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The Documentary: Orania

The Documentary: Orania: Orania

Orania Boy Statue

06/10/2014 GMT

Orania

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Orania, Orania

Orania, South Africa remains a whites-only town, despite the end of apartheid. Why?

Orania, South Africa remains a whites-only town, despite the end of apartheid. BBC reporter Stanley Kwenda visits the town to explore why.

Marking 20 years after the end of apartheid, BBC reporter Stanley Kwenda travels to Orania in South Africa to find out why Afrikaners in this remote town choose to live apart from other communities.

Stanley hears how Orania started life as a government construction camp for people working on a dam nearby. It was bought in 1991 by a group of Afrikaners who believed they were marginalised in post-apartheid South Africa and wanted their homeland to preserve their culture. However, Orania has close links to the family of Hendrik Verwoerd – the man who introduced apartheid – and, as a consequence, the town is now seen by many as a final outpost of apartheid.

Stanley Kwenda talks to some of Orania’s residents, including Carel Boshoff – the son of Orania’s founder – who claims that the community is simply looking after its people and interests. As a black Zimbabwean, Stanley explores whether the people of Orania are clinging to a racist past – or whether it is a close-knit community that just happens to be white.

(Photo: Orania town's logo of a boy rolling up his sleeves flanked by statues of apartheid heroes displayed above the town of Orania, South Africa. Credit: Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images)

BBC World Service

Twenty years after the end of apartheid, Stanley Kwenda visits Orania in South Africa to explore why it's a whites-only town.

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