GENADENDAL Barefoot on hallowed ground

Genadendal, a village in the Overberg region, is steeped in the slower pace of an earlier era. The bricks, stones, woodwork, thatch, and even the trees, tell the fascinating story of the first mission station in South Africa - and of many other firsts.

- ANRI MATTHEE

Driving east on the N2 between Bot River and Caledon, there's a turn off onto the R406 and a big arrow painted on a container pointing the way to Greyton, a popular weekend escape for Capetonians. But before you get to Greyton, you'll see another sign - one that looks like a church bell tower that welcomes visitors to Genadendal, a village with a rich spiritual history that is still evident today. This is where the Moravian missionary Georg Schmidt and a group of Khoekhoen established the first mission station in South Africa in 1738.

Today, it's not hard to picture the sight of a German missionary arriving here on horseback 284 years ago. Many Genadendallers, or "Genalers", as residents often refer to themselves, still travel by horseback.

The settlement, then named Baviaanskloof, developed quickly, and by the end of the 1700s it had grown to become the second-largest settlement in the colony after Cape Town.

In 1806, Jan Willem Janssens, the governor of the Cape at the time, visited the mission station and decided to rename it, so Baviaanskloof became Genadendal (Valley of Grace).

The community thrived, and there was an influx of residents when slavery was abolished at the Cape in the 1830s. In 1838, Hans Peter Hallbeck, a Swedish missionary, established a seminary for the training of teachers and pastors. It was the first institution in the country to offer formal teachers' training.