Posted by:
anybody
(
)
Date: July 25, 2023 03:38PM
There's only one problem.
No one wants to live there except a handful of people.
Several states in the USA want to do this very same thing under the disguise of "religious liberty." It won't work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OraniaThe town and its mono-ethnic and monoculturalist ideals have been the subject of much press coverage. The town was founded with the goal of creating a stronghold for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture through the creation of an all-White Afrikaner state known as a Volkstaat.[5][6][7] The town is generally described as "Whites-only".[8][9][10][11]
By 2022, the population was 2,500. The town was experiencing rapid growth and the population had climbed by 55% from 2018.[12][13] In 2023, the population was 2,800.[14]
Living in the town requires application, and is based around being Afrikaner and fluent in Afrikaans. The town's economy is focused around self-sufficiency and based on agriculture, notably of pecan nuts. Afrikaner Calvinism is an important aspect of local culture. While the South African government has stated that it is opposed to the idea of a Whites-only community, it has generally ignored the town.[15][16] Orania prints its own money and maintains the last transitional representative council in South Africa, but receives no national funding.
Coverage generally describes Orania as culturally backward, racially intolerant, and separatist.[30][62][63] Descriptions of Orania frequently call it "whites-only", since the town only accepts white Afrikaner residents.[8][9][10][11]
In 1991, the New York Times said that Orania was a "ghost town where White supremacists dream of carving out an idyllic homeland".[64] In 1994 the Los Angeles Times described it as a "Zealots' Dream" and "a bastion of intolerance".[65] A year later the Chicago Tribune saw it as "the last pathetic holdout of the former ruling class of South Africa", continuing that "the Afrikaners who once forced blacks to live apart from the rest of society are now living in their own prison".[66] Bill Keller dubbed Orania "the racist Camelot".[67] A Mail & Guardian article describes it as a "widely ridiculed town" and a "media byword for racism and irredentism".[62] An article in The Independent similarly writes that residents of Orania "have a reputation for being racists, and that the town attracts plenty of negative press".[63] Benjamin Pogrund described Orania as a "curious hangover from the vanished terrible past".[68]
Vadim Nikitin, writing for The National in 2011, described the conventional narrative about Orania as the last bastion of apartheid, and a "pathetic outpost of embittered racists" who refuse to live in equality with black South Africans. From this perspective, it is a 1950s-style fantasy shielding locals from declining White privilege. Nikitin notes that Orania lacks some of the conventional indications of privilege found in other post-apartheid White South African suburbs, such as black servants and some material luxuries.[69] Eve Fairbanks, writing for Witness, describes Orania's heavy emphasis on self-reliance as a paradox: "While Orania is the place Whites can go to undergo the regimen most explicitly designed to cleanse themselves of the sins of apartheid, it is also the place they can go to live most visibly like they did before it ended."[70]
Regarding the near-total segregation of the town and lack of any black residents, James Kirchick and Sebastian Rich of the Virginia Quarterly Review describe an uneasy relationship between the town's residents and the county's apartheid history. Orania's strict ethnonationalism and anti-globalization are incompatible with both apartheid and the rainbow nation of modern South Africa. Despite this, Orania maintains several monuments of the apartheid which had been discarded from other places. The Orania Cultural History Museum includes busts of every apartheid president of South Africa except for F. W. de Klerk, whom the museum's director considers a "traitor" for his part in the country's transition to democracy.[71] Leon Louw, the executive director of the South African Free Market Foundation, questioned the perception that the town is a refuge for racial bigots.[72]
Gavin Haynes from Vice News said that, "If you're a certain way inclined, Orania is probably a nice place to live. It's very neighbourly. It's also one of the dullest, most achingly pointless places in Christendom".[73]
Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo, a professor in political economy at the University of Johannesburg, said that Orania served as an important safety valve for Afrikaners in transition, and that "The Afrikaners are very forward-thinking people. Orania was established as a tactical strategic exit for the Afrikaner, should the new South Africa run into serious crisis. They will then have a place to preserve themselves".[74]
Andrew Kenny, a regular contributor to The Citizen newspaper, wrote that: "Orania was a revelation to me. I was enormously impressed by its success, decency, safety, modesty, friendliness, cleanliness, by its spirit of goodwill, by its egalitarian attitudes and, above all, by its prevailing philosophy of freedom".[75]
Rebecca Davis of the Daily Maverick feels that, "What makes Orania different is that it makes no secret of its discrimination. Because of this, the town has come to occupy a place in the public imagination vastly out of proportion to its size".[76]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/2023 03:39PM by anybody.