There’s a girl in the tourist office dressed in a tight pink frilly uniform. She’s 21 years old and having a busy day in Orania. Her father John is one of the town’s official tour guides and he’s set to show us the pecan-shelling factory, the bottle store, The Koeksister Monument, Orania’s private radio station and the flag that graced Hendrik Verwoerd’s coffin. But primarily he’s going to reveal the 700 Afrikaners — no fences, no security — who are here to be racist in peace. They want to be left alone, unless there’s a chance of you buying a koeksister.
To generate revenue the folk here are willing to endure a few hours of interrogation. The privately owned patch of irrigated desert turned Afrikaans volkstaat — the sprinkler systems cluck with pride — has grown by only 100 people since its inception 19 years ago and as a last suffocating attempt for survival is morphing into a zoo. Would you like wors with that pap? Another Klippies? Perhaps an Orania-branded hat from the gift shop? A night in a guest house? Founder Carel Boshoff anticipated a huge investment from the staunch Afrikaner rich for his bio-dome of apartheid, but this never transpired. So, like the kid who’s relentlessly teased, the people of Orania believe if they let you come and play with their toys then you’ll grow to like them. These tours are ostensibly borne from Afrikaner pride — to boast a shoddy town built entirely by white hands — but it’s a chance to gawk or experiment around open racists. A sort of ideological fetish club. And they are fully aware of the mocking, but when you’re a town the size of a high school and the residents live in prefabs, like the ones that cooked you during maths, what choice do you have? Orania, that last blemish of the old South Africa, is on its arse and we’re the only ones who can save it.
Better than working
The insignia of Orania is a boy getting down to work by rolling up his sleeves. He’s on T-shirts, mosaics and buildings, always looking suspiciously like he’s tugging on a belt with his teeth to shoot up crack. He embodies White Pride and White Trash like the old/young woman perceptual illusion. Geoff, a retired riot policeman, is eager to speak. “Everyone in this town is a racist. If they don’t admit it they’re stupid,” he says refreshingly, but then hamstrings himself with “But there’s nothing wrong with racism” and proceeds to sketch out the evils of Nelson Mandela. No one here lowers their voices during racial slurs, like they do in neighbouring towns. Geoff tells a curious story of how black cops accept bribes and whites don’t — he knows this because last time he “was in a hurry” he slipped the cop R100 in the folds of his ID. After much badgering he said he’d never tried it on a white cop.
Geoff is only subdued by the barman cranking up the Kylie Minogue — he’s embarrassed by this “old timer”. The barman indignantly claims that none of them are racists. He scorns the reputation and how he has to use a different email address so people “out there” will do business with him. But surely he’s oozing racial epithets out of his pores by living here, no matter what he says? Though most of what he says is friendly. He says you’ll only miss a job as a white person if you’re incompetent, not because of affirmative action. I spill a rum and coke and he pours me another free of charge.
I get a tinge of the Oranian work ethic when sticky Coca-Cola streaks down the bar. I thought of how they are going to make a big deal of the mess because there is no staff. I’m used to spilling drinks and dead-eyed poor workers coming out and mopping it up. But here the man’s wife says “it is okay, no really it’s okay”. Marvel at how these Afrikaners clean their own toilets! This, incidentally, is a conversation we have repeatedly: housework and its new-found burden since relocating here. My friend is writing an article on Orania for an English website. He can’t harp on about how there are white people here cutting grass. It’s not a photo opportunity in Britain to snap a white person holding a spade. For Afrikaners — hell, most of white South Africa — it’s a shock. You can eat pap and wors for breakfast here, but because there’s no cheap labour it’s almost lunchtime before the food arrives. The town is resolving this by recruiting their own exploited — exclusively white — work force. On the outskirts is an outreach-turned-recruitment centre. This is where they scoop up the drifters and gibbering whites of the Northern Cape. They charge a hefty R450 a month to stay in a reformed barracks — a room twice the size of a single bed. There’s a zero tolerance on alcohol, but you can settle your outstanding payments with services to the town. A frazzled old woman runs the car wash — her record for a day is nine cars, spraying manually — and she seems very content.
Tell us another one
If the apartheid museum is to damn the old ideology, Orania is a karmic companion to how pathetic life can be if it continues. In the bar a cute blonde five-year-old, who can barely see over the table, is hustling a young teen girl who doesn’t resist a feel up from the man who looks like he’s an artistic impression of a great trek soldier without his musket. The women are out-numbered here: they’re no good at manual labour. Geoff and the soldier — blonde, deeply tanned, almond face — ask us to guess their ages. It’s as if to say life is easy here: they don’t age. Geoff is seventy — which we guess correctly. The almond-faced man is 23 but looks closer to thirty.
We drive around the town and scrounge for racist jokes to tell each other. Kick back and get all that racism off your bare chest. I’m going to get a seatbelt tan. We didn’t act racist with the residents. We tersely disapproved of their stories and slurs, but now we attempt to mock their racism cowardly by telling ironic jokes to each other in the privacy of the car.
It’s a nervous experience having your level of racism tested. If you fall in love with the frilly girl in the Orania tourism office what then? People like to be binary: “You’re a racist and I’m not a racist”. It’s an appeal for visiting Orania that after a visit you’re going to come out squeaky clean by comparison. We can all name a family member or friend who could live here, though wouldn’t admit it. A fight breaks out between the three of us in the car over whom we know that’s reprehensible. Varsity friends, girlfriends: didn’t she say something one time? It’s not a desirable reputation to have and that’s what’s perplexing about Orania is they have publicly declared their prejudice, but they aren’t happy or whooping. A valve hasn’t relaxed from finally admitting their scorn and prejudice. Mostly they are exhausting and sad. It’s not the manual labour which is tiring them, but having to keep their defences up.
It’s not a zoo of fascist harmony, but glum, castrated folk accustomed to city, or at least suburban, life. Mostly from Pretoria, they’ve had the agency to pack up, move and are now forced to pretend like they were raised in a dorpie. Stuffed bigotry exhibits with fake smiles and there is no turning back. Look at all the “Te Koop” signs. There are no clothes shops, nurseries or electronic stores; only shops selling car spares, bars and a ridiculous number of churches. To be accepted here you need to be white, Afrikaans and Christian, but what type of Christian is debatable. For 700 people there are seven churches. That’s what becomes apparent: these people are fragmented.
One family we visit has been in The Netherlands for nine years. They’ve recently returned and cheerfully hand out roosterbrood for us to cook over the fire. The father is here to build eco-houses. This is in the same town where there’s a Verwoerd museum and folk pop in for a casual read of old Huisgenoot magazines from the sixties. One man tells us beside a gigantic bust of the leader that he never liked him. He was too soft on the blacks, he says. John, our guide, tries to soften the outburst with: “Everyone here has a story.” And then he chuckles.
The older woman in the tourist office, the one with candy-floss grey hair, tells us how she was attacked at gun point in her Pretoria home so packed up and moved to Orania. In Orania it takes time to distinguish the traumatised racists from the stupid ones. I found myself splitting people into two categories: true racist and racist from horrific crime incident. This concession, I realise, is pretty racist.
We’ll save them
The presentation video depicts gaggles of little kids on tricycles, but on the roads we see none. Instead we’re told men visit the town so they can ride their quad bikes recklessly because there’s no acting police force. Enforcement is run like a neighbourhood watch, with the worse crime apparently being a stolen bicycle (they are boastfully unlocked). But a black guy I meet says that if he went close to the river then he’d get punched in the face. There’s an uneasy trepidation as I approach him — I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been feared. “It’s weird here isn’t it,” I say and he immediately relaxes and agrees. They have an unofficial system of signing the black visitors in, giving them a pass. He visits in his red bakkie to sell watermelons. There’s an embarrassment around the town for having to rely on outsiders. The truth is they import practically everything.
After the video the pretty girl at the tourism office hefts down the media file. “That’s not even half of it,” she says. She’s a subservient encyclopaedia of facts — a great help to the four sets of journalists who are in the town, and that’s just today. She went to school here. Orania gives parents the choice of a sci-fi, home-grown curriculum: plugged in to computers with CD-ROMS like Master Maths, allowing you to develop at “your own pace”. The second is the standard theological backwater: The Christelike Volks-Onderwys. This is more conventional with special emphasis on Afrikaner history. I think of the blonde five-year-old pool player and pity who she’ll become in ten years. Two separate schools, each covering all 12 grades: you can’t help but think they were expecting more people.
Carel Boshoff the 4th, grandson of the town’s founder, is an intellectual racist. He’s a man with perfectly circular spectacles who’s chosen to put himself in a certain box and he isn’t coming out. His grandma is a Verwoerd and he’s cherishing the time when it’ll be his generation’s turn to fight for Hendrik’s remains (they’re stoically rotting in Pretoria). While standing over the grave of his son — he was a baby of one year when he died — John said, “His other two sons are retarded”. and then added: “It’s very sad.” This is the end of the Verwoerd and Boshoff line — the future of Orania — a tiny grave and two mentally handicapped children.
By spending money here you’re helping old Boshoff survey his kingdom for a little longer so take a packed lunch and sleep in the car. Don’t give them more than you have to, just enough to keep them afloat: it only works as a tourist destination if they’re miserable.
Rushdi, be very afraid of your new-found privileged status. South Africa is not a democracy and in the true sense of the word, it hasn’t been one under the previous administration either. South Africa is a communist country. The only whiff of democracy is in the constitution.
The Afrikaner was shackled into bondage by the privileged status the government afforded him, which left him at a huge disadvantage to fend for himself as a ward of the state.
Remember, a government that fears the people is a government of free people. Any bribe from gov., regardless how good it sounds, is a sucker’s meal leading to bondage and tyranny, and communists know no other way of government but by dictatorial means. Government must always be regarded as the people’s enemy.
So, there is no real democracy to flee from. People who refuse to be slaves, will assess their circumstances and fend for themselves, wherever that leads them.
Dear Ms Lunte,
Thank you very much for the reply! Yes, I did made an assumption. You caught me out and I therefore apologize.
I assumed (correctly or incorrectly?) that you are a proud member of the Rainbow nation and that JM is (even if you don’t like the idea) a leader figure of your society…just as the jolly Zuma, Nzimande, Xingwana, van Schalkwyk and others.
I can or will not be associated with the above-mentioned characters. They are nothing to me, nevermind my leaders!
The fact is that a growing number of Afrikaners are no longer willing to accept the ANC’s hegemony over our affairs and are therefore seeking ways of disengaging from the Rainbow nation franchise in a peaceful manner.
Orania is not the Volkstaat that we seek, only a very important model experiment in the Afrikaner’s quest for self reliance. Hopenfully one day the Northern Cape will be dotted with “copies” of Orania!
We now longer trust the ANC with our Volk’s future and we planning to make some adjustments. We are not asking the Rainbow nation for any funds, special treatment, assistance (or approval, for that matter), but if you could have some understanding it would be greatly appreciated.
Mr McNally and the token (self-hating) Afrikaner, Mr Redelinghuys, have clearly shown that they have no understanding and of therefore no longer of any concern. I suspect that you, on the other hand, have a little bit more between the ears…
Marius
In your blurb you describe yourself as an “Alternative Afrikaner” and aspiring politician.
I have news for you, Boet. You won’t have many takers for your policies under Afrikaners or the rest of the electorate. Cope is not coping.
I am afraid that you have missed the boat. Under Zuma, there is a swing towards traditionalism.
Afrikaners are finding their voices – and it is not the “sorry that I live” bleating or berating their history. The majority of Afrikaners had enough of this handwringing.
Boet, “ons is nie almal soos jy nie!”
They certainly have right to protect there language, culture, heritage and way of life. So the basis of your objection is they may not because they are white? I can defend there town entirely on race alone. White children under the age of 10 in South-Africa now make up less then 5% of that demographic group, most will however over the next 2/3 generation emigrate as has been the trend over the last decade or so with young whites. If there are no whites in South-Africa in what terms will you call it a multi racial South-Africa? To call a minority agitating for minority rights Nazi or racists (even if they are white) is as blatantly stupid as calling Hitler a cool hippie. You get black neighborhoods in Europe, Muslim communities in Europe, Black cities in America, gay communities, Rasta communities, Jewish communities, Chinatowns everywhere, and in the whole sub-Sahara Africa there is one white town, not 100 not a 1000, just one, and somehow this is suddenly an abomination to humanity, if you have a problem with it you are either extremely insecure or need a course in logic.
Dear Mourning Democracy and others
While I usually let this sort of thing go, your tragic miscategorization of history has moved me to retort.
First the issue of slaves. The introduction of slavery into the Cape by the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) occurred in 1658 and rapidly became an essential part of its labour supply. Although the Cape slave economy never reach a scale remotely comparable with cotton and tobacco plantations in the southern United States or sugar plantations, they were still a vital part of the Cape Colony. Most households had at least one slave, mainly for house work, and there were larger numbers on arable farms in the vicinity of Cape Town, although they were less important on cattle and sheep farms. The slaves were imported to supplement the labour of the Khoikhoi who had been driven to “take work” on white farms when they lost access to the land on which their nomadic existence had depended. The British government abolished slavery in 1834 although not all slaves were emancipated until 1838. But hey don’t take my word for it, check out page 51 in “An economic history of South Africa: conquest, discrimination and development” by C. H. Feinstein (http://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uEDe6FwZhk0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=Britain+abolition+of+slavery+1834+South+Africa&ots=Osa1Kyo_KN&sig=N-cSaljyNWbr8JtbHgZpEQMzTNk#v=onepage&q=slavery&f=false). Although any history book written before 1956 will do.
Dear Mourning Democracy and others
Oh and regarding the link between the Great Trek and the “slavery issue”. Nicely historians don’t have to guess on what part the abolition of slavery played in causing the Boers to trek northwards. Contemporary accounts written by the Trekkers themselves (as well as local Afrikaner/Dutch notables listed) Britain’s “unnatural” interference in the “proper relations between master and servants” as one of their primary complaint against colonial rule. Again you can check out page 30 of An economic history of South Africa: conquest, discrimination and development” by C. H. Feinstein (http://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uEDe6FwZhk0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=Britain+abolition+of+slavery+1834+South+Africa&ots=Osa1Kyo_KN&sig=N-cSaljyNWbr8JtbHgZpEQMzTNk#v=onepage&q=Great%20Trek&f=false) but again any decent history book on the subject will do.
Really some of you guys lack even a basic understanding of history. I mean next you will tell me the Afrikaner Nationalist Party didn’t torture people, didn’t assassinate people, didn’t fighting bloody wars in Mozambique and Angola that kill thousands of citizens, didn’t enact mass censureship and exploitation etc. I mean I am all for putting the past behind us but first let us accept that there was a past.
Dear Mourning Democracy and others
One final thing: “If you know your history, you will see exactly what the Afrikaner feared most, and fought against, happened when the ANC were handed the keys of the kingdom?” Really? I don’t know my history? Really??? The alternative to the 1994 election was civil war and economic collapse. The Afrikaner would rather have that but a multicultural South Africa? The Afrikaner would rather hold forty million people under the hammer of oppression then allow the majority to rule? Really? Is that what you are saying? The current state of affairs is what the worst possible outcome of the 1990 transfer of power? Really?
It would seem that the Afrikaners are in a no-win situation with McNally – if they hire black help then they are exploiting the blacks; if they do it all themselves they are racists. That would indicate that the problem is not one of theirs, but of the journalist. Personally, I’m all for the Afrikaners – more power to them
Dear Mr Howard,
It looks like someone took my advice and made a purchase at CNA…good on you, mate! So when you reached p.51 (5 days later) you were ready for you glorious come back here on Thought Leader. LOL!
Anyways, nobody here denies that the Afrikaner has made some mistakes in the past. What nation hasn’t? The Dutch (VOC) practiced slavery, that is true, but in the Afrikaner republics (the ZAR and Oranje Vrystaat) slavery wasn’t legal either. Check it up when you get a chance. The main reason for the Groot Trek was mainly because of the English (yes, your forefathers) who wanted to enforce their will on the Afrikaners. My forefathers (the Voortrekkers) were not having any of it, and neither will the current generation. We don’t want to assimilate into the “Rainbow” nation, finish en klaar! Do you understand this, my dear sir?
But please finish you new book, we can wait another 2 weeks or so. I wonder of Prof Feinstein will mention the conquest and discrimination in SA during British rule? Or the thousands of women and children that perished in camps…not in the name of an ideology, but because of something much more primitive…good old fashioned GREED!
And by the way, Orania is about the future, not the past. You should try and absorb that thought during your little sabbatical…if at all possible. I know it is hard, but you should at least try. Groete.
Dear Johann Eksteen
My belated response was not due to, as you seem to suggest, a deficiency of knowledge on my part but rather the chaotic work-schedule that informs my work at an establishment of higher learning. Normally, I would refrain from even a nominal attempt to address some of the gross inaccuracies that I am confronted with when I read comments on this website. But a rather beleaguered sense of my own educational vocation tempted me into this verbal maelstrom of accusation followed by counter-accusation. But I will admit that the lack of intellectual content that I am confronted with is at times so extreme that I have on occasioned dumbed down my own response to avoid habitual misrepresentation. For this apologise.
Dear Johann Eksteen
So let us deal with your criticisms in turn. You are correct that the ‘Afrikaner republics’ did not habour large legally defined slave populations. But we must understand this as a shift in the social and political construction of labour subordination in the context of the trekkers adopted ‘republican’ argo-economy. Although this is nominally accepted as part of the piquant of early Afrikanerdom (as you seem to suggest), it is perhaps more juridicious to consider alternative explanations. The de-escalation in access to non-local markets in the immediate post-Trek period or even the stark spatial environmental and geopolitical realities confronted by the early trekkers could be considered more primary causes. Indeed, to suggest that the shift away from mass slavery was part of an ideological revisionism of previously acceptable cultural and political norms would be a gross misrepresentation of the ideological temperament of the time and would ignore new forms of labour ‘compulsion’ practices adopted by the trekkers. Indeed, the infamous ‘Master and Servants Acts’ adopted by the ‘republics’ in the 1850s (modeled on colonial juridical examples of the Cape Colony of course) could be considered a far more accurate representation of a general ideological paradigm shift towards new forms of labour coercion and discrimination that were to be later ‘perfected’ in the later part of the 19th century.
Dear Johann Eksteen
But of course I digress… no what worries me is the positivist revisionism of the Oranian paradigm and what it is postulates for Afrikanerdom as a cultural entity in the context of a post-modern cosmopolitan understanding of the retention of localized identity within the shadow of a political transition away from traditional forms of ethnic chauvinism. Indeed, the post-Hegalian move away from the identification of identity principles as part of a conceivable ethnology (or a ‘biocultural-nology’ if you will) seems conjoined to this reality. In light of this connection, what concerns me is the deep counter-alternative to contemporary norms of cosmopolitanism that Orania-ism seems to symbolize.
Oh and please call me Dave.
@David Howard, you being an Englishman in Africa, this is what bothers me: “what worries me is the positivist revisionism of the Oranian paradigm and what it is postulates for Afrikanerdom as a cultural entity” (Ah, there’s that colonial thinking!)
What right do you have to be concerned with the Afrikaner paradigm? You clearly are not one of us, nor are you concerned for our wellbeing as clearly displayed by your long winded, excessively verbose tirade. So what then is it about our changing paradigm that concerns you? From the sliver of sense I was able to scrape from your pathetic rant, your issue is with Afrikaners seeing our history and culture in a positive sense. In other words, we must forever remain meek, sackcloth wearing, jannie-jammer-gat, sorry-we’re-alive drones just so that we fit easily into your little liberal “cosmopolitan” box?? God help us if we dare stray over the thought boundaries you and your ilk have so generously carved out for us.
I’ll have you know there is more than one political paradigm in this world and your intolerance for an alternative view is, quite frankly, disgusting. Especially from a so-called educator. Go peddle your social-anthropological, free-thought suppressing tripe to another ethno-cultural population group. We will define our identity in any way we choose! And if the current political trend is anything to go by (amongst Afrikaners), then I can assure you I am not alone in my views.
This article is very informative, despite it also being a completely savage, dishonest and deceptive abomination, replete with dirty tricks and a level of “journalistic” fraud that goes way beyond simple bias against Afrikaners.
Despite that I myself would not be allowed to live in Orania, as a white english man, I feel they have a right to preserve their threatened culture. They are living on private land. You came to them – they didn’t come to you.
What I’m left wondering is what your true motive is for such an insulting hit piece. Do you really feel so much hatred in your heart towards them, or are you simply trying to “prove” that you aren’t a racist by bashing those you accuse of racism?
Regardless of your motive, this article is journalistic career suicide.
Thanks for allowing the comments to be published though, both positive and negative. I must admit that both Johann Eksteen and John seem more level headed than yourself.
If Orania wasn’t so far from Cape Town I would love to visit. And, unlike yourself, I would happily pay for my meals and stay at a guest house.
Paul I can see by your photo that you never a knew south africa in the days when it was a safe and orderly place.
I doubt if it ever entered your mind while buying food in a supermarket that it was likely produced by an afrikaans farmer. Farmers who have suffered some 1600 brutal killings since 1994.The best farmers in Africa and the reason our politicians are so fat and sleek.
It is very clear in your article that you despised the Orania folk well before your visit but you my friend, are the despicable one .A south african who talks about another S african group as you do is clearly racist.My hope is that as you mature you will learn a little more about your fellow citizens. leo
To be honest, I think the whole concept of Orania is silly and backward and I must say Paul that your article is somewhat one sided & focuses mainly on mocking the concept with no real attempt to try and understand it.
That being said however, I cherish the idea of an Afrikaans homeland, where all the racists can club together and stay away from the rest of us that would prefer to move on, I cherish the idea of watching rugby at Loftus in PEACE without hearing comments and mockery about how we stole everything and now we want to take their sport as well!
If people want to act silly and suffer alone in the desert then let them be,atleast the rest of us wont have to deal with them!
To Mr. Howard and Paul McNally
I don’t know what I detest the most about your article and comments: The pretentious pseudo intellectual tripe (which acts as a veneer for…) or the blatant hate-filled yet self-righteous message. I move in academic circles here in Canada, and no-one would get away with this kind of prejudiced writing. Plus, Mr. Howard seems bent on impressing us with his use of a thesaurus – while it is clear he does not have much to say except celebrate the inexcusable vitriol flowing form Mr. McNally’s pen. Please Mr. Howard, realize that most people on this forum can see through your “Queen’s English”. Your anger and hatred is as clear as day.
The only thing this piece by Mr McNally shows is how deeply impressed he is by his own writing.
As for the the rest of us, we can be thankful he has, as yet, not ventured some institution for the mentally retarded and exercised his journalistic talents on the inmates.
The only thing that would matter to me are what is Orania’s crime level. Mr McNally does not seem to broach the subject.