This page sets out one way of seeing the valley’s future. The Forum has not adopted it. The ideas it describes are not yet agreed, and some of the people and organisations it mentions have not yet been asked. The ideas will be tabled at the Forum’s November 2026 meeting, where anyone can question, change, or reject them.
What the letters in square brackets mean
Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.
- [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
- [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian mission records, or from the people putting an idea forward, in their own documents or statements. It has not been checked against other sources.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
Statements without a tag are proposals or points of view. They describe what the valley could become.
The goal
In 2038 the valley marks 300 years since two very different peoples met here, by showing what a second meeting, made on fair terms, can build for the next 300.
1738: two worlds meet
On 23 April 1738 Georg Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof, the place now called Genadendal [IC]. Two very different ways of life met there.
The Khoekhoe had lived in the Overberg for many centuries [IC]. They were herders who moved their cattle and sheep with the seasons [IC]. Land belonged to the group as a whole, and cattle were the measure of wealth [IC]. They knew the valley’s water, plants, and weather from long experience.
Schmidt came from Herrnhut, a village in Saxony built by refugees of the Moravian Church [IC]. His church had a long tradition of teaching. One of its bishops, Jan Amos Comenius, had argued that every child, rich or poor, girl or boy, should learn to read, in their own language, by seeing and doing [IC]. Moravian missionaries were craftsmen who earned their own living and lived among the people they served [IC].
Neither side could have built what came next alone. Schmidt first taught at a kraal where Africo was the clan leader [MS]. By the end of 1738, 28 people were living and learning at the station [IC]. They learned to read under a pear tree, dug a water furrow, planted gardens, and traded work for supplies [IC].
The hard side of the story
The meeting did not happen between equals. The Dutch East India Company ruled the Cape, and settlers had been taking Khoekhoe grazing land since the 1600s [IC]. Local ministers objected to Schmidt’s baptisms, and farmers did not want to lose cheap Khoekhoe labour [IC]. Schmidt was forced to leave in 1744 [IC].
What he started survived because of the Khoekhoe side of the meeting. For 48 years, with no missionary, no church building, and no salary, Magdalena (Vehettge Tikkuie) gathered people under the pear tree and read to them from the New Testament Schmidt had left her [IC]. When missionaries returned in 1792, they found her still teaching [MS].
What the meeting produced
Over the next 300 years the valley built a heritage that is known across South Africa:
- The school Schmidt began is still open. It is now L.R. Schmidt Primary School, described as the oldest school in South Africa [IC].
- South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opened at Genadendal in 1838 [IC].
- The mission printed De Bode van Genadendal from 1859, one of the roots of written Afrikaans [IC].
- Genadendal knives, furniture, and crafts were sold across the Cape [MS].
- After slavery ended in 1838, the mission became a home for freed people as well as Khoekhoe families [IC].
- In 1995 President Mandela named his Cape Town residence Genadendal [IC].
Much of what the valley built was also taken away by power held elsewhere. A law of 1909 denied residents ownership of the land they lived on [IC]. In 1926 the government closed the teachers’ college, arguing that coloured people were suited to farm work and did not need higher education [IC]. Under apartheid, coloured families were forced out of Greyton [IC]. The full story is on History of the Valley.
The lesson
Two things stand out from 1738. The heritage lasted because each side brought something the other lacked. It suffered most when decisions about the valley were made by people outside it. A second meeting would need to keep the first and change the second.
2038: a second meeting
In 2038 the valley turns 300. The ideas on this page start from the view that a new meeting between very different worlds is already under way, and that the 2038 anniversary is the moment to show what it can build. Two kinds of difference are meeting again.
The valley and the wider world
In 1738 a traveller from Europe arrived in a Khoekhoe valley. Today many kinds of people from outside are looking towards the valley:
- Families looking for schools. English-speaking families in the valley already send their children elsewhere for high school [MS]. Families from other parts of South Africa and abroad pay high fees for schools in rural settings [MS].
- Visitors who come for heritage, nature, and food. The Heritage Trail proposal aims for a six-month waiting list of visitors by 2038 [MS].
- Researchers and bioregional projects. Places around the world are building local economies around their own rivers and land. One network, the Design School for Regenerating Earth, says it aims to help start 1,000 bioregional learning centres by 2035 [MS].
- Government and companies, who look for partners able to deliver work on water, land, skills, and local supply.
The valley brings what none of them can find elsewhere: its land and water, and 300 years of learning carried by its people. The BioConomy work describes this as moving from being needy to being needed [MS].
Old knowledge and new knowledge
The first meeting joined Khoekhoe knowledge of the land with Moravian reading, gardens, and trades. The second could join what the valley already knows with new science and new ways of learning.
| What the valley already knows | What is arriving | Where they could meet |
|---|---|---|
| Khoekhoe and San history, and the use of medicinal plants, taught today in the Mission Museum’s school programmes [MS] | Citizen science: residents and visitors recording plants and animals on the Valley of Grace Nature Realm [MS] | The Heritage Trail, the museum, and school projects |
| Water furrows and gardens since 1738 [IC], and Greyton’s street furrows (leiwater) [TBV] | New methods for keeping rain in the soil and rivers, and research on how plants help bring rain | Farms, food gardens, and the catchment |
| The oldest school in South Africa and its first teachers’ college [IC] | Project-based learning, where a class learns its subjects by working on a real question about the valley | The Learning Campus |
| The mission’s shared life, and the community feeding scheme farmers started in 2020 [MS] | Co-operatives owned by their members | The Agri-Heritage Co-operative |
| Older residents’ memories of the valley [MS] | Recording and sharing stories online, credited by name | The Heritage Trail |
What the valley is working on
Learning: from the pear tree to a campus
Learning is where the valley’s story began, and where the break came in 1926. When the teachers’ college closed, the valley lost its only place of study after school [IC]. It has not had one since [TBV].
Today the valley has one high school, Emil Weder Secondary, which teaches in Afrikaans [IC]. Families of children starting Grade 8 in 2028 or later face a hard choice. The Valley of Grace High School Decision Tool sets out their options and what each one costs [MS].
The longer-term idea is the Valley of Grace Learning Campus. It would have four parts sharing one site:
- An English-medium boarding school that pays rent to the campus. Families from outside the valley would pay its fees. Its rent would pay for bursaries for valley learners and for the rest of the campus.
- A school of skills, a public school with a practical curriculum.
- A vocational training centre for work in tourism, conservation, and farming, open to school leavers and adults.
- A Bioregional Learning Centre for further study and research about the valley’s land, water, and heritage. It would bring study after school back to the valley, for the first time since 1926.
Emil Weder would remain the valley’s Afrikaans high school, with its own heritage and governing body. Its learners would be welcome at the training centre and the learning centre. How, and whether, the school links with the campus would be for its governing body to decide. Emil Weder’s principal supports exploring the idea [MS]. People from Bonnievale, where a town built its own technical high school, have visited Emil Weder to share their experience [MS].
This is the second meeting in its clearest form. Families from the wider world would pay into the valley. The valley’s own young people would gain a path from school into study or work at home. Project-based learning would join the valley’s knowledge of its own land with the standards that universities expect.
The BioConomy: keeping value in the valley
The Forum’s long-term goal describes the BioConomy in plain terms: running more of the local economy so that what the valley has stays in the valley [MS]. That means money spent at local shops and farms, skills in young people, water in the ground, and healthy soil. Farms, shops, and markets carry on as they do now. The BioConomy adds ways for neighbours and businesses to work together on things nobody pays for today, such as clean rivers, healthy veld, and passing on heritage.
The work so far falls into four areas.
Water and land. The valley lies below Theewaterskloof Dam, the largest dam in the system that supplies Cape Town [IC]. Greyton Shale Fynbos, a plant community named after the village, was listed as Critically Endangered in 2022 [IC]. Groups in the valley clear invasive plants from the reserve and commonage [MS]. Ideas under discussion include an Overberg leopard corridor in the mountains, and research into whether healthy vegetation helps bring rain to the catchment [MS]. See Greyton Conservation Society and Wild Restoration.
Knowing the land. In July 2026 the Valley of Grace Nature Realm went live on the Guardians of Earth platform [MS]. It covers about 10,000 hectares of the valley, and residents, learners, and visitors can record plants, animals, and heritage on it [MS].
Food. The Valley of Grace Agri-Heritage Co-operative would let small growers share one brand, a farm shop, and visitor experiences. It builds on food projects already working in the valley, such as Valley Food Gardens [MS].
Heritage and visitors. The Valley of Grace Heritage Trail would link Greyton and the mission settlements with one trail. It proposes training eight heritage guides and six heritage home hosts from the mission settlements, and crediting about 20 older residents by name for the knowledge they share [MS].
Doing it differently this time
The first meeting showed what goes wrong when the valley does not set the terms. These principles are proposed for the second. Some of them the Forum has already agreed.
- Communities are involved from the start. The Forum agreed at its first meeting that affected communities should be part of a proposal from the beginning, before it is written [MS].
- Land comes first to the Komitee. Any idea that touches Farm 39, TRANCRAA, land tenure, or the mission settlement goes to the Transformasie Komitee first [MS].
- Old knowledge is credited. People who share what they know are named and paid where there is income, as the Heritage Trail proposes.
- Outside money pays in, and value stays. Fees, visitor spending, and grants would fund bursaries, training, and care for the land. The valley would own what it builds.
- Every village gains. The Forum’s long-term goal says a good result in one village does not count if another is left behind [MS].
- Each part of life keeps its own value. Cooperation in the economy, equality in rights, and freedom in learning and belief, as set out in Our Long-Term Goal.
Milestones on the way to 2038
| When | What could happen |
|---|---|
| November 2026 | The Forum names a champion for each priority [MS]. The Learning Campus, the Heritage Trail, and the Agri-Heritage Co-operative are tabled [MS]. |
| 2027 | The Forum’s first yearly survey, to see whether life in the valley is changing [MS] |
| 2027 to 2028 | First training courses for adults, in borrowed rooms [MS] |
| 2028 | Families of children starting Grade 8 choose high schools [MS]. April 2028 marks 290 years since Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof. |
| By 2030 | A boarding school could open on the Learning Campus [TBV] |
| 23 April 2038 | 300 years since the meeting at Baviaanskloof |
What is still open
- Whether the Forum adopts this way of seeing 2038.
- How descendants of the Khoekhoe and San in the valley want the meeting of 1738 remembered, and what part they want in 2038. They have not been asked.
- How the Moravian Church, its congregations, and the Mission Museum plan to mark the tercentenary. They have not been asked about this page.
- Whether each of the three ideas is agreed, changed, or dropped in November 2026.
- Where the Learning Campus would be, what it would cost, and whether families would pay its fees.
- How the unfinished TRANCRAA process for Farm 39 affects any plan that uses its land.
- Who would organise the 2038 celebrations, and how.
Have your say
Contact the moderators via How to Submit, or come to the Forum’s November 2026 meeting.
Related
- History of the Valley
- Georg Schmidt
- Jan Amos Comenius
- Our Long-Term Goal
- Ideas for the Valley
- Valley of Grace Learning Campus
- Valley of Grace Heritage Trail
- Valley of Grace Agri-Heritage Co-operative
- Forum Priorities
- Genadendal Mission Museum
- Emil Weder Secondary School
- L.R. Schmidt Primary School
References
- Valley of Grace High School Decision Tool. Home and Learning Campus. High school options for families from 2028, and the working detail of the campus idea.
- BioConomy. bioconomy.earth. The BioConomy framework, and the idea of moving from needy to needed.
- Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Schmidt, Georg and Tikhuie, Vehettge Magdalena. Schmidt’s work and departure, and Magdalena’s 48 years.
- South African History Online. Genadendal Historic Village and Museum. The teachers’ college and its closure in 1926.
- BioConomy Wiki. The Comenius-to-Schmidt Chain. Comenius’s ideas on education and the Moravian tradition of craftsman missionaries.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. National List of Threatened Terrestrial Ecosystems, Government Gazette 47526, GN 2747 (November 2022). Greyton Shale Fynbos listed as Critically Endangered.
- Forum research notes, held by the Forum: Business Case for High-End Schooling and Bioregional Learning in the Valley of Grace (2026), on fees and demand for rural schools; A Global Inventory of Bioregional and Place-Based Ecological-Economic Projects (2026), on the Design School for Regenerating Earth.