Orania

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Orania
Orania (South Africa)
Orania
Orania
Coordinates 29 ° 49 ′  S , 24 ° 25 ′  E Coordinates: 29 ° 49 ′  S , 24 ° 25 ′  E
Symbols
flag
flag
Basic data
Country South Africa

province

North Cape
District Pixley Ka Seme
ISO 3166-2 ZA-NC
local community Thembelihle
Residents 1500 (2017)
founding 1991
Website www.orania.co.za (afrikaans)
Main village of Orania (2014)
Main village of Orania (2014)
Aerial photograph of Orania (2015)

Orania is a settlement in the North Cape province of South Africa . It is located in the semi-desert Karoo in the Pixley Ka Seme district . According to the 2011 census, 892 people lived here at that time. Since 1990 only Boers and people who identify with the Boers have been allowed to live in this place. Orania sees itself as the nucleus of a new, Boer state in accordance with the people state ideal. The 1500 (as of 2017) residents should live and work as independently as possible and not, as is common in South Africa, have black workers do manual labor.

Foundation and status

In December 1990 around 40 Boer families bought the then dilapidated place for around 1.4 million rand , which consisted of 170 barracks that the South African government's water management authority had once built for the workers of a dam. The surrounding area is around 3000 hectares and also belongs to Orania. They were led by Carel Boshoff , a son-in-law of the former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd . This happened a few months after the de facto end of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela . The reason given was the increasing crime in the rest of South Africa, which also led to the murders of white farmers. In 2004, Orania brought out its own currency, the Ora .

In the South African parliamentary elections in 2014 , the Vryheidsfront Plus won 224 out of 291 votes (around 77%) in Orania, while the party only got 0.9% nationwide. The Democratic Alliance received 15%.

Orania Administration Building

Orania is not an official municipality , it is the private land of the people living there. The administration of the settlement is the responsibility of the corporation Vluyteskraal Aandeleblok. The cost of living is about twice as high as in the rest of South Africa.

The place is run by grassroots democracy . The shareholders elect a management board of seven people with a chairman each year. This is currently (2012) Carel Boshoff Jr., son of the founder of Orania. The management functions like the city council and employs the village manager who works like a city treasurer. In 2012 this is Frans de Klerk.

In 2012, 560 families lived in Orania. The place has the most modern irrigation systems in the region, so that agriculture, such as the cultivation of pecan trees , became possible. In addition, there are almost one hundred entrepreneurial units in Orania.

The Orania Moving (German: "Orania Movement"), a foundation that is supposed to proclaim the ideal of the Boer state based on Orania and is responsible for contact with visitors, interested parties and journalists, is run by Carel Boshoff jr. and Jaco Kleynhans. According to its own account, the Orania Bewegungsing has around 3,000 members and maintains contacts with a group from Xhosa in the Eastern Cape province and with regionalist movements in Europe. In South Tyrol there is the group “South Tyrolean Friends of Afrikaaner - Amici sudtirolesi del popolo Afrikaaner”, which supports the Orania project with ideas and finances.

The aim is to establish an autonomous area in which the ethnic minority of the Boers make up the majority and in which their cultural identity can survive ( people's state ). This area is said to be between the Upper Karoo and the western Atlantic coast.

Movies

In 2012, German director Tobias Lindner made the documentary Orania about the settlement and its people. The film was released in June 2013.

The South Tyrolean director Hendrik van den Driesch shot the documentary South Tyrol and the Boers in 2013 - a decade-long friendship about the historical and current points of contact between Tyrol / South Tyrol and the Boer ethnic group in South Africa, whereby Orania is also discussed in detail. The film premiere was on May 22, 2015 in Maretsch Castle in Bolzano .

In her 2018 documentary, Farmlands, right-wing activist Lauren Southern reports on the settlement against the background of the tense situation of white farmers in the rest of South Africa, who are often victims of racially motivated acts of violence and assaults.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 2011 census , accessed November 18, 2013
  2. ↑ Orania plans new e-currency ( en ) Retrieved September 29, 2017.
  3. ↑ Election result at news24.com (English), accessed on September 10, 2016
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Scheen: In the wagon castle. faz.net, June 1, 2013, accessed June 1, 2013
  5. ↑ Official website , accessed on September 11, 2012
  6. ↑ Leadership staff on the Orania (Afrikaans) website , accessed May 29, 2016
  7. ^ Contract signing with a Xhosa community , accessed on July 2, 2013
  8. ^ The New Observer, Orania Delegation Received by Members of the Dutch and Flemish Parliaments , accessed June 26, 2013
  9. ↑ a b Buren visits the South Tyrolean People's Party ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 25, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.svp.eu
  10. ↑ Official website , accessed on July 12, 2013
  11. ↑ Autonomous Province of Bolzano - South Tyrol, Department of German Culture, Media Shop South Tyrol and the Boers - a decades-long friendship , accessed on October 10, 2015