Wupperthal, also known as Wuppertal in the Cape Province, is a Mission village of the Moravian Church in the Clanwilliam district, 72 km by road southeast of Clanwilliam. A railway bus service used to plie between Graafwater station and Wuppertal via Clanwilliam.
On 7 October 1829, Johan Gottlieb Leipoldt, pioneer of the Rhenish Mission in South Africa and grandfather of the poet-physician C. Louis Leipoldt, arrived at the Cape in the company of the missionaries Theobald von Wurmb, G. A. Zahn, and P. D. Luckhoff. On 2nd January 1830, Leipoldt and Von Wurmb bought the farm Rietmond, 2563 hectares in extent, situated in the isolated corner formed by the Cedarberg and the source of the Tra-Tra River. They established the first Rhenish missionary farm in South Africa on 4th January 1830 and called it Wupperthal, after the valley of the Wupper River in the Rhineland, where the Rhenish Mission Institute at Barmen was situated. Leipoldt and his successors did not apply themselves exclusively to spiritual work among the local people but, from the start, also had their temporal welfare at heart. In 1834, an outlying farm was purchased, with the aid of a government grant, for grazing, so that the mission station then had some 20,000 hectares at its disposal.
In 1838, the community grew considerably, owing to the arrival of former slaves who had been freed on surrounding farms. To ensure that all would earn a good living, some residents were trained as shoemakers, tanners, milliners, bricklayers, joiners, or thatchers. The neat white houses with their well-kept thatched roofs and the graceful old, thatched church, which was consecrated in 1834, are of good workmanship and were built by the people themselves, lending a picturesque, old-world aspect to the village. Hats are no longer made, but the tannery and the veld-shoes are known throughout the country. At one time, about 32,000 pairs of riempie (a small thong) veld-shoes, made without nails, were produced at Wuppertal every year. By the end of the 1960s, however, the veld-shoe industry, the principal employer in the community, declined because antiquated machinery, much of it installed before the turn of the century, proved too much of a handicap. Funds to replace these machines were lacking, so that even more young people left the valley to seek employment elsewhere. Together with the inhabitants of the mission village, approx. 4000 people lived on the mission farm in 1970. There are several mission schools. On 17 October 1965, the Rev. H. K. Diehl, on behalf of the Rhenish Mission, handed over the mission station of Wuppertal to Bishop P. W. Schaberg, who accepted the congregation into the Moravian Church.
Many of the inhabitants of Wuppertal make a living out of their agricultural products, mainly dried fruit, rolled tobacco, and dried beans, while others breed goats.
