Orania - let's pack our bags and head there!

Reading that Liberal rag, the 'i' today (hey- its cheap - 30p - and one ZOG paper is as bad as another), I came across this most splendiferous statement :-

"There is no litter in Orania, no serious crime. There also no Black people there."

Now this definitely got my interest. I have heard of Orania for some time, but have never really looked into it. All White enclave ideas seem to come and go as quick as Nick Griffin's 'Donation letters'. There was the Aryan Nations which lasted for a time until ZOG shut it down, I think over tax reasons. There is the repeated call from Harold Covington to all move to the North-West of America and establish an all Aryan community. There was  even a call to get us all to set up in Essex. Perish the thought - this is Yorkshire Comrades!

Anyway here are some facts and figures about Orania - the one scheme, founded in 1991 and which is growing in size, that might be a way forward, albeit in South Africa, which has the space.

Carel Boshoff with the bronze busts of Paul Kruger, JBM Herzog, DF Malan, JG Strydom and Hendrik Verwoerd, five leaders of South Africa, which are proudly displayed in Orania

Walk into a shop or restaurant in Orania or stroll along its quiet lanes, and you will be greeted only by white faces. There are a few black and brown faces but they belong to people making deliveries. That is how the people here – almost 100 per cent Afrikaner – like it. To own or rent a home in the town you must be accepted by the community, which runs it as a company and has the power to deny entry to those who do not share its love of the Afrikaner language and ''culture’’. A lot of black South Africans speak Afrikaans but that is not the ''point’’.
“There is a difference between an Afrikaans speaker and an Afrikaner,” says Jaco Kleynhans, Orania’s public relations man. “We are not talking about race here – we want to associate with certain cultural traditions.”
Those ''cultural traditions’’ include celebrating people like Kruger and great days in the Afrikaner calendar, like December 16. On Monday, the day after Mandela’s funeral in his home village of Qunu, Afrikaners will celebrate what is now known as the Day of Reconciliation. Before black majority rule it was known by another name, Day of the Vow, and commemorated the Battle of Blood River, the victory in 1838 of 470 Afrikaners – Voortrekker colonists – over an army of up to 15,000 Zulu warriors.
“The 16th of December is very important to us, one of our most important festivals, when people wear traditional clothing,” says Kleynhans. Not an occasion for celebration if you are a Zulu, or indeed a black person of any tribe. For culture, read skin colour. It’s just that, this being post-apartheid South Africa, Oranians can’t quite put it that way. 

Walk into a shop or restaurant in Orania or stroll along its quiet lanes, and you will be greeted only by white faces. There are a few black and brown faces but they belong to people making deliveries. That is how the people here – almost 100 per cent Afrikaner – like it. To own or rent a home in the town you must be accepted by the community, which runs it as a company and has the power to deny entry to those who do not share its love of the Afrikaner language and ''culture’’. A lot of black South Africans speak Afrikaans but that is not the ''point’’.

“There is a difference between an Afrikaans speaker and an Afrikaner,” says Jaco Kleynhans, Orania’s public relations man. “We are not talking about race here – we want to associate with certain cultural traditions.”

Those ''cultural traditions’’ include celebrating people like Kruger and great days in the Afrikaner calendar, like December 16. On Monday, the day after Mandela’s funeral in his home village of Qunu, Afrikaners will celebrate what is now known as the Day of Reconciliation. Before black majority rule it was known by another name, Day of the Vow, and commemorated the Battle of Blood River, the victory in 1838 of 470 Afrikaners – Voortrekker colonists – over an army of up to 15,000 Zulu warriors.

“The 16th of December is very important to us, one of our most important festivals, when people wear traditional clothing,” says Kleynhans. Not an occasion for celebration if you are a Zulu, or indeed a black person of any tribe. For culture, read skin colour. It’s just that, this being post-apartheid South Africa, Oranians can’t quite put it that way.

Much has been made in recent days of Mandela’s political genius in steering South Africa bloodlessly towards majority rule in 1994. The “Rainbow Nation” is lauded as an example to all of how mutual tolerance can conquer ethnic antagonism. But that rosy picture requires qualification. When a crowd of 60,000 people gathered in Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium to celebrate the life of Mandela, joined by some 60 heads of state, there were few Whites indeed cheering with them!

In the end, the event, a public relations disaster for Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, booed by his own people in front of world VIPs and media, resembled more a political rally than a coming together of a people. The rainbow that day was green, gold and black, the colours of the African National Congress, which has enjoyed uninterrupted rule since 1994. What kept the Whites away is open to debate but fear is part of it. Talk to Afrikaners and Anglo-South Africans about the future and the word “fear” is rarely absent.

Orania is an answer to that fear, born in the dying years of apartheid. The main options then were simple: stay and hope for the best or emigrate. Some 750,000 Whites chose the second option, moving mainly to English-speaking countries. But there was a third course, a kind of internal exile aimed ultimately at the creation of a federated or independent Afrikaner homeland. This radical solution was the brainchild of Carel Boshoff, an Afrikaner intellectual and son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister from 1958 until his assassination in 1966. Verwoerd, an American-trained sociologist, was the man who conceived apartheid.

Orania was the result. Situated halfway along one of the main roads linking Johannesburg and Cape Town, it lies in a sparsely populated area, where huge skies meet a horizon punctuated by escarpments and triangular kopjes. It is an arid place, chosen by Boshoff to be unattractive to all but those sufficiently desperate to come here – frightened Afrikaner whites.

“It is argued that Verwoerd constructed two huge dams on the Orange River and irrigation canals because he knew what was coming and saw this as a future homeland for Afrikaners,” says Boshoff’s son, also a Carel. “Why here, in this place? Well, where else does a previously advantaged small minority go? Where other people don’t want to follow.

Orania has it's own website which you can find HERE