Several KwaZulu-Natal organisations were honoured for their role in heritage restoration, a conservation agency said on Saturday.
Amafa Heritage KZN spokesperson Barry Marshall said the fifth annual Amafa Heritage Awards, held on Friday in Pietermaritzburg, were to honour everyone who had worked to protect the heritage of the province.
Amafa Heritage KZN is a provincial heritage conservation agency formed as a statutory body in terms of the KwaZulu-Natal Heritage Act of 1997.
The Evangelical Seminary of Southern Africa was awarded for its restoration of buildings of architectural and historic interest in Pietermaritzburg.
The Kwambonambi Traditional Authority was also honoured for preserving King Shaka’s banana plantations, believed to have been looked after by the Zulu king during his childhood.
Marshall said the Sri Siva Soobramoniar and Marriamen temples had also been restored.
Other than the organisations, two other people were honoured.
”Steve Watt was honoured for his research and recorded fatalities of various conflicts including the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and the First Anglo-Boer War, 1880-1881, and Mary Neethling for her interest in South Coast history which led to the first Port Shepstone History Society in the 1970s, ” he said.
The Mnweni Rock Art Monitoring Group and Umdlankomo Rock Art were honoured for their involvement in a number of cultural heritage projects to identify, record, conserve and manage rock art and other archaeological sites in the mountain areas of the Mnweni Triangle. — Sapa