers and Poets

The people included here were either born in Britain, died in Britain, became British citizens, became Prime Minister of Britain or ascended the British throne.

South Africa

The Bantu-speaking inhabitants faced a permanent presence of European settlers for the first time in 1652 when the Dutch established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1795 the British landed forcing the Boers north, a development which would eventually lead to the Boer War a century later.



 In 1994, five years after the Apartheid system was dismantled, the country returned to black majority rule with the election of Nelson Mandela.

Explorers and Adventurers

The London-born explorer Mary Kingsley died in 1900 while working as a nurse during the Second Boer War. In 1893 and 1895 she had made two expeditions to West Africa, becoming the first European to travel in the area.


Nobel Prize Winners

Physiology or Medicine
The molecular biologist Sydney Brenner was born in Germiston in 1927. He became a British citizen and in 2002 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with the English scientist John Sulston and the American H. Robert Horovitz for their research into genetics.


World Heritage Sites

World Heritage Sites
Since 1999 twelve sites (as of 2025) of cultural, historic and natural importance in South Africa been designated as a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. A selection of these sites are found below.

Free State
In 2005 the Vredefort Dome was designated a World Heritage Site. The site marks the impact of a meteor which hit earth over 2,000 million years ago creating a crater with a radius of 190 kilometres. It therefore represents the oldest and largest evidence of such an event which would have had a dramatic effect across the globe.

Guateng
The Fossil Hominid Sites of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraas were designated a World Heritage Site in 1999.

KwaZulu-Natal
Made up of five ecosystems the iSimangaliso Wetland Park was designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1999.



 In 2000 the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park was designated a World Heritage Site.

Limpopo

In 2003 the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape was designated a World Heritage Site and was until the 14th century the location of the largest kingdom on the continent.

Northern Cape

In 2007 the Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape was designated a World Heritage Site. South Africa's 8th site to be designated is an area of mountainous desert covering 160,000 hectares in the north-east of the country.

Western Cape

Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held during the Apartheid regime, was designated a World Heritage Site in 1999.



 The Cape Floral Region was designated a World Heritage Site in 2004 and is made up of eight protected areas covering over half a million hectares of land.


Writers and Poets
The author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien, was born as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in Bloemfontein in 1892.

J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien Society



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