oa ‘Hy die nie vir sy eie mense sorg nie is slegter as ’n heiden’

Henry van der Burgt

The town of Orania stands out in contemporary South Africa as a community with the objective to restore Afrikaner freedom. For this purpose, the town strives towards self-determination: the community has its own land, its own institutions, and does its own labor. Following my ethnographic fieldwork, this article describes one critical event in which Orania allowed me, as an outsider, to take a peek behind the scenes. By analyzing this incident as a social drama we can look past the homogeneity through which Orania presents itself, and see meaningful differences of opinion with regard to how the community responds to outsiders.