Zoar, Western Cape


Zoar is a settlement in Garden Route District Municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Village and mission station 21 km east of Ladismith. It was founded by a group of over 200 German Separatists seeking escape from religious persecution in their homeland, on the farm Elandsfontein in 1817 and named after Zoar on the Red Sea, mentioned in the Bible. The name at first meant ‘insignificance’, but when Lot fled thither from Sodom, it acquired the meaning of ‘haven’.