stop, isolated by the Witteberg mountains to the east and being in an thinly populated area, Rosendal did not fulfil the early promise of becoming a city or large town. Today this accounts for its unique low density character. Visitors will notice a grid pattern of streets with a small number of homes spread out with great distance between them, creating the sensation of being in open countryside even when in the middle of town. From the late 1970s Rosendal entered a period of decline with businesses and services closing and population falling. The closure of the local Afrikaans language school in 1982 had a particularly strong effect on the town's vitality; Rosendal began to acquire some of the character of a "ghost town" with many abandoned or disused homes. This began to reverse from the late 1990s when a small group of writers, artists and adventurers began to call it home. Today there are roughly 100 people living full-time in what is the historic town area as well as weekend or recreational home owners from Johannesburg, Bloemfontein and internationally. For a place of its size it is diverse and cosmopolitan with residents who have professional careers nationally and abroad. It remains a small Free State farming town in character in which cattle are herded through the streets by cowboys and wild or untethered horses roam the town. It is also a place of farmers, farm workers, artists and weekenders in which arts festivals and music concerts are held. Apartheid era geography is apparent and Rosendal village is physically separated from Mautse, the former township, which is a vibrant community today of 7000 people. Mautse may have had its origins in apartheid planning as the residence of domestic and other workers, some of whom were uprooted from homes in or on the outskirts of Rosendal itself. Some residents of Mautse came from Lesotho in search of a better life, but most came as a result of the Land Reform Act at the end of Apartheid, when – with intent to counteract slave labour – government brought in minimum wage, which meant white farm owners who once fed and sheltered black labourers to work their fields, could no longer do so. Historic Mautse, most of which is made up of brick homes and RDP houses, is situated alongside new and growing sections of the settlement, the largest of which is Matatie