The Wuppertal Mission village of the Moravian Church lies in the Clanwilliam district, 72 km by road south-east of Clanwilliam. A railway bus service plies between Graafwater station and Wuppertal via Clanwilliam. Population (1970): White 8; Coloured 670. The cemetery is very quaint and simple but infortunately the older graves have been painted over so many times the names are unreadable. Browse through the gallery.

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 2 Jan. 1830 Leipoldt and Von Wurmb bought the farm Rietmond, 2563 ha in extent, situated in the isolated corner formed by the Cedarberg and the source of the Tra-Tra River, for £125. Here they established the first Rhenish missionary farm in South Africa On 4 Jan. 1830 and called it Wuppertal, 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 Coloured 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 ha at its disposal. In 1838 the community grew considerably, owing to the arrival of a number of former slaves who had been freed on surrounding farms. To ensure that all would earn a good living, some 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 Coloured people themselves, lending a picturesque, old-world aspect to the village. Hats are now no longer made, but the tannery and the veld-shoes are known throughout the country. At one time about 32 000 pairs of riempie (small thong) veld-shoes, made without nails, were produced at Wuppertal every year.

By the end of the 1965, however, the veld-shoe industry, 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 ever more young people left the valley to seek employment elsewhere. Together with the inhabitants of the mission village approx. 4000 Coloured people lived on the mission farm in 1970. There are several mission schools. On 17 Oct. 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, roll tobacco and dried beans, while others breed goats. The minister and a council of 16 overseers are responsible for public order and for the division of the plots, gardens and arable lands.