Kimberley - Establishing a settlement exclusively for one race group is walking a dangerous line, according to the leader of Orania.
“Race and culture are not synonyms,” Dr Wynand Boshoff, Orania and the Freedom Front Plus leader in the Northern Cape, said on Wednesday in response to the establishment of another “whites-only” town in the province.
The new settlement is rising in the Northern Cape and its founder is promising a free 1 000 square metre piece of land to any (white) South African who wants to help “fight against the uprooting of the white race”.
The settlement, named “Eureka”, is situated outside Garies in the Northern Cape. Its founder, Adriaan Alettus Nieuwoudt, describes himself as the official co-ordinator of the Eureka Movement of South Africa.
Eureka is described as a “security town” where people can “securely retire, live and work with their own schools, shops and medical services in their own mother language (Afrikaans) and rural culture”.
“If you are going according to race only you are walking a very risky line as you are going against historic principles and the Constitution. It’s senseless. It is also best to keep race out of the political fireplace. For communities to link cultural settlements to race is really not ingenious,” Boshoff said.
He added that he had not been invited for consultations by the Eureka settlement founder, Nieuwoudt.
Boshoff further stated that there are quite a few cultural villages dotted around the Northern Cape. “There are various places in Namaqualand such as Pella and Komagas for a specific group of people.”
Boshoff also said that there was an ongoing banter between him and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). “They want land in Orania and I want land in Taung as I like cattle and Taung is the perfect place for farming with cattle.”
According to Nieuwoudt, he bought the piece of land (now known as Eureka) “with his own money, during 2016”. He has promised to donate a 1 000 square metre plot in Eureka to “each member of the uprooted white race who registered with the Eureka Movement”.
“This plot will stay reserved in your name till the end of days. Whether you use it or not, it remains your own place in the land of your birth and is transferable to your heirs. When you start building on the plot, you have to carry building costs, but until then we cost each other nothing,” a statement by Nieuwoudt reads.
Attempts to contact Nieuwoudt for comment were unsuccessful.