Head out of Cape Town toward the West Coast and the pulse of the nation slows. Time seems to pass more leisurely, and when you get deep west to the Wupperthal mission station, it is almost at a standstill.
In this idyl nesting in the valley of the Cedarberg mountains, politics is less pressing, the post office and single-tank petrol station are open for just half a day, and the cellphone networks don’t roam here.
Although the emissaries of the African National Congress and the National Party have attempted to whip up Wupperthal’s interest, elderman Nollace Salomo sums up the mood of the populace. “Politics is not for them,” he says.
The parties have won only a small showing at the public meetings they have called.
Although only one German Moravian missionary still lives in the village of whitewashed thatch cottages, this mission station is still firmly church land. The church, which occupies the heart of the village, is the registered ratepayer, landowner and ruler.
The 3_000 inhabitants of Wupperthal central and the 10 settlements dotted around it still live by a code of conduct introduced early in the 19th century when the missionary Johan Leipoldt stumbled upon the area which reminded him of the Wupper valley in Germany.
On a Sunday morning in the late 20th century, little seems to have changed. In starched shirts with hats, ties and even tiepins, Fritz Hanekom and Pierre Valentyn cut an olde worlde sight as they walk up the cobbled path that leads to the church. The bell-ringers, they are the first to arrive.
The two men open the three church doors (the front door for women, the side doors for children and men) and put out a shiny black chair with a cross for its back. An armsorgkas (poor-care collection chest) is placed on it – symbol of a set of values growing more rare. Although not wealthy, members of the congregation who stream into the church each put a donation into the chest.
But the changing times are marked by new symbols like the fashionable platform shoes the teenagers wear.
If you look closely, the signs of progress lie scattered at the bell-ringers’ feet. Thick black pipes and thinner blue ones are piled high. These are the elements of a new sewerage system, for which residents are laying the pipes.
Since 1994, things have changed at the mission station. Electricity pylons are a new feature and in addition to power, there is also running water in almost every cottage.
All the work has been done by the residents, who have been paid from Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) funds.
At the entrance to the town, billboards advertising the HOP (the Afrikaans acronym of the RDP) have been erected. But the residents don’t know what the HOP stands for or which district council delivered the goodies, let alone which political party controls that council.
Margaret Snagans used to trek into the surrounding mountains to find wood to fire her stove. Over the years she had to walk further and further to find bark, lugging it to her cottage on her back.
“We don’t buy candles or use lamps anymore. Now I use the stove to cook on,” she says. But Snagans has also watched many young people leave to work in the nearby town of Clanwilliam or faraway Cape Town.
Like Snagans, 73-year-old Paul Wynand has lived all his years in Wupperthal. Before retiring, he was a craftsman at the local shoe factory.
“Look, we’ve now stepped into the new South Africa,” he says, adding enigmatically that the new rights can be overstepped.
Progress has brought the world to Wupperthal. Although the local store – which until recently operated its own currency – does not sell newspapers, satellite dishes are perched incongruently on two or three cottage windows.
There is more disposable income in the area now and the law forbidding hard alcohol is becoming more difficult to police. It’s still very safe though. “We can still sleep with our doors open and in the summer we sleep on the stoep,” says Snagans.
This insular community, so similar to the Amish or the Quakers, is determined to live its old way in the new South Africa. Development funds, controlled by a church council, have been spent so wisely over the past five years that more are available.
The government has funded an organic tea plant where local farmers hope to harvest a bumper crop of organic rooibos tea. And although nobody in Wupperthal owns a 4×4 vehicle, Salomo and his team have finished slicing an overland route through the peaks and valleys of the Cedarberg mountains to which they hope to attract wealthy city types.
Only time will tell whether Wupperthal can open up and stay closed. For now, the elders are determined this is possible. Says Salomo: “As iets sy kop uitsteek, kan ons dit gou onderdruk [If trouble raises its head, we can quickly stamp it out].”
And for all its simplicity, this community will be no easy political pawn in any party’s crown as the election jamboree hots up. No party will easily be able to claim development as its own gift to Wupperthal … that is, of course, if they can draw anybody to the meetings.
“The HOP is state money,” says Salomo.