The Khomani Cultural Landscape is a cultural site located in northern South Africa, in the Northern Cape province, near the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. It covers a section of the Kalahari Desert historically associated with the ǂKhomani San people, one of the Indigenous groups of southern Africa. The landscape was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2017 in recognition of its cultural and historical significance.

The site is not defined by monumental architecture, but by a territory shaped through use, movement, and knowledge passed down over generations. It includes hunting and gathering areas, water points, places linked to oral histories, and seasonal routes. Together, these elements reflect a way of life grounded in a detailed understanding of the Kalahari’s arid environment and in practices adapted to its ecological constraints.

For a long time, the ǂKhomani San were marginalized and displaced from their land, particularly during the colonial period and under apartheid. In the late 1990s, a land restitution process enabled some ǂKhomani communities to regain rights over parts of their ancestral territories. The Khomani Cultural Landscape embodies both this history of dispossession and more recent efforts to achieve legal, cultural, and political recognition of Indigenous peoples in South Africa.

The cultural landscape also carries intangible dimensions. Languages, stories, spiritual practices, and knowledge related to fauna and flora are integral to the site, even when they leave no visible physical traces. Managing the territory therefore requires acknowledging local communities and their role in preserving and transmitting this knowledge.

Today, the Khomani Cultural Landscape functions simultaneously as a space of memory, a living territory for some ǂKhomani families, and an area governed by conservation policies. It highlights the challenges involved in protecting living cultural landscapes, where environmental preservation is closely linked to the recognition of the rights, histories, and practices of the people connected to them.