Solidarity wants a “geographical area” where Afrikaners can exercise “cultural freedoms” and I’m studying maps of the Northern Cape with renewed interest.
On Wednesday, Newzroom Afrika anchor Xoli Mngambi spoke to Werner Human from Solidarity and Joost Strydom of the white enclave of Orania, quizzing both about Schrodinger’s Blankestan, that magical place where you are both a part of the multiracial democratic South Africa and also not.
I must confess, however, that I remain slightly confused about who, exactly, is going to live in Mr Human’s “geographical area”.
The issue arose when Mngambi asked Strydom if the millions of black and coloured South Africans who speak Afrikaans as a first language would be welcome in Orania (and, by implication, Solidarity’s future “geographical area”).
Well, explained Strydom, dodging an honest “no” answer with the agility of a springbok swerving away from a cheetah, there are only two ways to become an Afrikaner.
First, the applicant must “self-identity” as an Afrikaner. (I’ll let the jokes write themselves.)
Second, you must be recognised as one by other Afrikaners, who, without any objective yardsticks to go on, are going to base their judgment on how much they think you’re an Afrikaner, which is based on what they think Afrikaners are, which is, obviously, themselves and other people they think are like themselves.
In other words, since Human didn’t disagree with anything Strydom said, we have to assume that Solidarity wants a “geographical area” and a legislated set of special protections for a group that, by Strydom’s yardstick, is defined purely by groupthink and vibes. What could go wrong?
Ah yes, the ancient dream of all people to cut themselves off from constitutional protections like access to justice by living in a place owned and run for profit by a tiny elite you can never join.
Perhaps sensing that this wasn’t really a basis for solid legislation, both quickly invoked reality — or least a version of it — by speaking admiringly of the Ingonyama Trust, the de facto homeland of Zulus in South Africa. Ah yes, the ancient dream of all people to cut themselves off from constitutional protections like access to justice by living in a place owned and run for profit by a tiny elite you can never join.
Still, at least they wrote a number on the back of a napkin. About 5-million people live in the 2.8-million hectares of the trust, averaging out to about 0.54ha per person, which, if nothing else, is a solid precedent for Solidarity.
The aforementioned vibes make it difficult to put an exact figure on the number of Afrikaners who might, in theory, want to semigrate to the new Blankestan, but if we assume that it’s whites only, and will therefore be rejected by the few hundred thousand Afrikaners who wouldn’t want to be part of such a set-up, along with another few hundred thousand who can imagine nothing worse than uprooting their lives to go and cosplay quasi secession on some ver verlate vlakte, minus a few hundred thousand who like the idea but want their own volkstaat closer to their favourite pub, I think Solidarity would do astonishingly well to get a quarter of white Afrikaners in SA, or 500,000.
The 0.54ha per applicant gives you a square with sides about 50km long. And wouldn’t you know it: if you plonk that square down in the Northern Cape, with Orania at its centre, you get an area containing almost nothing but Orania and neighbouring farms. Hopetown lies just to the northwest; Vanderkloof lies just to the southeast. For the rest, it’s cultural freedoms and vibes as far as the eye can see.
Could it happen? Probably not. But is it a good idea? Also probably not.
But of all the questions the interview raised, one stands out for me.
If Solidarity wants to win the right not to be enmeshed in or dragged down by the rest of us, and if its whole ethos is about partial independence and self-sufficiency for white Afrikaners, but just for white Afrikaners, and you can only be a white Afrikaner if you get anointed by vibes, then why, a couple of weeks ago, did Solidarity phone me, an English-speaker without vibes, and ask me for money?
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