South Africa’s smallest town with only 8 permanent residents has 75Mbps uncapped Internet
Despite having just eight permanent residents, the small hamlet of Val in Mpumalanga offers uncapped Internet with speeds of up to 75Mbps.
Widely considered South Africa’s smallest settlement, the charming, rustic Val has a rich history dating back to 1896.
The town’s name is derived from the Afrikaans word for waterfall, Waterval, which was the name of a nearby farm owned by one of its original residents, Joseph Smith.
Val was founded after the completion of a railway line between Johannesburg and Natal, after which the Smith family built a new home close to the railway station.
The hamlet’s main road was named Smith Street after its first residents. The Val Hotel was built in or around 1902.
In April 1902, it was the meeting place where General Louis Botha and Boer Commando leaders discussed the difficult decision to surrender in the Second Anglo-Boer War.
The nearest major regional road to the town is the R547. It may be possible to spot the hamlet halfway during a direct flight between Standerton and Balfour.
However, apart from a row of agricultural silos, it might go completely unnoticed even when flying at low altitude.
Aside from the hotel, Val’s only other major buildings are a shuttered post office, a chapel, and a pub, which shares the same building as a restaurant and museum.
The hotel and its adjoining facilities are owned by Andre and Rita Britz. In a 2025 interview, Rita told Broad Media Investigations that they bought the hotel for around R18,000 at auction in 1995.
Today, the hotel offers 12 rooms, six self-catering cottages, and a 15-bed backpackers, meaning it can house roughly the town’s population several times over.
A miraculous wartime Christmas party
Britz, a former teacher, launched and continues to host an annual festival called Boer and Brit Day in late March or early April.
The event commemorates the town’s history and role in the Second Anglo-Boer War with a parade, wreath-laying ceremony, and a re-enactment of an historic event from December 1900.
Dubbed the Whisky Train Incident, it involved a group of Boer guerrilla fighters under Commandant Fanie Buys who detonated explosives on the track to derail a carriage with Christmas supplies.
According to local lore, the spoils of the incident — tins of pudding, fish, vegetables, meat, and boxes of liquor — were too delectable for soldiers on both sides to think of fighting.
The town has also become a popular stopover for bikers visiting from nearby towns and cities at the weekends.
Britz said one of the hamlet’s best features was safety, with children able to play around carefree, apart from having to stay away from the railway.
She elaborated on this in an interview with South African freelance journalist and tourist guide Iga Motylska, who visited the town in 2015.
Britz explained the regional police station had 28 officers, which meant each of the hamlet’s 12 residents at that time had more than two “bodyguards” to protect them.
Fast mobile Internet available
The police station’s need for connectivity could have been a contributing factor to Val having fixed-LTE coverage.
MyBroadband was curious to learn about the type of Internet connectivity someone can expect to find in a hamlet like Val.
We initially struggled to find the location on several Internet service providers’ maps using only the “Val” name, or even “Val Hotel” or “SAPS Val Station.”
Some ISPs even mistook the location we were seeking for the upmarket Val de Vie Winelands Estate in Paarl.
When we finally managed to get a provider’s coverage map pointed at the right location, we were not surprised to find there was no fibre-to-the-home connectivity or 5G in the hamlet.
Although the eight permanent residents of Val might not have the fastest or lowest-latency broadband connectivity, they can get an uncapped fixed-wireless package at a reasonable price.
MTN offered 4G coverage in the area, including support for its uncapped Home Internet products, which it sells directly and through several third-party ISPs.
At MTN, these packages start from R339 per month for a 15Mbps connection with a 100GB fair usage policy.
The fastest product — Home Internet Infinite — offers up to 75 Mbps for the first 1.5TB of consumption for R1,199 per month.
Photos of Val in Mpumalanga
Loading ...