Orania and How to Escape South Africanization
Escaping Anarcho-Tyranny
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The Lesson of Orania
Orania is essentially the sole success story from South Africa since convicted terrorist Nelson Mandela acceded to power and turned that outpost of civilization back into the Third World.1 So why isn’t it much talked about? Well, because it is an Afrikaner-only town, and so its existence and success disproves the egalitarian2 myth at the root of the “Rainbow Nation” propaganda.
Hellish South Africa
First, it is important to remember what South Africa outside of Orania’s walls is like: as of 2023, it had a higher per capita crime rate than Somalia.3 It has 80 murders daily, a farm murder a week, a rape every four minutes, and two or three riots a day.4 Meanwhile, there are 3 welfare dependents for every net taxpayer.5
In short, what once was a relatively prosperous and safe society is a pigsty of crime and chaos; there are safe places, of course, but on the whole, the country is quite poor and dangerous.6
How Orania Succeeds
But then there is Orania. There has only been one murder in its history, there is no rape, there are no welfare dependents, no riots, no carjackings, and no farm murders. It is an island of old-world-style stability and an entrepreneurial, small-scale life in an incredibly dangerous country that is falling apart at its seams.7
How has it achieved that?
Well, it did what the rest of the country didn’t: enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution, it’s an Afrikaner-only town, a place ruled and guided by heritage. There are strict limits on who can even visit, even stricter controls on who can be a resident, and everyone there is relatively like-minded because of its strict immigration controls, something Rhodesia found was hugely beneficial.8
So, though it is in the middle of what used to be a desert, it’s hugely prosperous. Despite its less-than-promising location, small population, and hatred directed at it by the South African government, it has grown and prospered in the decades since its founding. Its farmers turned the scorched, sandy plains into thriving and fertile fields. It has invested in its own energy production, so it isn't hamstrung by the constant blackouts of Eskom, the affirmative-action-obsessed energy utility.9 It has its own banks and company currency, shielding it from the rest of the country’s economic dysfunction.
Key to that success is its understanding of its need to be independent, which is seen in its labor policy and followed in every area of life, from erecting new buildings to banking. If a ditch is to be dug or a roof is to be put up, Afrikaaner labor from Orania's residents does it. No one else.
There are no migrant workers, no hostile farm laborers (as on many South African farms), no cheap labor brought in as effective scabs to push down earnings for the native population. Only through that can Oranians be independent, only by doing their own work can they separate themselves from the rest of the country, and so they do all their own dirty jobs.
Paired with that, it embraces the heritage of its Afrikaner residents. From their strongly held Calvinist Christian beliefs to the Dutch-Huguenot-German cultural blend that lies at the root of the Afrikaner people, all that is cherished and celebrated rather than despised, much to the benefit of a thus much more cohesive Orania.
The Closed Society
So, Orania is the definition of a closed society:10 its people are united in a common bond of blood and outlook, and are highly successful for it. Whereas the rest of South Africa is falling apart at the seams, it is thriving and has turned a literal desert into a prosperous town with a thriving agricultural sector.
By contrast, South Africa generally is an open society, thanks to George Soros and the Open Society Foundation,11 and far worse for it. The fruits of that can be seen in the Rainbow Nation doing the opposite of Orania: its DEI farmers, given free farms the government stole from Boers, manage to turn prosperous farming estates into deserts in the blink of an eye.12 The same thing happened in Rhodesia, for much the same reasons.13
Such is why Orania is rarely spoken about by those who ostensibly want to build better societies. It disproves the myth, pushed by the Western democracies during the post-WW2 era, that open societies succeed while closed ones become poor and tyrannical.14 That myth was never really true — pre-Reform England was essentially a closed society as it was hierarchical and tradition-bound, but it was prosperous and far from tyrannical.15 The same was in many ways true of Rhodesia.16
But, despite being a lie, it is what it pushed by the “ our democracy” crowd. They claim only closed societies are poor and backwards, and thus we need to destroy every tie that binds, every tradition or aspect of heritage in the way of “progress,” to become “open” and thus prosperous.17
Orania shows all that claptrap to be an utter lie. Now, thanks to it and its brave residents, we have a very clear example of an open society — South Africa — being an anarcho-tyrannical hellhole, and a closed society — Orania — being a bastion of stability, freedom from crime and corruption, and prosperity So, Orania disproves the myth at the root of the Globalist American Empire.18
Predictably, the powers that be hate Orania for that reason. But it is a good lesson, as it shows what we need to do to escape South Africanization.
Americans Must Learn from Orania
There’s much America can learn from Orania’s success. Yes, our Civil Rights Act19 makes it nearly impossible to do anything on the scale of Orania (though there are some club-based exceptions to this), which is why Ridge Runner20 has taken a somewhat different tack.
But, still, we are undoubtedly facing South Africanization,21 as the murder of Austin Metcalf and the praise of his murder by most of the black community make clear.22 Orania is relevant for that reason; it is the escape from South Africanization, and such an escape is certainly needed.
So, what lessons are relevant, as the technicalities somewhat aren’t?
Doing Your Own Work
Orania’s labor policy of doing all of its own work is quite a change from the rest of the West, where governments and companies import armies of illegal migrant labor, H-1b visas, and similar foreign labor to drive down "labor costs" — by which they mean the wages paid to native citizens.
Meanwhile, the importation of the worst wastes of carbon on the planet (or at least their cousins) causes immense pain and suffering to the native citizens.23 In South Africa, the laborers are involved in farm attacks. In America, we have illegal immigrant crime waves. In Europe, they have migrants behind "grooming gangs" and horrific crimes and terror attacks.
The only way to avoid that is by doing our own work. Whether running a lumber company or farm in a small town or setting immigration policy for the federal government, the only way around the costs of importing others to do the work is to do it. Naturally, that’s unpleasant, but who would rather have their heart eaten by MS-13 than just mow the lawn Saturday afternoon?
So, whether Ridge Runner or otherwise, no “exit strategy” will succeed if cheap labor is counted on, as it is anathema to independence.
Homogeneity Counts
Everyone reading this likely knows that diversity is not our strength. So much is obvious. If D.I.E.versity was indeed a strength, everyone would be rushing to get a DEI doctor…instead, we all live in fear at the thought of being lumped with the DEI admission to medical school.
But what homogeneity and diversity mean is often misunderstood. “White” is no more a homogeneous group than “South African” is, which is why Orania is not a white-only town. Rather, it’s an Afrikaner-only town with strict policies meant to pick the best, homogeneous berries from that group. That very strict sense of homogeneity across categories — the same sort of thing as existed with the Rhodesian immigration system24 — is what creates real benefits that allow an independent town to survive and thrive in a hostile environment.
That is worth considering, and thinking about. America has a great many different groups from even Northern Europe alone — Scots-Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Irish, North German, South German, Dutch, etc. — and as many Protestant denominations as could have been (and have been) dreamed up by eccentrics since the 1600s. A town full of Puritan, Massachusetts types like Elizabeth Warren, paired with JD Vance-style Scots-Irish like JD Vance, would no more be successful as an independent “exit” than Orania would be if it let in a million Bantus. The groups don’t get along because they don’t have the same culture or priors despite having the same skin tone, so the benefits of homogeneity aren’t there, as there isn’t true homogeneity.
Thinking about Orania
Orania, much like Rhodesia in the decades before it, shows what the benefits of a closed, homogenous society are. It shows that something comes of getting a group of like-minded, like-acting people together and sticking a shovel in the soil.
Doing so is difficult at every level, from hate directed your way by the government to the technicalities of making it work.
But it is necessary. Well, if you don’t want your upstanding son with a bright future to be murdered by some thug at a track meet, then escaping South Africanization to the extent you are able is a must. Perhaps Trump will fix everything…but that is doubtful. If he doesn’t, the problems remain and must be dealt with. Orania shows that exiting them to build something new, great, and beautiful is, when possible, the way to do it.
Featured image credit: By Vectorebus - https://orania.co.za/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78030530
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Fantastic article and completely correct
The multi cultural / racial experiment has failed spectacularly and proven definitively that races exist … cultures exist … ethnicities exist ….
And democracy is a race to bottom of sub mediocrity
Excellent article regarding the foundation of parallel societies, and the importance of doing your own manual labor. The often unspoken corollary is that a dearth of manual labor is a necessary precondition for technological development.