The valley’s history is difficult to read in some places. Khoekhoe land was taken, a missionary was expelled, residents were denied ownership of the land they lived on, a college was closed, and families were forced from their homes. Yet this small valley started things that spread across South Africa, and many of them are still here. This page sets out what began here, what was taken, and what carried the valley through. It then shows how the plans for 2038 continue the same story. For the full account, see History of the Valley and History of Greyton.
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 one community’s or organisation’s own sources. It has not been checked against sources that do not depend on them.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
Statements without a tag, mostly in the last three sections, are the Forum’s reading of the history and its proposals for the future. The ideas they describe are not yet agreed.
What began here
| Year | What began | What it led to |
|---|---|---|
| 1738 | A school for Khoekhoe learners under a pear tree at Baviaanskloof, started by Georg Schmidt with Africo, Vehettge (Magdalena), and others [IC] | It is described as the oldest school in South Africa [IC]. It is now L.R. Schmidt Primary School, with 391 learners in 2026 [IC]. |
| 1738 | The first Protestant mission in southern Africa [IC] | The Moravian Church went on to found more mission villages in the Cape, several of them under Hans Peter Hallbeck [MS]. |
| 1797 | A forge and a water mill at the mission [IC] | Genadendal knives were sold across the Cape [MS]. The museum keeps Genadendal-made knives, furniture, and tools [MS]. Balie’s history calls the mill the oldest surviving water mill in South Africa. It was restored and milling again in 1992 [MS]. |
| 1801 | A wooden water pump on four wheels, sent as a gift from Zeist in the Netherlands [MS] | Balie’s history calls it the oldest fire engine in South Africa. It is on display in the Mission Museum [MS]. |
| 1814 | A school building for children, which Balie’s history calls the first juvenile school outside Cape Town [MS] | It opened on 15 July 1814 with 243 children [MS]. |
| 1819 | A bridge over the Sonderend River, built by residents under the missionary Johann Daniel Beinbrecht [IC] | Balie’s history calls it the first solid bridge in South Africa [MS]. It is now a Provincial Heritage Site [IC]. |
| 1823 | A lending library, with books in English, Dutch, and German [IC]. Balie’s history gives 1825 [MS]. | Villagers could borrow books or read in a reading room, at a time when few people in the colony could [TBV]. In 1832 the Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette called it perhaps the best country library in the colony [MS]. |
| 1831 | South Africa’s first kindergarten, opened by Hans Peter Hallbeck on 12 September 1831 for 144 children aged three to six [MS] | Balie’s history says similar schools soon opened elsewhere in the country [MS]. |
| 1832 | A pipe organ at the mission, bought with a gift made in 1830 [MS] | The museum holds what is described as the oldest playable pipe organ in South Africa [IC]. See Music of the Valley. |
| 1837 | One of the first printing presses in the colony [IC] | The press is now in the Genadendal Mission Museum [IC]. The printing works ran for more than 170 years, until 2003 [MS]. |
| 1838 | South Africa’s first teachers’ training college [IC] | For almost ninety years it trained teachers for the mission schools [IC]. |
| 1838 | A home for people freed from slavery [IC] | Genadendal grew from 1,446 people in 1837 to 2,187 in 1840 [MS]. Newcomers were given land to build on and taught a trade [MS]. |
| 1854 | Greyton, a village of smallholders laid out on long plots, each with room for a house, crops, and a few animals [IC] | The village plan drawn by J.G. Rietz has changed little, and gives Greyton its character today [IC]. |
| 1854 | The leiwater: open furrows carrying water by gravity from the Gobos River to every plot with a water right [MS] | The furrows still water Greyton’s gardens, run by volunteer water bailiffs. It is one of the last such systems still working in South Africa [MS]. See Greyton’s Leiwater. |
| 1856 | The Genadendal brass band’s first recorded performance, at Easter [MS] | Brass playing, taught at the college from 1838, spread to Moravian congregations across the Cape. The Moravian Brass Band Union was formed in 1951 [IC]. The Genadendal band still plays [MS]. |
| 1859 | De Bode van Genadendal, a monthly paper founded by Benno Marx [IC] | Printed in the Dutch spoken at Genadendal, 17 years before Die Afrikaanse Patriot, it is part of the story of how written Afrikaans began [IC]. |
| 1860 | Reis van Genadendal naar de Kaapstad, a board game printed at Genadendal [MS] | Balie’s history calls it the oldest board game in South Africa. Players follow the wagon road from Genadendal to Cape Town [MS]. |
| 1865 | A road over the mountains to McGregor, through the Boesmanskloof, attempted from 1865 to 1880, again from 1924, and as a relief scheme from 1936 to 1941 [TBV] | The road was never finished [IC]. Its route is now the 14-kilometre Boesmanskloof hiking trail between Greyton and McGregor, known as the “road to nowhere” [IC]. |
| 1907 | Teachers’ Review, printed at Genadendal [MS] | Balie’s history calls it the first professional magazine for teachers in South Africa [MS]. |
| 1977 | The Greyton Nature Reserve, on the village commonage, established by Brian Rycroft [IC] | About 2,200 hectares of mountain fynbos, including Greyton Shale Fynbos, a Critically Endangered plant community named after the village [IC]. |
| 1991 | The Mission Museum’s collection is declared a National Cultural Treasure [MS] | The museum keeps some of the oldest documents in the country, and runs free school programmes [MS]. |
| 1995 | The president’s Cape Town residence is named Genadendal [IC] | President Mandela chose the name to honour the oldest mission settlement in South Africa, and visited the valley on 10 October 1995 [IC]. |
What was taken
The things that began here grew in spite of what was done to the valley:
- Land. Khoekhoe grazing land was taken for colonial farms from the 1600s onwards [IC]. See Soeswa and Stoffel Koekson.
- The first mission. Schmidt was forced to leave in 1744, after the Cape’s ministers rejected his right to baptise [IC].
- Ownership. The law of 1909 let residents live on the mission land but not own it [IC]. More than a century later, the transfer of Farm 39 is still not complete [IC]. See TRANCRAA and Farm 39.
- Trades. Cheap factory goods undercut the valley’s crafts in the second half of the 1800s, and many people left to find work [TBV]. Balie’s history says Sheffield knives were sold at the Cape with the Genadendal mark, and the last of Genadendal’s knife-makers died in 1880 [MS].
- Higher learning. In 1926 the government closed the teachers’ college, arguing that coloured people were suited to farm work and did not need higher education [IC].
- Homes. Under the Group Areas Act, coloured families were forced out of Greyton to Heuwelkroon, probably between 1968 and 1974 [TBV].
What carried it through
Each time the valley’s institutions were taken away, something smaller kept going.
The Moravian Church itself had survived this way. After it was banned in 1620, families kept its faith and its books in secret for about a hundred years, until refugees renewed the church at Herrnhut in 1727 [IC]. Its bishop Jan Amos Comenius had prayed that a “Hidden Seed” would survive [MS]. Georg Schmidt was born in one of the villages where it did [MS].
The same thing happened in this valley. When Schmidt left in 1744, the valley was left with no missionary and no church building. For 48 years Magdalena gathered people under the pear tree and read to them from the New Testament he had left her [IC]. When the missionaries returned in 1792, the congregation was waiting [MS].
What carried the valley through was held by households and passed on at home: faith, reading, crafts, music, and knowledge of the land. Laws could take the land and close the college. They could not take what people had learned. The school that began in 1738 has been teaching since 1792 [MS]. In Greyton, residents still keep the leiwater running, as volunteer bailiffs and street wardens [MS].
The learning arc
Learning runs through the valley’s story more than anything else.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1738 | Schmidt’s school under the pear tree [IC] |
| 1792 | The school reopens, and has run ever since [MS] |
| 1838 | South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opens [IC] |
| 1926 | The government closes the college [IC] |
| Today | The valley has one high school, Emil Weder Secondary, which teaches in Afrikaans [IC]. There is no place of study after school [TBV]. |
| 2028 | Families of children starting Grade 8 choose high schools, with help from the High School Decision Tool [MS] |
| 2030s | The proposed Valley of Grace Learning Campus, with a Bioregional Learning Centre, would bring study after school back to the valley |
Seen this way, the Learning Campus is the next step in a 300-year story. The first school taught reading, and the college trained teachers. The campus would train young people for work in the valley’s own land, water, and heritage, and bring back the higher learning that was taken in 1926. Emil Weder would remain the valley’s Afrikaans high school, with its own heritage and governing body.
The wider arc
The valley’s story has always reached beyond the valley. The mission belonged to a church with missions on several continents [IC], and the words printed at Genadendal fed the growth of a language [IC]. In 1995 the valley’s name was chosen for the president’s residence [IC].
The next reach is already under way. 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]. The Forum’s plan for the valley is called the BioConomy: running more of the local economy so that what the valley has stays in the valley, including money, skills, water in the ground, and healthy soil [MS]. The BioConomy framework was first worked out in this valley [MS]. See BioConomy.
The Forum’s research describes this as the valley moving from being needy to being needed [MS]. The valley would once again have something to teach: how a place with a hard history can rebuild its economy around its own land, water, and people.
Towards 2038
On 23 April 2038 the valley marks 300 years since the meeting at Baviaanskloof. The things that began here were made by very different people working things out together, often on unequal terms. The plans for 2038 ask whether a second meeting, on fairer terms, can start the next 300 years. See Future of the Valley and Our Long-Term Goal.
What is still open
- Which other firsts belong on this page.
- Whether the Forum adopts this reading of the history.
- How residents of Heuwelkroon, Madiba Park, and the mission villages would tell the same story.
- Whether the Learning Campus and the BioConomy are agreed, changed, or dropped.
Have your say
To add a first, correct a fact, or tell the story from your side, contact the moderators via How to Submit.
Related
- From the Farm to the Classroom
- Valley History
- History of the Valley
- History of Greyton
- Greyton’s Leiwater
- Money and Land
- Music of the Valley
- Future of the Valley
- Valley of Grace Learning Campus
- Our Long-Term Goal
- Genadendal Mission Museum
- Genadendal: A Long Walk
References
- Balie, I. (2023). Genadendal, The Valley of Grace: A Long Walk Through the History of the First Mission Station in South Africa. AuthorHouse. First published 2020. The fire pump, the juvenile school, the bridge, the kindergarten, the organ, the board game, Teachers’ Review, and the knife trade. Page numbers are on Genadendal: A Long Walk.
- South African History Online. Genadendal Historic Village and Museum. The school, the library, the teachers’ college and its closure in 1926, and the 1995 renaming.
- Wikipedia. Genadendal. The forge, the mill, the library, and the college.
- South African History Online. Afrikaans: the Language of Black and Coloured Dissent. De Bode van Genadendal and written Afrikaans.
- Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae. “I Will Gather All Nations and Tongues”. Genadendal’s population from 1837 to 1840.
- du Preez, H. and others (eds) (2009). The Challenge of Genadendal. Mandela’s foreword on the naming of the residence and his visit.
- greyt.co.za. Get Involved. Greyton’s leiwater and its volunteer bailiffs.
- McGregor Village. The Road to Nowhere. The three attempts at the Boesmanskloof road.
- Getaway. Traversing the Road to Nowhere. The unfinished road and today’s trail.
- Hutton, J.E. (1909). A History of the Moravian Church, chapter 16, “Comenius and the Hidden Seed”. The Hidden Seed and the villages the first exiles came from.
- BioConomy Wiki. The Comenius-to-Schmidt Chain. How a tradition survived the loss of its institutions.
- BioConomy. bioconomy.earth. The BioConomy framework, its origin in the valley, and the idea of moving from needy to needed.
- Forum research notes, held by the Forum: A Global Inventory of Bioregional and Place-Based Ecological-Economic Projects (2026), on the Design School for Regenerating Earth.