Cape Town - Heritage experts, historians and other members of the community are flocking together to save a disused old historical church in the middle of the rural town of Heidelberg, on the Garden Route towards Mossel Bay and Gqeberha.
They have come together to donate their services for free to assist in the campaign to restore Heidelberg’s Ou Kerkie, which was left to fall apart when it was snatched away by apartheid’s Group Areas Act.
Community spokesperson Alex Marshall said the apartheid government appropriated the church, uprooted its congregants, and moved them several kilometres away.
Only after a change of government in 1994, and several petitions later, were some of the properties of the church returned in 2007, including the old church building.
He said in 2021 a Congregational Church Council meeting called for a renovations committee to be established, and for its members to raise funds to restore the Ou Kerkie, the town’s treasured legacy, to its former glory.
The congregation has launched a Buy-a Brick campaign where individuals can buy a brick for R100.
“At the end of the project the names of all donors will be displayed on a roll, as a gesture of our appreciation.
“We invite support for all and sundry to our cause of restoring our Ou Kerkie to full use again,” he said.
Marshall said: “All work on the building is being guided on a pro bona basis by heritage expert Roger Fisher, who has vast experience in such renovations and the architect Jaco Booyens.”
Marshall said his personal involvement is that of a historian, with a keen interest in the history of the town, from the time the indigenous Hessqua people lived and grazed their cattle there, to the time the first Trek boere entered the valley to settle there.
Another volunteer on the project is project leader Anneline Hartnick, who said the townspeople’s lives were disrupted when they were moved and forced to start anew.
“For more than 45 years this church stood there as a symbol of our bitter past, with the pain and wounds that were never healed or resolved.
“I believe that we not only need to restore the church building, but also restore the dignity of our ancestors, the generations before us,” she said.
All donations can be deposited in the following account: JF Neumann Memorial Congregation UCCSA Absa account number: 929 163 5364.