Draft for consideration by all recognised indigenous governance entities.
Every word on this page is subject to your revision, replacement, or removal.
Sections marked in brackets are intentionally left open.
Before Genadendal, before Greyton, before any name now on a map, this valley was home to you. The Khoekhoe herded cattle and sheep across these plains for two thousand years, and the San walked these mountains for tens of thousands of years before that. The Chainoqua lived at the foot of these mountains when Georg Schmidt arrived in 1738; the settlement he joined was already theirs. The people of this valley today carry that lineage. It was never extinguished, and it is not past.
This page acknowledges that everything else this website describes happened on their land, in their story, and often at their cost.
We are not afraid to acknowledge what has happened in the past. Land held in common was surveyed, fenced, and granted to others. Access to water and grazing was cut off. A smallpox epidemic, brought by colonial contact, devastated a people who had no immunity to it. A way of life built on movement, cattle, and shared abundance was dismantled within a few generations. Later, labour laws created further separation. The resulting losses were material, cultural, and spiritual, and their consequences are still alive in this valley.
[This section belongs to the People. Possibilities discussed so far include: the survival of lineage and identity in the valley's families; the Khoekhoe contribution to the formation of Afrikaans; knowledge of the mountains, plants, and water; names, stories, and practices carried in families. We will not draft this. It is for the People to draft.]
[Space for the People to describe themself, any representative mandate, and their role in the valley's present and future, in their own words and at whatever length they choose.]
To the descendants of this valley's first Peoples, the intent of this website is to restore pride and wellbeing in the valley and to commit to the following:
Indigenous knowledge shared with this project remains under the governance of the People, who decides what is recorded, what is published, and what stays within the community. Nothing on this website concerning Khoekhoe and San heritage is final until it has passed through the Peoples' governance. Where visitors benefit economically from this heritage, the structures described on this site are designed so that descendants benefit first. And where this page or any other gets it wrong, the correction process is open to anyone, at any time.
[Further undertakings to be added at the People's direction.]
The Valley of Grace is a living brand owned by no one, benefiting everyone. Stewarded by the Ward 2 Business Forum, it covers both the destination and everything the land and her people produce. The valley sits within the Cape Floristic Kingdom, the smallest and richest of the world's six floral kingdoms, beneath mountains inscribed as part of the Cape Floral Region Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some 30,000 people call this place home.
A note on care and accountability: The story told on these pages belongs to the people of this valley, many of whom carry its most challenging chapters in living memory and in family history. The last thing I want to do is tell their story carelessly.
This website was prepared with close attention to the historical and legal record. Every claim has been checked against archives, court documents, published scholarship, and community sources, and where the record is uncertain, I have tried to say so rather than smooth it over.
I'm Michael Haupt, doula of The Valley of Grace. Although I wasn't born here, I've lived in this valley since 2013, and I'm raising a daughter here who traces her lineage to one of the families displaced from their homes in this valley. The fourth chapter of this story is the one I want her to grow up in, and while there may be challenges getting there, the community engagement work I've been involved in over more than a decade gives me hope.
Even with care, errors and omissions are possible, and they are mine alone. If anything on these pages is wrong, incomplete, or told in a way that causes hurt, I want to hear it directly, and I will fix it. WhatsApp me directly by tapping here.
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