The tiny town known as the House of Bread voted one of the best in South Africa 

Bethlehem has been voted the best town in the Free State in the 2026 kykNET Kwêla Town of the Year Competition. 

This was driven largely by community action through the Make Bethlehem Beautiful campaign, which pooled funds to improve service delivery in the town. 

Bethlehem’s community-driven success makes it unique in the Kwêla rankings, as it lacks the natural beauty of many of its competitors. 

The Make Bethlehem Beautiful Movement began in 2025 to address the local municipality’s service delivery failures. 

Led by prominent community leaders, local citizens took matters into their own hands and volunteered on weekends to fill potholes, paint public walls, and clean up green spaces. 

This resulted in the town’s strong performance in the Kwêla rankings and restored its historic beauty, with it being one of the oldest towns in the region. 

Bethlehem was established in 1864 by Voortrekker settlers on the farm Pretoriuskloof because they found the valley fertile. 

In particular, the valley produced exceptional wheat yields, which led them to name the town Bethelem after the Hebrew word Beit Lechem. 

While biblical, this name translates directly to “House of Bread”. Keeping with the biblical theme, the river flowing through the town was named the Jordaan River. 

The town was one of the few Afrikaner places to benefit from the Anglo-Boer War, gaining prominence as the temporary capital of the Orange Free State in 1900. 

This saw its population grow rapidly, and it avoided the destruction seen in other parts of the country. 

The period surrounding the war would also see the town’s architectural beauty come to the fore, with many of its historic structures built during that time. 

Many of Bethlehem’s churches, government buildings, and homes were built out of hand-carved golden sandstone quarried from the surrounding cliffs. 

This gave the town a unique feel, and its churches dominate the landscape with their imposing spires. 

Today, the town retains these old buildings but has expanded greatly, with 76,000 people living there, and Afrikaans and Sesotho are the dominant languages. 

Bethlehem is predominantly an agricultural town, processing large quantities of maize, wheat, and sunflowers, and raising livestock. 

It also has substantial manufacturing operations, with Nestle and Coca-Cola having facilities in the town. 

Many other sectors of the economy exist to serve these operations and their workers, with a fledgling tourism industry also contributing to the town’s prosperity. 

Making Bethlehem beautiful again

Despite its historic importance and beauty, Bethlehem has deteriorated in recent years due to inadequate service delivery and mismanagement by the local municipality. 

Bethlehem falls under the Dihlabeng Local Municipality, which is notorious for failing to maintain infrastructure and provide basic services. 

At times, the municipality’s wastewater plants have achieved 0% microbiological compliance, meaning that untreated sewage enters local water systems. 

The municipality’s water supply is also unreliable, with Bethlehem experiencing regular multi-day outages, as in other towns. 

However, the most visible signs of decline are in roads filled with potholes, trash lining parts of the streets, and the general decay of public buildings. 

This is what kick-started the Make Bethlehem Beautiful Movement, which has been supported by other civil society organisations such as AfriForum. 

These organisations have circumvented municipal authorities to take service delivery into their own hands, cleaning up streets, cutting grass, and painting buildings. 

Founded by residents, the Make Bethlehem Beautiful movement created dedicated citizen crews to fill potholes and repair roads across the town. 

It also started the Yellow Bin Project to organise waste management without the municipality, where communities manage public bins and collect refuse. 

Volunteers also spent their weekends cleaning public playgrounds, clearing overgrown areas, and painting worn-out public walls. 

The turnaround from these initiatives resulted in Bethlehem being a finalist in the 2026 kykNET  Kwêla Dorp van die Jaar competition. 

Ranking among the nine best towns in the country is a major achievement for Bethlehem and is the first time a town from the Eastern Free State has received the honour. 

However, this does not mean that Bethlehem’s turnaround is complete, as it is impossible for a town to function without basic service delivery. 

“Although there has been a noticeable improvement in Bethlehem’s aesthetics, there is still a lot of decay and ‘tomorrow is another day’ mentality,” AfriForum said.

“The improvement in the town can largely be attributed to a community that decided to intervene itself. This is not a victory for the municipality, but proof of a well-organised community.”

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Photos of Bethlehem

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