The !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre won Gold at the Africa Responsible Tourism Awards this year. Located just 70 km from Cape Town, !Khwa ttu offers education, training, and jobs to help the San people reclaim and share their traditions. In 2022, the centre introduced a sustainable sourcing policy for food and beverages, focusing on foraged ingredients and ethical, artisanal suppliers. This initiative revives ancient food traditions while promoting cultural and environmental conservation and supporting local economies.
By 2024, !Khwa ttu had partnered with 44 local producers, creating the equivalent of 4,500 employment days and directly investing in rural livelihoods. The judges praised the centre’s innovative integration of local economic development and cultural heritage through food.
In 2017, CNN Travel asked: “Can tourism and art save the world’s oldest people, the San, in southern Africa?” It noted: “Caught between modernity and 20,000 years as hunter-gatherers, the San people sit at a crossroads. Saving the world’s oldest people is a big challenge, but their, and our, heritage is being celebrated on the coast of South Africa, close to Cape Town, at Grootbos and !Khwa ttu.” Both sites have received Responsible Tourism Awards for their efforts.
A shared human heritage
As !Khwa ttu reminds us: “It is our story – the story of humankind.” There are an estimated 130,000 San living across six countries in southern Africa. They are among the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies in the world. Their languages, ancient lifestyles, and cultural traditions are under severe threat from climate change, land displacement, and a lack of public understanding.
The !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre embraces the concept of ‘community curation’. It showcases the skills and knowledge of San people from across the region, alongside the archaeological story of early human development along southern Africa’s coastline.
Nature, conservation and the Cape Floral Kingdom
Both !Khwa ttu and Grootbos are situated in the Cape Floral Kingdom – one of only six floral kingdoms in the world. This region is known for its biodiversity and high levels of plant endemism. The fynbos biome, a Mediterranean-type shrubland, is both fire-prone and ecologically rich.
Grootbos has conserved extensive areas of this ecosystem. Through guided nature walks and its botanical collection, the Grootbos Florilegium (featuring more than 100 botanical illustrations and their pollinators), visitors gain a deeper appreciation of this unique environment. TIME recognised Grootbos as one of the World’s Greatest Places in 2024.
The birthplace of modern humans
At the southern tip of Africa, two major marine ecosystems converge. According to a film produced by Grootbos, this region avoided glaciation during the Ice Ages, allowing relatively uninterrupted human evolution. Many scientists now argue that modern human life originated here.
Sea-level fluctuations reshaped the now-submerged Paleo-Agulhas Plain off South Africa’s coast, once rich in wildlife and inhabited by early hunter-gatherers. Modern Homo sapiens are believed to have developed complex behaviour here between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Humanity’s Global Journey
Curtis W. Marean, Foundation Professor at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and honorary professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, argued in a 2015 Scientific American article that Homo sapiens became the ultimate invasive species:
“Sometime after 70,000 years ago, our species, Homo sapiens, left Africa to begin its inexorable spread across the globe… Everywhere H. sapiens went, massive ecological changes followed. The archaic humans they encountered went extinct, as did vast numbers of animal species. It was, without a doubt, the most consequential migration event in the history of our planet.”
He attributes this success to a social shift: “I think the diaspora occurred when a new social behaviour evolved in our species: a genetically encoded penchant for cooperation with unrelated individuals… It also fostered innovation, giving rise to a game-changing technology: advanced projectile weapons. Thus equipped, our ancestors set forth out of Africa, ready to bend the whole world to their will.”
If you’re visiting the Cape, don’t miss Grootbos and the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre. Nestled within the Cape Floral Kingdom, these places are more than attractions — they are reminders that this region is where our shared human story began.
