Hymnal record of a missionary structure at Thabantsho (Gerlachshoop) of the Bakoba of Kgoshi Boleu

Abstract

This research sets out to answer a problem involving whether or not the first church was established across the Vaal River in the 1860s at Gerlachshoop (Maleoskop). An incidental find of an unknown publication may corroborate an answer to the problem. Anecdotal notes in a hymnal songbook record the first inauguration of a bell of one of the earliest Berlin Missionaries north of the Vaal River. This may clarify the location within the landscape and whether the structure of a church at Gerlachshoop or Thabantšho was erected, as opposed to being a deception or a historical figment of imagination by a subsequent director of the Berlin Missionary Society. The national heritage value of such rare early documentation of European/African literature and the built environment is of great significance and serves as one of the earliest records of German translations into the Sekopa language almost 150 years ago, with several early hymns set to musical notation, that marked the occasion when the actual Sekopa hymns were sung at the event of the inauguration of an early church and its bell.