The sun was sinking, the air was cold, and the lights were out when we visited the strikingly beautiful sandstone church at Mariazell Mission. The outage had nothing to do with Eskom, though, and it somehow heightened the atmosphere in the darkened church, early-evening light filtering through the stained-glass windows as the voices of a youthful choir barrelled up towards the rafters - and connected to some powerful force beyond.
The voices weren't a professional choir but, as it turned out, students at the mission's school which, since its establishment in 1904, has had a tradition of educating numerous prominent figures, including Albertina Sisulu and Mosiuoa Lekota and, more recently, Philani Potwana, who - in 2020 became South Africa's youngest-ever CEO.
Perhaps among the youngsters who were singing there was a future president Or perhaps a bright spark who will solve the energy crisis once and for all. The church, with its view of the Southern Drakensberg mountains that separate South Africa from Lesotho, was built under the auspices of Franz Pfanner, the Trappist monk who arrived in South Africa when he was already in his 50s and between 1882 and 1908, built 22 mission stations, starting
