Orania was established in 1991, so it is no longer a “vision” as such, but I include it here because I visited and support the concept of “private towns” – and hopefully future “private cities”.  

Orania is located in the Northern Cape – the Orange River, the longest river in South Africa, divides it from the former “Orange Free State”

Orania is an intentional community established in 1991 on privately-owned land on the banks of the Orange River at a point where the river divides the Northern Cape and Free State provinces.  The town was founded with the goal of creating a refuge for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and culture but it has been the subject of much negative press coverage vilifying it for being a “racist” town, since only white people live there.

Orania was founded by Karel Boshoff, the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd – the oft-called “architect of apartheid”.   One of its very first residents was Verwoerd’s widow Betsie who lived, until her death in 2000, in a very modest house (there are no mansions in Orania) – now maintained as a museum and shown to visitors.

At the time of my visit (2014) – 23 years after its foundation – Orania’s population was a very modest 1000 or so, but has since increased to an estimated 3000 (2024) and growing about 10% a year.   Although pop’n growth has been much slower than its founders had hoped, the recent population spurt is quite impressive given the “climate” – in every sense of the word – climatological, political, and economic.  In particular the low wages on offer.  Except for occasional larger infrastructure projects, all work is done by the residents – they don’t use out-sourced black labour.  They also receive none of the government financial assistance which undoubtedly would have been forthcoming to a black community with similar self-sufficiency aspirations.  On the contrary they have had to spend much of their limited funds fighting off a series of maliciously frivolous legal challenges to their right to exist.   

Since Orania is a privately-owned town, prospective residents are required to submit to an interview process with a committee, which can reject applicants on certain criteria, the most important of which is to be an Afrikaner or at least be able and willing to speak Afrikaans. English-speakers can apply – although very few have – but would definitely have to speak Afrikaans exclusively in public, or face expulsion.  Visitors, on the other hand, will have no problem speaking English and are welcomed by the town management, if somewhat hesitantly in my case – possibly because they were concerned that this “Engelsman” might be a journalist with an “anti-racist” agenda.   The staff in the pleasant river-frontage restaurant were friendly and spoke English, but the owners of the nice log-cabin style hotel were rather unfriendly.   Perhaps they resented speaking English (like one sometimes experiences in France) or maybe they also suspected us of being Anglo journalists doing yet another hatchet job?

Orania has no statute barring admission based on race, as that would violate South Africa’s constitution.  Countless negative press reports by a stream of lying leftist media hacks – the NYT, the Guardian, et al, all parroting the disingenuous claim that “only whites are admitted”.   The insinuation being that all black applicants who have applied to live in Orania were rejected because they are not white.  The somewhat unsurprising truth is that only whites have actually applied to live there..!   One has to ask why would a black person GENUINELY want to live in an Afrikaner town, unless he/she had a political agenda with the intention of discrediting the community with frivolous charges of alleged “discrimination” and “micro-aggressions”, such as “unfriendly looks”..?

In 2024 Ade Adepitan – “I cannot be racist because my wife is white” – joined the long list of leftist hacks hunting for “racism” and finsing it.  The BBC’s wheelchair-bound (tick), black (tick), leftist (tick), affirmative-action beneficiary travel show presenter – was especially hostile and extremely RUDE to the Orania management and insanely conspiratorial (see below) –

“They’ve got weapons. I hope viewers of my documentary find themselves asking where the money is coming from. Because I’ve travelled all around Orania and I’ve seen that they have hardly any industry. They have no manufacturing base. They’ve got this tiny population in the middle of the desert and yet it’s able to sustain itself. You can’t tell me a few pecan farms are funding that town.”  Ade Adepitan (2024) 

I also don’t know where the money the Oranians mostly don’t have comes from but perhaps a few wealthy Afrikaners leaving legacies could be a useful source?   Adepitan, who has benefitted all his life from affirmative-action and institutional white guilt, totally lacks understanding that a tightly-run corruption-free cohesive community – as future Oasis-Cities will be – can be economically successful without any govt subsidies.