Valley of Roses

Rosendal Free State South Africa, August 6th 2011

Rosendal—Rose Valley—in the eastern Free State is reached by a dirt road from over a mountain pass and when you descend down into the valley and arrive at this small but very pleasant farming town cum arts colony with its simple early 20th century cottages and well laid out streets, surrounded by hills, you know that you have arrived at a special spot.

Obscure towns that are made popular by creative types are a phenomenon world wide. The basic story is that an attractive if over looked place is discovered by outside talent or starving artists who bring with them some big city vibe or inventiveness. A few antique shops or galleries, a decent restaurant and a boutique hotel are the basic ingredients. Some grow into international destinations in their own right; San Miguel de Allende, an historic Spanish colonial town in the highlands of central Mexico is one such place, having been a destination for American artists and every restless or hedonistic soul from Ernest Hemingway to Jim Morrison for decades. Now, of course, it is a major cosmopolitan centre with links to money and celebrity from Paris to Los Angeles and with eye popping real estate prices to match. Williamsburg Virginia, Carcassonne Provence, Niagara-on-the-Lake Ontario, Santa Fé New Mexico, have all been down this route, starting from relatively humble origins as sleepy out of the way provincial towns before becoming lifestyle destinations.

By this late stage such places are victims of their own success—becoming all that their original residents wished to escape in big city comforts, commercial development and character. But for every ruined over done resort—the nearby town of Clarens even here in the Free State comes to mind—there are dozens of smaller places that are scratching along with more humble comforts and ambitions, undestined for fame and riches, staying true to their original surroundings.

Rosendal sits comfortably at the early stages of the story as an emerging arts colony. There are only a few hundred residents and probably a few dozen artists, artisans and outsiders who are relatively recent arrivals and small business owners. There is a (magnificent) antique store, a pleasant B&B, a good hotel and a cafe-restaurant. Although claims to comfort are modest, they are more than pleasant. And, perhaps most importantly, a visitor to Rosendal does not forget that they are in a village in the eastern Free State, surrounded by mountains, farms and the unavoidable sense of history and all that entails in this difficult country.

Arriving near dusk, there is a wedding going on and every room in town is booked up. But a kindly local is quick to help out and in minutes I have a bed in the house of a local artist, away for the weekend, and a booking for the town’s once a month dinner theatre, located in an inimitable junk emporium. Afterword there will be a barn dance down the street.

For this visitor, coming from an isolated Free State farm an hour away where a decent restaurant is an unknown pleasure, this small outpost of cosmopolitanism is balm to the soul and a feast for the eye. The dinner theatre, in a drafty tumble down junk store, is a find in itself, it’s proprietor a well known Afrikaans language actor and, probably, the town’s only openly gay man. I have to hand it to him for the sheer audacity of bringing theatre to this corner of the Free State as well as the chutzpah to pull off this improbable evening, which he does with charm and good manners. The theatre, in a simple room with rusty tin walls and roof, ends up being a concert by a lounge singer of some renown in this country, kind of a South African Diana Krall or Eleni Mandell. It is, quite literally, as though a source of light has been conjured from this improbable location.

The real trick of any art colony cum destination town is to not lose touch with their soul, even the dark underside and rough edges of who they are and where they came from. Even San Miguel de Allende Mexico, now the haunt of billionaires and movie stars, still has at least one spot immune to change or gentrification—La Cucaracha (the cockroach) Bar. A dirty place with its own unique claims to charm, at night it attracts poor Mexican labourers, thieves, Manhattan money, Hollywood stars and the curious or eccentric. William S. Burroughs drank there in the 1940s as did as did Neal Cassady, the Sal Paradise character of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, who lived—and died—there in the 1960s. Such places are a town’s spiritual ballast, a place where all will mix.

Down the street from Rosendal’s dinner theatre a barn dance is going on. It is Boer dancing, together with the matching folk music that is a mainstay of rural entertainment in this country. A live band is set up at the front of the room flanked, for effect, by bales of hay. There are a few weekenders and out of towners from Johannesburg here, but otherwise this is a very local scene.

White South Africans are often physically big people, as are the three young men, all farmers, standing at the bar. One is a particularly large man, 6 foot 6’ and at least 275 lbs; that I’m not local is obvious and he wants to know who I am and what I’m doing here. When he finds out I’m a foreign journalist he can’t seem to figure out whether he wants to beat the shit out of me or buy me a drink. But first he wants to know what I think of Julius Malema.

Ahh Julius Malema, the rabble rousing radical politician and anti-white race baiter, he really is the man of the hour and you can’t escape him these days. I offer that he’s a trouble maker and a dangerous man but a clever manipulator. Almost before I can finish the man in front of me explodes:

He’s not clever! He’s a kaffir!

This is the old South Africa. But it is Saturday night and the local boys are out on the town, saying—I hope—things they may not when stone cold sober. Otherwise this is not the time for a nuanced political discussion with this man the size of a house and who is on the verge of taking out his anger and frustration on the nearest foreign liberal.

I would take care of him if he were here right now!

He is seething at this point as though Malema were here in the room. But when he’s composed himself again he leans over the bar, orders two shots of Klipdrift brandy hands me one and knocks back the other. Next, he says, I must dance—with his sister; a fetching blond in her early 20s.

Boer dancing is basically a local version of the Texas two step and the band is playing Afrikaans folk tunes and covers of American country and western songs. The rhythm is easy and pleasant to follow and the atmosphere here at this event is friendly and relaxed.

I did not get blixened—beaten up—at the barn dance. But just as important I am grateful that Rosendal has not lost sight of who and where it is.