Orania
Orania is a white separatist South African town founded by Afrikaners. It is located along the Orange River in the Karoo region of the Northern Cape province. The town is situated on the R369 highway, and is from Cape Town and approximately from Pretoria. Its climate is arid.
The town was founded with the goal of creating a white ethnostate for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture through the creation of an Afrikaner state known as a Volkstaat. The town is generally described by outside observers and scholars as "Whites-only" and as an attempt to revive apartheid, although the community denies this. Living in the town requires application, and acceptance is dependent upon being Afrikaner, demonstrating fluency in Afrikaans, a clean criminal record, and sharing the community's values and goals. Afrikaner Calvinism is an important aspect of local culture. While the South African government has stated that it is opposed to the idea of a Whites-only community, it has generally ignored the town.
The town's economy is focused on self-sufficiency and is largely based on agriculture, notably of pecan nuts. Orania prints its own money-like coupons which can be used to purchase in its stores and maintains the last transitional representative council in South Africa. The town has pursued energy independence primarily through solar power, constructed its own sewage works, and has experimented with introducing its own cryptocurrency as a replacement for cash.
Two South African presidents have visited the town. Nelson Mandela visited in 1995, and Jacob Zuma in 2010. The town has also received visits from tribal leaders from the Xhosa and Tswana people.
The town has grown at an annual rate that was estimated at 10% in 2019 — faster than any other town in South Africa. The population increased by 55% to 2,500 from 2018 to mid-2022, and to 2,800 in July 2023. In 2023, the town council announced plans for the population to grow to 10,000 as soon as possible.
Ideology and purpose
The stated goal of Orania's founders was the preservation of Afrikaner cultural heritage, and selfwerksaamheid. All jobs, from management to manual labour, are done by Afrikaners; non-Afrikaner people are not allowed to live or work there. The town's monoculturalism and monoethnic philosophy rejects the concept of baasskap, where the White minority exploited Black labour for economic gain, in favour of a model of strict Afrikaner self-sufficiency.Critics accuse the town authorities of rejecting the Rainbow Nation concept and trying to recreate apartheid-era South Africa within a White ethnostate.
Residents argue that they wish to preserve their own Afrikaner cultural heritage and protect themselves from crime in South Africa. They also reject the "White" label as meaningless.
History
Early history of the area
The Orania region has been inhabited since about 30,000 years ago when Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived a nomadic lifestyle there. A number of late Stone Age engravings indicate the presence of the San people, who remained the main cultural group until the second half of the 1700s, with the arrival of European hunters, trekkers and the Griqua people. The earliest indication of the presence of Afrikaner people in Orania dates to 1762; in the early 19th century, many farmers moved seasonally back and forth across the Orange River in search of better grazing. An 1842 Rawstone map shows the Vluytjeskraal farm, on which Orania would later be built. The first known inhabitant of what is today Orania was Stephanus Ockert Vermeulen, who purchased the farm in 1882.Etymology
The Department of Water Affairs established the town as Vluytjeskraal in 1963 to house the workers who were building the irrigation canals connected to the Vanderkloof Dam. It was part of a bigger scheme to bring water to the semi-desert central parts of South Africa. Other comparable construction towns like Vanderkloof and Oviston were also established.The Department of Water Affairs changed the name to Orania, a variation of the Afrikaans word oranje, referring to the adjoining river, after it was chosen in a competition. By 1965, it was home to 56 families. Coloured workers who participated in the construction project lived in a separate area named Grootgewaagd. The first phase of the irrigation project was completed in 1976. After the dam was completed, most of the workers moved away, and the town fell into disrepair during the 1980s. Grootgewaagd became home to a mixture of coloured and black families who squatted on the abandoned land. The Department of Water Affairs completely abandoned Orania in 1989.
Origins of modern Orania
The idea that Afrikaners should concentrate in a limited region of South Africa was first circulated by the South African Bureau for Racial Affairs in 1966. By the 1970s, SABRA advocated the idea of transforming South Africa into a commonwealth, where different population groups would develop parallel to each other. At the time, mainstream Afrikaners supported the bantustan policy, which allocated for the 15 million black Africans living in South Africa at the time.In 1981, Hendrik Verwoerd Jr advocated for Afrikaner homeland in an underpopulated area of the country. He believed that such a mini-state would run on computers and nuclear energy. To support his concept, he established the Society of Orange Workers, with hopes of creating its first development. The organisation attracted 325 members.
May 1984 saw the establishment of the Afrikaner Volkswag, an organisation founded by Carel Boshoff, a right-wing academic and the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd. The goal of the Afrikaner Volkswag was to put the ideas of the SABRA into practice. Boshoff regarded contemporary plans of the National Party government to retain control through limited reforms as doomed to fail. Believing that black-majority rule could not be avoided, he supported the creation of a separate, smaller state for the Afrikaner nation instead.
In 1988, Boshoff founded the Afrikaner-Vryheidstigting or Avstig. The founding principles of the Avstig were based on the belief that since black majority rule was unavoidable, and European minority rule morally unjustifiable, Afrikaners would have to form their own nation, or Volkstaat, in a smaller part of South Africa. Orania was intended to be the basis of the Volkstaat, which would come into existence once a large number of Afrikaners moved to Orania and other such 'growth points', and would eventually include the towns of Prieska, Britstown, Carnarvon, Williston and Calvinia, reaching the west coast.
File:Volkstaat–VF.svg|thumb|Volkstaat model pursued by Avstig and Freedom Front
On 23 April 1994, the Freedom Front, the African National Congress and the National Party signed the Accord on Afrikaner self-determination. This led to article 235 of Constitution of South Africa, which guarantees the right of self-determination for cultural groups.
Boshoff's plans excluded the area of traditional Boer republics in the Transvaal and the Free State, which encompass the economic heartland of South Africa and much of its natural resources, instead focusing on an economically underdeveloped and semi-desert area in the north-western Cape. This desert state, Orandeë, because of its very inhospitableness would not be feared or coveted by the South African government.
Proponents of the idea conceded that this model would demand significant economic sacrifices from Afrikaners who moved to the Volkstaat. The model is based on the principle of 'own labour', requiring that all work in the Volkstaat be performed by its citizens, including ploughing fields, collecting garbage and tending gardens, which is traditionally performed by blacks in the rest of South Africa.
The town was originally part of a strategy to create an Afrikaner majority in the northwestern Cape by encouraging the construction of other such towns, with the eventual goal of an Afrikaner majority in the area and an independent Afrikaner ethnostate between Orania and the West Coast. Boshoff had originally envisaged a population of 60,000 after 15 years. While he conceded that most Afrikaners might decide not to move to the Volkstaat, he thought that it was essential Afrikaners have this option, since it would make them feel more secure, thereby reducing tensions in the rest of South Africa.
Establishment and recognition
In December 1990, about 40 Afrikaner families headed by Carel Boshoff bought the dilapidated town of Orania for around R1.5 million, on behalf of Orania Bestuursdienste from the Department of Water Affairs. In the lead-up to the move-in, some 500 black and colored people still lived in Orania. These 64 families were evicted by the Department of Water Affairs in early 1991, in one of the last largescale forced removals of Apartheid. The families were provided newly built homes, but were taken more than away to Warrenton, Northern Cape. Grootgewaagd village was renamed Kleingeluk. In April 1991, the first 13 inhabitants moved into Orania. At that time, the town consisted of 90 houses in Orania and 60 in Kleingeluk, all in serious disrepair. In August 1991, the farm Vluytjeskraal 272 was added to Orania. The National Party government led by F. W. de Klerk opposed the creation of an Afrikaner state, and the existence of Orania, but it took no action, believing it would fail on its own.The town council was established in February 1992. A journalist for the Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant, visiting in 1993, noted that houses had been repaired, but the town lacked any meaningful economic activity. There were few jobs available, and no money for further development. The town relied on neighboring farms for food. Orania elected its own transitional representative council, a temporary form of local government created after the end of apartheid, in 1995. Construction on an irrigation scheme to cover a area began in 1995 and was completed in October 1996.
In a conciliatory gesture, President Nelson Mandela visited the town in 1995 to have tea with Betsie Verwoerd, widow of former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Mandela was asked about reports that he had to get permission from the town authorities to enter Orania and replied: "I didn't have to ask for permission. I came in. I was not given any pass. It's not something that worries me. They are entitled to run their settlement as they like."
Orania grew to 200 permanent inhabitants in 1996. By 1998 R15 million had been invested in the town for expenses including the upgrading of water and electricity supply, roads and businesses.
On 5 June 1998, Valli Moosa, then Minister of Constitutional Development in the African National Congress government, stated in a parliamentary budget debate that "the ideal of some Afrikaners to develop the North Western Cape as a home for the Afrikaner culture and language within the framework of the Constitution and the Charter of Human Rights is viewed by the government as a legitimate ideal".
On 14 September 2010, the president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, visited Orania. He said that he was "warmly welcomed", that Orania had "interesting ideas", and, "the Oraniers were prepared to live in South Africa, but wanted a place to exercise their culture". In May 2023, Gayton McKenzie, leader of the Patriotic Alliance party, visited the town.