Clarens

The sandstone country around Clarens was long used by San hunter-gatherers, whose paintings survive in shelters in the cliffs of the surrounding hills and in the national park nearby, and later by Basotho communities farming and herding in the foothills of the Malutis. The Caledon, or Mohokare, valley to the south became the frontier between the Basotho kingdom of Moshoeshoe and the Orange Free State republic, and the wars of 1858 to 1868 transferred much of the fertile land west of the river to the republic, opening the district to Boer farms.

The village itself is young. It was laid out in 1912 on two farms and named after Clarens in Switzerland, the lakeside town where Paul Kruger, president of the South African Republic, died in exile in 1904. For its first decades it was an ordinary service centre for maize, wheat and sheep farmers, with a church, a few stores and the sandstone buildings that give the place its character. The surrounding highlands were declared a national park at Golden Gate in 1963, and during the apartheid era the small Basotho homeland of QwaQwa lay immediately to the east, its land later incorporated into the park.

Clarens changed in the last quarter of the twentieth century, when artists moved in and the village's setting, cheap sandstone houses and clear light made it a weekend destination for Gauteng, three and a half hours away. Galleries, guest houses, restaurants and small breweries followed, and tourism overtook farming as the main business. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project, completed in stages from the 1990s, added another presence nearby: water tunnelled from Lesotho emerges at an outfall on the Ash River near the village and flows on towards the Vaal.

For a village of its size Clarens has an unusual concentration of artists, and the galleries around the square — landscape painting, sculpture, ceramics, beadwork and craft — are the reason many people come. The sandstone architecture, the poplars and the mountain backdrop have been painted and photographed so often that the village has a settled visual identity, and the local art economy supports framers, potters and craft workshops alongside the galleries.

The wider district is Sesotho-speaking, and Basotho culture is strong on both sides of the nearby border: the patterned woollen blanket worn as a cloak against the highland cold, the conical mokorotlo hat, horses as everyday transport in the mountains, and choral and traditional music at gatherings. Afrikaans farming culture runs alongside it, with Dutch Reformed churches, agricultural shows and rugby, and the two meet in the village's shops and workplaces.

Weekends set the social calendar. From Friday the village fills with visitors from Johannesburg and Pretoria, the pubs and restaurants around the square are busy, and craft beer, mountain biking, trail running, horse riding and white-water paddling on the mountain rivers are the activities on offer; by Monday it is quiet again. Autumn colour and the first snow on the Malutis are local events in themselves, and residents are used to being asked for directions to the park.

Only a few thousand people live in Clarens and its township of Kgubetswana, which holds most of the population, within the Dihlabeng municipality centred on Bethlehem. The village proper is small and low-built, its streets laid out on the valley floor, and the difference between the guesthouse streets and the township is the same inequality visible across the country, at village scale.

Tourism is the main employer — guesthouses, restaurants, galleries, guiding and building work on the steady stream of new cottages — with farming the other mainstay: maize, wheat, sunflowers, sheep and cattle, and cherries and asparagus in the district to the south. Many households depend on seasonal and weekend work, wages are low, and people commute to Bethlehem or further for jobs, schooling and hospital care. Property prices in the village have risen sharply with its popularity, which pushes newer housing to the edges.

The rhythm is weekly rather than daily: a quiet Monday-to-Thursday of deliveries, building and farm business, then a busy weekend. Water supply, electricity interruptions, road maintenance and municipal finances are the recurring complaints, and winter brings burst pipes and frozen mornings. The proximity of Lesotho shapes daily life too, with cross-border trade, labour and family ties running through the district.

Clarens eats like the Free State platteland with a weekend-visitor overlay. The braai is the centre of home cooking — boerewors, the coiled spiced sausage, lamb chops from the highland farms, and steak over coals — while restaurants around the square serve grills, burgers, pizza and trout, with farmed venison such as springbok and kudu on many menus. Potjiekos, meat and vegetables layered in a three-legged iron pot over a fire, suits the cold months, as does oxtail stew.

Sesotho cooking is the everyday food of the district: pap, the stiff maize porridge, eaten with a meat or vegetable stew and with moroho, cooked greens; motoho, a fermented sorghum porridge drunk at breakfast; and seswaa-style boiled and shredded meat at celebrations. Vetkoek, fried dough filled with mince, and grilled maize cobs are sold from stalls and roadside braziers.

The area's produce shapes the sweet side. Cherries from the Ficksburg orchards appear as fruit, jam and liqueur in season, asparagus comes from the same district in spring, and farm shops sell cheeses, preserves and wood-oven bread. Afrikaans baking is everywhere — koeksisters, syrup-soaked and plaited, milk tart, and malva pudding — and the village is known for small-batch beer brewed locally, drunk alongside Cape wine and rooibos tea.