Orania: South Africa’s white-only town where Apartheid lives on

In the heart of South Africa hides the small town of Orania. With a population of less than 3,000 people, this village hides a dark secret that foreign visitors might not notice at first: The entire population is white.

The BBC explains that the town was established in 1991 by Afrikaners during the last days of Apartheid in South Africa, out of fears of “diluting their culture”.

According to the BBC, Orania was founded by 40 Afrikaner families headed by Carel Boshoff, son-in-law of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the mastermind who codified apartheid into law.

Pictured: Carel Boshoff in 2004

The founder's son, Carel Boshoff Jr., spoke to British newspaper The Guardian about how he fears that white Afrikaners could be “wiped out” through violence or assimilation and believes that Orania is just the start.

“We are something like the phoenix in the ashes”, Boshoff stated. “The questions to which Orania is the answer are so fundamental to the structure of South African society that you can’t express and affirm your Afrikaner identity without coming to the conclusion of a bigger Orania”.

According to the BBC, the town leaders claim that Orania is misunderstood, arguing they are not against black people, but just standing for themselves. However, many others claim otherwise.

The BBC explains that there is a thorough screening process to become a resident of Orania, which includes being a white Afrikaner. Speaking Afrikaans is not enough, which is the case for many black and mixed-raced South Africans.

Unsurprisingly, the town has not been free of controversy. Managed as a private partnership, it was almost annexed by a local democratically elected government in the early 2000s until the matter was decided in court, ruling in favor of Orania.

Image: Tingey injury law firm / Unsplash

South African author and legal scholar Tembeka Ngcukaitobi told The Guardian that Orania “represents the reversal of the constitutional project of national building” and that anyone who cares about South Africa “would rightly be offended by what Orania represents, which is an enduring legacy of racial mobilization”.

Boshoff and other residents of the town seem to be succeeding in their enterprise, despite criticism. The Guardian reported in 2019 that Orania’s population was booming, doubling through the 2010s.

But who are exactly the Afrikaners and why they are so controversial? The Afrikaners, also known as Boers, are descended from 17th Dutch settlers that established a colony along the Cape of Good Hope.

The British takeover of the Cape Colony in the late 1700s forced the Boers to move north and east in what was known as The Great Trek, creating two independent states outside British rule.

In the late 1800s, British troops fought the Boers to gain complete control of Southern Africa, annexing the two Afrikaner independent countries, eventually forming a dominion known as the Union of South Africa. Eventually, it would become a republic in 1961.

In 1948, the Afrikaner-led National Party comes to power, ruling the country for over 40 years and installing a system of racial segregation known as Apartheid.

Apartheid came to an end in the early 1990s, with the election of former political prisoner Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa, seen as the last nail on the coffin of Apartheid-era institutionalized racism.

However, the ghost of Apartheid still remains among the political problems and economic disparities of South Africa.

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