Abstract
The small rural town of Orania was established in 1963 as a result of the Orange River Water Scheme. Its purpose was to accommodate the workers of this large water project during the canal construction phase. It underwent further development to provide for the services and needs of the construction workers. However, subsequent to the completion of the project in 1989, when the Department of Water Affairs abandoned it, it became a ghost town. The town was put up for sale by tender and was bought by the Afrikanervryheidstigting (AVSTIG) (the Afrikaner Freedom Foundation) in 1991, and was envisaged as the first homeland for the Afrikaans-speaking white population. A mixed-methods methodology was used to obtain information about the development and the current developmental potential of the town. At this stage, it was clear that the Apartheid ideology was reaching its demise in South Africa. The town went through three economic phases. The first was as an economic phase during construction in the early 1960s, when large water projects were initiated by the South African government. Subsequently, during the early 1990s, it served as a political-economic base; and finally, in 1994, when the farm adjacent to the town was bought and subdivided into smallholdings, it entered an agricultural economic phase. This development brought about steady growth in the town’s population from 1997 to 2011, with the 2011 census showing a growth of approximately 49%, with a significant increase in the age group younger than 20 years. Twenty-four (24) years after Apartheid, on account of the authority wielded by the village council to act as gatekeeper, Orania still has a whites-only population.
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Kotze, N., Schoeman, R., Carow, S., Schmitz, P. (2020). Orania—24 Years After Apartheid: The Sociopolitical Reanimation of a Small Rural Town in South Africa. In: Nedkov, S., et al. Smart Geography. Key Challenges in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28191-5_17
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