Apart from us: The living skeletons of apartheid in Orania and Kleinfontein

Mail & Guardian

13-05-2025

Orania in the Northern Cape markets itself as a cultural haven.
The birth of South Africa's democracy in 1994 meant not only the dismantling of apartheid laws but the moral and symbolic promise of inclusion, restoration and healing. Yet, three decades later, the vestiges of apartheid persist, not only in economic inequality and spatial injustice, but in towns such as Orania, in Northern Cape, and Gauteng's Kleinfontein, which thrive on exclusivity under the guise of self-determination.
To understand the gravity of this, we must return to the architecture of apartheid. Through laws such as the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act, apartheid engineered a system where space, movement and even identity were brutally policed. Public amenities were segregated under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act and black South Africans were effectively criminalised in their own country under the pass laws.
These laws didn't just restrict, they dehumanised. They enforced a logic that some lives were worth more than others.
The democratic breakthrough 31 years ago promised a rupture from that logic. The Constitution, celebrated globally, enshrined equality, dignity and freedom. But how meaningful are those rights when certain towns, nestled comfortably in democratic South Africa, systematically exclude people based on race?
Orania and Kleinfontein market themselves as Afrikaner cultural havens. They invoke section 235 of the Constitution, which allows for cultural self-determination. But, when culture becomes a smokescreen for racial homogeneity, it is not self-determination, but rather a modern-day segregation.
These communities are not merely preserving a language or tradition, they are preserving apartheid's core belief in racial separation. Their very infrastructure, from who is allowed to own property to who may enter or live there, is built on exclusion.
The idea that black South Africans, who make up the majority of the population, are not welcome in these areas is a slap in the face to Madiba's dream of an inclusive nation. This exclusion is not passive or symbolic, it is active and operational. Much like during apartheid, black South Africans may enter these towns only as labourers, not as equals, residents or citizens of shared nationhood.
This is not merely a moral issue, it is a constitutional and political crisis. While proponents argue that these towns are private, peaceful and constitutionally protected, the selective interpretation of rights undermines the Constitution's foundational values. Freedom of association does not grant the right to recreate apartheid under cultural pretences. Their existence weakens social cohesion and inflames racial tensions, reinforcing the belief that integration is not only unwanted but impossible.
Commentators often deflect by asking why cultural minorities cannot have spaces to protect their identity. This is dishonest framing. No one is challenging the right of Afrikaners to practise their culture, language and traditions. Like other cultures, they would still be able to practise their culture and preserve their language in any society across the country.
What is being challenged is the systemic exclusion of others based on race. There's a profound difference between cultural celebration and racial isolation. The existence of Orania and Kleinfontein is not a question of legal technicalities but of national conscience. They are the living skeletons of apartheid — proof that while the laws have changed, the attitudes and structures of racial separation have not been fully dismantled.
The democratic project cannot afford to look away. South Africa's future cannot be built on parallel societies, one multiracial and striving for equality, the other clutching to the ghosts of white supremacy.
True reconciliation means confronting these uncomfortable realities and demanding that no town, no community and no individual be allowed to exist apart from us.
Khothalang Moseli is a doctoral candidate at the Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State, and a social and human rights activist. He writes in his personal capacity.