The Bafokeng have gained considerable importance in present-day South Africa mainly due to platinum mining. Missionaries of the Hermannsburg Mission Society have accompanied and influenced the history of the Bafokeng. The book looks into the culture and religion of the Bafokeng using the numerous reports which Christoph and Ernst Penzhorn submitted to their superiors in Germany. These pioneer missionaries not only had the Christianisation of the Africans in mind and strove to understand their traditional belief system, but they facilitated the school education of the Bafokeng in a manner that was inextricably linked to everything else.

Heinrich Bammann together with his family, lived amongst the Bafokeng as pastor and served in the local Lutheran congregation from 1991 - 1996.