South African Sendinggestig Museum

About South African Sendinggestig Museum

The South African Sendinggestig Museum, situated at 40 Long Street, Cape Town, occupies the country's oldest surviving indigenous mission church building. Built between 1802 and 1804 by the South African Missionary Society, the structure was originally established as a space to provide literacy training and religious instruction to enslaved individuals, Khoi, and San communities.

The architecture is highly distinctive, featuring South Africa's first basilica-style layout with an apse, 750 mm thick shale walls, and the only surviving example of a steeply pitched, lime-concrete flat roof from the colonial Cape era. Declared a National Monument in 1977 to prevent its demolition, the building now functions as a province-aided museum. Its permanent exhibitions display original church furniture, historical records, and commemorative elements, such as a starred floor symbolizing the 1834 abolition of slavery and benches inscribed with the names of the first enslaved people baptized on the premises to preserve the complex social and religious history of the early Cape.