Rustler’s Valley (part I): The Rumour

When I was growing up as a kid near Ficksburg in the Eastern Free State, Rustler’s Valley was what its name suggests: a hold out for the lawless; a safe haven from polite society. The local community was scandalised by stories of what transpired behind those there mountains: music concerts, hippies from Jo’burg, dagga (marijuana) … 

Anyone who has lived in or near a conservative, rural town will be aware of the tales that become possible from a single anecdote or observation. The occasional person who drifted into town from Rustlers and/or rumour which blew in across the veld provided a rich source of speculation for the community. (Of course, humanity does this well no matter the place of abode, and was doing so long before the so-called “post-truth” age linked by some to last year’s American election). Perhaps it is the absence of the relative cover and anonymity afforded by a city that leaves the life of inhabitant and stranger open to inspection and pronouncement in a small dorp.

Decades went by and the change that had been resisted for so long in the country came to pass. White rule – political rule anyway – was swept away. Mandela became president and the sun still came up the next day. Mbeki followed. And then in 2007, a fire swept through Rustler’s, ending an era. I daresay many of the old timers nodded their heads and whispered knowingly to each other. 

The first I heard of the place again, in the so-called new South Africa (and the new century), was in 2014 when one Gino Govender made contact and came to collect a copy of The Agri Handbook. He, Kumi Naidoo and Jay Naidoo were starting an agricultural enterprise at Rustler’s Valley in the Eastern Free State. I was familiar with those names. I had come across Kumi Naidoo several times whilst reading up for previous editions of the agricultural publication. An international environmental activist group like Greenpeace, of which he was executive director, has certain areas of common interest with agriculture – water and energy, for starters, and how the growing of food impacts on the environment. And anyone who lived through the cauldron of the years before the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 knew of Jay Naidoo, General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). And at Rustler’s. Fancy that! It’s a small world, I thought.  

I paid it no more mind until a colleague, Mike Stuart, brought news of developments at Rustler’s Valley in the Free State. Did I know about it?

And so it came to pass on a morning in May 2017 that we met Gino Govender at the Sandwich Baron in Kensington to hear about their work and the developments at Rustler’s.