Botanist Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans first drew scientific attention to the area in the 1920s, and at the request of Jan Smuts the government set aside nine farms as a preserve for wildlife and natural vegetation in 1918. By the early 1940s, Pole-Evans had expanded the Dongola Botanical Reserve to 27 farms, including Greefswald -- the property containing Mapungubwe Hill, site of a medieval African kingdom. In 1944, the Minister of Lands proposed a Dongola Wild Life Sanctuary encompassing 124 farms. The National Party, then in opposition, fought the proposal fiercely, arguing that agricultural land should not be surrendered to wildlife. The debate became known as the "Battle of Dongola" and resulted in a reduced sanctuary. When the National Party won power in 1948, they abolished it entirely within a year. Farms were returned, donors reimbursed, and the conservation vision shelved for a generation.

The park's second life began modestly in 1967, when the Vhembe Nature Reserve was established on just three farms, including Greefswald. The decisive push came in 1993, when De Beers Consolidated Mines -- which had created the adjacent Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve -- called for a national park. In 1995, South African National Parks and the Limpopo provincial government signed an agreement, and the Vhembe-Dongola National Park was proclaimed on 9 April 1998. It was renamed Mapungubwe National Park and opened officially on Heritage Day, 24 September 2004. The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape became a National Heritage Site in 2001 and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003. In 2009, the park's Museum and Interpretive Centre -- a building designed by Peter Rich Architects using locally sourced materials and traditional vaulting techniques -- won the World Architecture Festival's World Building of the Year.

The park's geological history reaches back 210 million years, to a period when one of the earliest plant-eating dinosaurs, Plateosauravus, walked the sandstone hills. That deep time shows in the landscape -- eroded formations, Kalahari sands, and the rich alluvial deposits of the Limpopo floodplain. The riparian corridor along the river supports a dense, closed-canopy forest of fever trees, ana trees, leadwoods, and figs, some of which have grown to enormous size on the nutrient-rich floodplain soils. Baobabs stud the hillsides, with one specimen measuring 31 metres in circumference. Twenty-four Acacia species and eight Commiphora species contribute to the high plant diversity. Away from the river, the vegetation shifts to short, dense mopane woodland and sparse, tufted grassveld -- a mosaic of habitats that supports an unusually rich assemblage of wildlife for a relatively small park.

Birders know Mapungubwe as one of Southern Africa's exceptional sites: 387 species recorded, including Pel's fishing owl, Verreaux's eagle, Kori bustard, ground hornbill, pennant-winged nightjar, and grey crowned crane on the Limpopo floodplain. The mammal list is equally impressive. The park is designated a Lion Conservation Unit alongside South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. African bush elephants, white rhinoceros, leopards, cheetahs, African wild dogs, spotted and brown hyenas, giraffes, and zebras share the landscape with smaller species like klipspringers, steenbok, and aardvarks. At least 17 bat species roost in trees and caves throughout the park. A treetop boardwalk offers visitors a canopy-level perspective on the forest ecology, and the interpretive centre displays artefacts from the Iron Age kingdom, including ceramics, trade beads, and gold objects that tell the story of a civilization that flourished here eight centuries ago.