The Hermannsburg Mission Society no longer plays any role in South Africa in running schools, teacher training colleges or seminaries for the training of African pastors. All that remains of previous endeavours are the ruins of settlements founded by the mission, and the private schools for children of German parentage which are rapidly losing their German and Hermannsburger character. All that is left, in effect, are the few remaining people who went through the institutions, their children who are now scattered across the country and the world, books produced in the course of the mission's history, and its various archives. In Germany these archives are carefully catalogued and cared for. In South Africa they are under constant threat of neglect, destruction, and even fire.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the abandoned and dilapidated buildings of the mission headquarters and the old Mission Press at Moorleigh near Estcourt speak of a bygone era. Farm schools have by and large been closed, and the former Bantu community schools are now incorporated into KwaZulu-Natal as public schools. Closed down in 2002, Umpumulo languishes, disused and decaying amid the lush vegetation of the surrounding hills, and in North West province, on the road between Coligny and Ventersdorp, Bethel is now a secondary school for girls, hidden among a grove of trees planted by the mission. Over time, the buildings have expanded considerably, and there is only a dim memory of the school's origin as a mission school, let alone a German one. In the villages around Rustenburg, likewise, the missionaries have left, and Kroondal, the centre of the former German community in that area, is now a shadow of its former self, criss-crossed by highways cutting away whatever charm the village might once have had. All that remains is a church and shady graveyard, and headstones bearing the names of settlers and missionaries. The Hermannsburg book depot no longer exists, and the Mission Press no longer produces school textbooks. The short-lived Primary Education Upgrade Programme, begun just a few decades ago, is a remnant of a past considered best forgotten.