Beating Chains

‘Few would’ve survived Rusty’s ordeal – an incredible story of hope and resilience’ - Stephen McGown, author of Six Years a Hostage Rusty Labuschagne has been through a trauma few have experienced and disclosed. In 2003, the successful Zimbabwean businessman, who ran a safari outfit, flew his own aircraft and had a fishing resort on Lake Kariba, was framed by a poacher, the police, and the courts and wrongfully convicted of drowning a poacher. He served ten years in Zimbabwe’s prisons, including the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, where he suffered through food shortages, no running water, and people dying around him daily. Rusty lost everything he had worked so hard for, but most of all, his freedom. His story is a testament to his extraordinary resilience in conditions most would find unbearable. He shares the life lessons he learned – how to harness your inner strength, how to forgive, and how to show gratitude – as he found true freedom through sincerity and humility. Rusty’s is an inspiring story of true grit in the face of great adversity, of a man who loses everything as he is broken by a corrupt political system, but who then rises to fight that system on his own terms. In doing so he rebuilds himself from the inside out.