South Africa welcomed 10.5 million international tourists in 2025, surpassing pre-pandemic tourism levels, while Cape Town alone attracted 1.44 million foreign overnight visitors, who generated approximately R19 billion in direct foreign tourism spend.

Our country is also home to 12 UNESCO World Heritage properties, ranging from Robben Island and the Cradle of Humankind to Mapungubwe, the Cape Floral Region and the newly inscribed Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites.

As South Africa marks Heritage Month, the question is not only how we celebrate these places – but how we ensure the infrastructure supporting them survives for generations to come.

For engineering and infrastructure company AvenirHoldings, heritage preservation must include the less glamorous, but essential work of maintaining buildings, roads, electrical systems, water infrastructure, drainage, access facilities and surrounding public spaces.

“Heritage cannot be preserved if the infrastructure that supports it is allowed to deteriorate,” says Tshidi Mndzebele, CEO of AvenirHoldings.

“We need to think about heritage infrastructure in terms of its entire lifecycle. Preventative maintenance, regular condition assessments and early intervention can be significantly more cost-effective than waiting for infrastructure to fail and then undertaking major rehabilitation.”

The need is evident. In 2025, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Tourism found that the Evaton Memorial, Sharpeville Memorial and Boipatong Monument were inadequately maintained, calling for greater intervention and community involvement in their upkeep.

The answer is not necessarily to spend more, but to maintain SA’s infrastructure smarter.

Engineering-led asset management can help heritage authorities identify infrastructure risks before they become expensive failures. Digital asset registers, condition monitoring, preventative maintenance schedules, energy and water efficiency measures, and phased rehabilitation can extend the life of existing infrastructure while reducing costly emergency repairs.

“The objective should be to protect the heritage asset while making every rand invested in its infrastructure work harder,” says Mndzebele.

“That means planning maintenance before deterioration becomes damage, using engineering data to prioritise interventions, and developing solutions that are sustainable over the long term.”

With tourism contributing R24.5 billion in direct spend and supporting more than 106,000 jobs in Cape Town alone in 2025, maintaining the infrastructure around South Africa’s heritage sites is not simply a conservation responsibility – it is an investment in tourism, local economies and the country’s future.