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Whites-only town booms in 'Rainbow Nation' South Africa
In a country where menial work in wealthy areas is typically done by black people, white people here mop supermarket floors, wield leaf blowers and harvest nuts.
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South African politician and writer Carel Boshoff (C), the son of Orania founder Carel Boshoff and grandson of former South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, leaves with other worshippers after a service at a Dutch Reformed Church in Orania, on July 24, 2022. (AFP/Marco Longari)
From a distance, Orania looks like any other small town in rural South Africa.
But once inside, the visitor is struck by an obvious difference.
Everyone here is white.
And in a country where menial work in wealthy areas is typically done by blacks, whites here mop supermarket floors, wield leaf blowers and harvest the nuts on pecan farms.
Orania is a whites-only town in a country that has declared an end to racial segregation.
The history of this incongruity dates back to 1991, when apartheid was in its death throes.
White Afrikaners -- descendants of 17th-century Dutch colonisers -- bought up 8,000 hectares (19,000 acres) of land on the banks of the Orange River, in the sparsely populated Karoo region.
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