Genadendal

Georg Schmidt arrived in what was then called Baviaanskloof in 1737 as a young Moravian missionary. He found a community of Khoisan people reeling from a smallpox epidemic, formed a small congregation, and began teaching them to read and write. The Dutch colonial farmers objected — education threatened their supply of cheap labour — and Schmidt was forced back to Europe in 1744. He never returned. The mission was abandoned for 48 years.

Three missionaries came back in 1792 and found Schmidt's pear tree still standing, planted by a Khoisan woman from seeds he had left. They resumed his work and the settlement grew. At its peak, Genadendal was the second largest settlement in the Cape Colony after Cape Town. The first teachers' training college in South Africa was built here in 1838. President Nelson Mandela renamed the official Cape Town presidential residence Genadendal in 1995, in honour of the village's significance.

What stands today is a village of around 5,600 people, 5 kilometres from Greyton on the R406. The original Moravian church houses the oldest pipe organ in South Africa. The mission museum preserves Schmidt's pear tree, instruments, manuscripts, and artefacts of the mission period. The 19th-century streetscape is largely intact — stone buildings, oak-lined roads, a clock tower visible across the valley.

Greyton gets the visitors. Genadendal gets the people who took a wrong turn or are paying attention. It is a more honest place in certain ways, and the history it carries is weightier.