The Royal Hotel, Bethulie

22/03/2026

Anthony as James Bond, 1965. A reel from the Carte Blanche segment on the Royal Hotel Bethulie

20/03/2026

Coming up on Carte Blanche this Sunday, March 22. There may be some familiar scenes. Sorry for the short notice, but the slot has only just been announced.

In a quiet Free State town stands the House of Stories… We check into a hotel and wake up inside a story. For the full story, get DStv Stream Premium: https:...

26/09/2025

The distinguished travel writers Chris Marais and his wife Julienne du Toit have long been among our most valued supporters. Here's a story of theirs published in today's (Sep 26) Daily Maverick, an extract from their recently-published Karoo Roads IV.

Looking for an erudite, eccentric experience complete with a superb history lesson and a glass of red wine? Then visit Bethulie’s Royal Hotel, read one of its many thousands of books and meet its fascinating owner.

10/08/2025

A cartoon by Ella Baron in the UK’s Observer newspaper (August 10) invokes the spirit of Millicent Fawcett, the only woman portrayed among the distinguished statues in London’s Parliament Square. The honour was given her as driving force of the national suffrage movement which secured the vote for Britain’s women in 1918. Seventeen years earlier Millicent had been appointed leader of the ‘Ladies’ Committee’ tasked with touring South Africa to review the situation in the concentration camps following ‘sensational’ complaints by Emily Hobhouse. It was expected that the commission’s six ladies would conclude that Emily’s allegations were nonsense. Instead they reported that far from exaggerating the situation, Emily could have gone much further. The ladies visited all 33 of the concentration camps, several of them more than once, and reported that Bethulie's was far the worst. They blamed the sky-high death rate on the superintendent, a civilian pl***oy named Russel Deare from Port Elizabeth. Deare had been so frightened of dying in the camp that he had abandoned it and was running it long distance from the hotel. Millicent suggested that he should immediately be replaced. She pointed out that while Bethulie was the worst camp, one of the best was a short distance down the river at Norvalspont. The superintendent there was St John Cole Bowen, a former army officer and ex-magistrate. On Millicent’s urging Russel Deare was relieved of his duties and Cole Bowen was appointed in his place. In a matter of weeks Bethulie's raging death rate was drastically reduced. For the rest of the war its situation was in line with what was happening in camps elsewhere.

03/08/2025

Following their forced surrender at Golden Gate in August 1900, members of the Bethulie Commando were shipped to Ceylon, today’s Sri Lanka, as prisoners-of-war. They and more than 4,000 others were interned in hastily erected corrugated iron huts and sheds at Diyatalawa camp in Ceylon’s hill country – now a sought-after destination for Sri Lankans wanting to escape the heat of lower altitudes. Today the area once occupied by the camp is a military complex normally closed to casual visitors, but the hotel's Anthony Hocking recently spent a day at the base as guest of the Sri Lankan army. To his surprise, he found dozens of the original prisoner-of-war huts still in use, though much modified and improved. The old camp graveyard has long since disappeared as it’s now part of the Sri Lankan army’s sniper school, but an SA-government monument to the dead (1913) is still in place and carries the names of 140 Boers. Among them were at least five members of Bethulie Commando. Sadly the monument has been neglected for decades and is in need of a good clean.

24/07/2025

Last week we hosted a high-level delegation from the FAK and the Voortrekker Monument (Pretoria) on a three-day familiarisation mission in Bethulie, Springfontein and Norvalspont. The group was led by Dr Danie Langner (left) managing director of the two organisations and also ‘hoofleier’ of the Voortrekker youth movement. The FAK has special interest in our area as its founder, Dr NJ van der Merwe, was a teenager in Norvalspont Concentration Camp and his experiences there helped frame his thinking when he put together the FAK (1929) and the Voortrekkers (1931). The Louw Wepener grave and memorial just outside Bethulie belong to the Voortrekkers. In 2008 the FAK was instrumental in moving the precious Wepener bust and panel to the Voortrekker Monument heritage museum in Pretoria for safekeeping. The bust has been replaced with a 3D-printed concrete replica, and you’d never notice the difference.