Much of what this wiki says about the valley comes from people who have studied it for years. Some are archaeologists and historians. Others are residents who hold family records, stories, or knowledge of the land. This section names the living researchers who help write the wiki, with their agreement, and the research projects whose published work it draws on most.
How the wiki credits research
There are three ways a researcher’s work can appear on this site.
- Cited. Published books, theses, and articles are listed under References on the pages that use them. Anyone’s published work can be cited this way.
- Credited. When a researcher checks a page or gives material for it, that page names them in a Contributors section. This happens only when they have agreed to be named.
- Profiled. A researcher can have a page of their own in this section, describing their work and the wiki pages they have helped with. A page is published only after the researcher has agreed to it in writing and approved the text.
A researcher who checks a page does not, by doing so, support the Forum or any idea on the site. A credit says only what they did on that page.
Research projects
These projects have published their work, so the wiki cites it without asking. Listing a project here does not mean its makers have checked any page on this site, or that they support the Forum or any idea on it.
- Moravian Knowledge Network (#DigitalHerrnhut). A research network led by Alexander Lasch at TU Dresden’s Chair of German Linguistics and Language History, working with the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB). Its digitalherrnhut project puts Moravian archives online as searchable text and teaches students and volunteers to read the old German handwriting they are written in. Its partners include the Genadendal Mission Museum, and its team documented the mission at Genadendal on a visit in 2024. The blog has an account of a visit to South Africa for each year since. In December 2025 the team published transcriptions of four copies of the Genadendal mission diaries held at Het Utrechts Archief in the Netherlands. The Genadendal Diaries describes those files.
- Genadendal Diaries: machine-readable texts. An open repository that holds the same four diary files, covering 1792 to 1805, as tables and plain text, with one row for each line of the manuscripts. It adds new English translations, one diary entry at a time, and a glossary of people, places, and terms. The translations are machine translations that no person has checked yet, and readers of old German or Dutch are invited to review them. The texts may be reused with credit under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0). The repository builds on the Moravian Knowledge Network’s edition, and that edition’s makers have not reviewed it.
- The Khoekhoe Saga. A documentary series on the Khoekhoe, written and directed by Johann Abrahams and first shown on SABC2 in January 2023 in seven episodes. A longer version runs to 13 parts. It follows the Khoekhoe from their origins to the revival of Khoi and San identity today, and includes Genadendal among the mission villages it covers. The full series is hard to find online, so the wiki’s page on it draws on press coverage and the series trailer.
Contributors
No contributor pages have been published yet.
Offer your knowledge
If you have studied the valley’s history, land, water, or people, or you hold documents, photographs, or family stories, contact the moderators via How to Submit. Say which pages you could help with.
If you know where rock art or burial sites are, please share their locations with the moderators privately. They are never published on this site.