Twenty-five years after apartheid, black people cannot live and work in this small South African city
October in Orania can be charming. When the sun sets, long ribbons of burnt orange settle on the horizon. The flies and mosquitoes that come with the summer’s oppressive heat haven’t arrived yet. It is Magdalene Kleynhans’ favourite time of year. “You can sit outside until late into the night,” says the businesswoman, whose family spends much of their time outdoors. Her children fish from the banks of the Orange River whenever they choose. Kleynhans leaves the house unlocked. “It’s a good life. It’s a big privilege.”
But there is much more to this small Northern Cape town than the bucolic ideal painted by Kleynhans. Incredibly, 25 years after the fall of apartheid, Orania is a place for white people only.
(The horror! — ed.)
Kleynhans runs one of Orania’s biggest enterprises: a call centre whose business is recruiting and retaining members for Solidariteit, a trade union primarily for Afrikaner workers, and Afriforum, a self-styled “civil rights” movement. Afriforum recently met with US president Donald Trump’s administration and Tucker Carlson of Fox Nows to tell them that Afrikaners are facing a widely discredited genocide. Both have made extensive investments in Orania’s construction boom.
Oranians claim the town is a cultural project, not a racial one. Only Afrikaners are allowed to live and work there to preserve Afrikaner culture, the argument goes.
The reality, however, is a disquieting and entirely white town, littered with old apartheid flags and monuments to the architects of segregation. While there are no rules preventing black people from visiting, those who live nearby fear they would be met with violence.
The town has faced numerous calls for it to be broken up over the years, with prominent author and advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi arguing its existence violates South Africa’s successful dismantling of racial segregation.
“Orania,” he says, “represents downright hostility to the idea of a single, united, non-racial country.”
(Translation: Orania represents the Boers’ downright hostility to the idea of being dispossessed of land and slaughtered in their beds by primitive, low impulse control beasts who are incapable of creating Wakanda. –ed.)
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