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South Africa: Orania, the city reserved for whites nostalgic for apartheid
South Africa: Orania, the city reserved for whites nostalgic for apartheid
(SPECIAL ENVOY / FRANCE 2)
More than ten years after Nelson Mandela’s death, South Africa hardly resembles the “rainbow nation” of his dreams. Apartheid nostalgics founded an all-white city there, which is now booming. More than three decades after the abolition of racial segregation, an excerpt from “Envoyé spécial” in Orania, where blacks are absent.
At the gas station, at the butcher’s, at school and at the supermarket… everyone is white. This is the rule for living in Orania, South Africa: be Afrikaner, Christian, and white. It was imposed by the founders of this city located in the semi-desert province of the Northern Cape. And if some families settle there, it is because in Orania, there are no black people. The new arrivals say to themselves “reassured” and feel safe here. In twenty years, the The community has grown from a few hundred inhabitants to 3,000 today, who live self-sufficiently. Orania even has its own currency… without Nelson Mandela’s face on the notes.
On the banks of the Orange River, the land on which Orania was founded was bought by several Afrikaner families in 1991. The year apartheid ended, when blacks finally got the same rights as whites, they came to barricade themselves here.
Far from wanting to offer a refuge to racists, the stated project of this white enclave is to “to preserve Afrikaner culture and to develop it. I“There is no question of refusing to live with black people.” This is what Orania’s official spokesperson, Joost Strydom, claims before to show journalists around a sort of sanctuary.
At the top of a hill overlooking the city were gathered statues toppled elsewhere in the country. In a prominent place, the bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966 and ideologue of apartheid, who imagined and implemented the segregationist laws. The main founders of Orania are none other than his daughter and son-in-law, Anna and Carel Boshoff.
Despite this loaded heredity, according to the spokesperson, it would be a question here of defend a minority: that of the Afrikaners, who according to him have “virtually no political and economic power in the country. Living in Orania is a question of survival, not only physical, in a very violent country, but also cultural. We want a region where Afrikaners can live in their thousands, even millions.”
To protect them, these Afrikaners who pose as victims can count on the only political party present in Orania. It is a far-right party, the Freedom Front Plus. At its head, we find the son of the founder of Orania and grandson of the “architect of apartheid”, Wynand Boshoff.
In twenty years, the Freedom Front Plus has almost doubled its number of voters, joined the ruling coalition, and even entered the government. The party wants to create a white, independent nation. “This is the ultimate goal we are pursuing, says Wynand Boshoff. We have a regional vision, Orania is not just a small isolated community. It is not just a test town for Afrikaners. We have a broader perspective for South Africa.”
Excerpt from “The Nostalgics of Apartheid”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on September 19, 2024.
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