What better way to document all of South Africa’s great monuments in one library than through Wikipedia. Wiki Loves Monuments is an initiative by the Wikimedia foundation to documents all of the world’s heritage.

The South African version of the initiative encourages people to participate and celebrate South Africa’s living heritage by taking photographs of heritage sites and uploading them either via mobile or their computers to the competition website. The winners for this year have been picked.

“We would like to commend this year’s participants for the high quality of their photographs. The quality of photographs submitted has been increasing every year, and this year was the best we have had in terms of quality since the South African competition started in 2012,” said Wikimedia South Africa in a statement.

According to the foundation more than 4 000 photographs were submitted this year, lesser number than last year’s 6 000. The foundation feels that this year showed an improvement in the “quality of submissions was much higher than in previous years.”

Some photographs were however disqualified due to the Copy Right Act of 1978.

“We are deeply disappointed that we could not accept photographs of recently built monuments. Most of these monuments commemorate South Africa’s struggle against Apartheid, and it is very unfortunate that photographs of these important historic places cannot be submitted or used on Wikipedia.”

What is really cool about an initiative like this one is that it helps map monuments around the world, which is very great.

This year’s winners include:

A photograph of the Women’s Memorial Under Rainy by Leanri van Heerden, which one first prize.

Second Prize went to a photo of R Aspeling Union Buildings by Robbie Aspeling

Third Prize went to the Old Dovecote. Farm Onverwacht, (Die Bos), Somerset West. by Chris Snelling

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