TBV Guest Writer Dhoya Snijders: White Company

Orania is ‘slegs vir blankes’, whites only. If you happen to be of another tint, you may visit the town, but you cannot work or stay overnight. You won’t find this rule black on white, but it will be enforced white on black if you do not comply. In the non-racial democratic South Africa of 2010, how is this possible?

The answer is private ownership and the Vluytjeskraal Aandeleblok is the company that is wound up with the appropriate red tape. In fear of the political changes South Africa went through in the early 1990s, a handful of Afrikaners bought a large tract of land in… the middle of nowhere. They named the desert plot Orania, started Vluytjeskraal Shareholders and created Constitution article 7.1 which states that a select committee is to approve of one’s membership of the community. Once you do get accepted as a member, you become a company shareholder without private title deeds and with an executive board that sets the rules.

Regardless of where you come from, Orania is a long drive. A farmer’s market is building up as Fede and I arrive at dusk. We order fig juice from a very old man. “Di’s hierso vyf Ora meneer!". Besides having its own flag, anthem and annual festivities, Orania has its own coin, the Ora. The currency was launched precisely five years ago and its celebration sneers at the coinciding commemoration of FW de Klerk’s freedom speech of 1990. Besides boosting cultural identity, word on the streets is that the Ora is a fabulous security measure. If an outsider raids the local till, he or she will be stuck with a worthless bunch of paper.

Strategic, I think, but for now I don’t have any Oras. I give the old man a five euro note instead (valued at 55 Oras), which soon turns out to be a wise investment. The fig juice looks slightly putrid and is luke warm, but the 92 year old vender is in high spirits and introduces himself as Carel Boshoff. Cerebral alarm bells go off as I recall Mr Boshoff to be the son in law of Apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, former head of the SA Institute for Race Relations, former head of the Broederbond, leader of the Voortrekkers, founding member of Orania and so on and so on. Within no time we get invited to do an interview on RadiOrania, meet the Orania board of directors, get invited to speak to Carel Boshoff Junior (MP for Freedom Front+) and get a peek at daily life in this peculiar little town.

Approximately 1500 people have flocked to the town since South Africa’s independence in 1994. The board cleverly plays upon the daily fears of South Africans and advertises itself with two unique selling points: employment and security. The economy is said to be bustling and the only serious crime you find is against mankind at large. Although it is not so strange that crime levels are low in a fenced-off piece of aridness, I must admit Orania is one of the few South African villages I encountered where one need not worry much about keys, locks and walking out at night.

When one does walk about town, it is not unusual to bump into Verwoerd, Malan, Strijdom or other Apartheid leaders. The Orania movement is eager to collect statues of all the old ‘heroes’ the ANC has been dismantling. They even contacted the new government with the request to notify them of any such removal. A bakkie can then be sent out to retrieve a marble, bronze or granite version of their Apartheid star. We query the philosophy behind all of this. “Well, where in the world do you find teenage students with their own car, pool, maid, and gardener?”, Boshoff Jr. asks us. “Only here in SA! This leads to exploitation of people and unfortunately, in this country these exploited people are the uneducated blacks”. I follow his reasoning, student life in South Africa does seem somewhat swish, but his following stride of reasoning separates our ways. “History has shown that Africans and non-Africans won’t hinder or exploit each other if they are not in each other’s faces”. With that, Orania brings the Apartheid ideology of separate development to a novel level.

But is it really about race Orania? We speak to people at the market, in the guesthouse, in the pub and it is not long before we hear that many of the Oranians (particularly the new ones) don’t want to vacuum their own house, do their own washing or clean their kid’s bums. As a consequence, white low-skilled workers are employed against minimum wage. Talk in the bar sounds surprisingly classist: the ‘owners’ are in power, they control the economy and ‘they have these fancy parties’. The self-proclaimed ‘workers’ would rather see the governing ‘owners’ go. In comparison to the board members, your ‘average Oranian Joe’ hits a different tone concerning South Africa too. In the ‘Stokkiesdraai’ bar we don’t hear the somewhat nuanced argument of Orania being a constructive asset to the country. “We lived in a zoo”, “with baboons”, people employ the most racist slur our ears have ever heeded. Quite some members of the community have experienced violence, rape, muggings or murder in their pre-Oranian life and are heavily traumatized. Their fuses are short and things can get rough, more so with alcohol about. Mayor Opperman says there is no place for hate in Orania, but the absence of psychiatrists and hospitals generates a challenging problem.

Although Orania advocates separateness and autonomy, it remains deeply reliant on the outside world. But what does the outside world think of this eccentric Afrikaner stronghold? At breakfast, Mr. Boshoff tells us about Orania’s meeting with Mr. Zuma. The board is pleased because Zuma has acknowledged that the Afrikaners are the only white tribe in Africa. There is place for this community under his leadership. We frown. Preserving culture, ok. Self-governance, fine. Social experimenting, sure. But principles of inequality… shame!


Dhoya


Note From the Editors: Pictures 1 and 4 were taken by the Writer Dhoya Snijders.
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TBV team