From the outside, looking in

Nieu-Bethesda is famous for Helen Martins’ Owl House, but this is only one attraction in a town where creativity flows as surely as water from the Sneeuberg. Here in the Eastern Cape Karoo, hearts and doors remain unlocked.

- KYRA TARR

Twilight is a magical time of day, when the blue shades of evening start winning over the sun’s warmer hues. Cast in this light, Nieu-Bethesda seems otherworldly, an apparition of civilization in an otherwise boundless landscape.

As I trundle into town on a dusty road, firelit dinner parties are illuminated in the windows. There are no streetlights here. In fact, Nieu-Bethesda was one of the last towns in South Africa to receive electricity. Before 1995, electrical appliances were the preserve of the lucky few who owned generators. (Barbara Weitz, co-owner of The Ibis guesthouse, tells me how her husband Johan had to return home from playing in the veld in the evenings when he heard the first generator roar to life.)

Nieu-Bethesda was established in 1875 on a farm called Uitkyk. It owes its existence to the Dutch Reformed church and to the faithful who didn’t want to make the long journey to Graaff-Reinet every Sunday to worship. The church still stands proudly at the centre of town – a beacon of endurance. Nieu-Bethesda’s townsfolk would need more than endurance, they’d need pure grit, to make it in this isolated pocket of South Africa. There were times when the town nearly ran empty of permanent residents, but it was saved and sustained by art and the creative spirit that continues to dwell in this valley.

The art of one woman, distilled and interpreted by the celebrated writer Athol Fugard in his play, The Road to Mecca, would capture the imagination of a nation. Helen Martins turned her home into a “living” work of art and is the mysterious presence behind the Owl House for which NieuBethesda is famous.