South Africa's white Afrikaner separatists want Trump's help to become state

By Tim Cocks

ORANIA, South Africa (Reuters) - A radical of achromatic Afrikaners was truthful opposed to bulk Black regularisation erstwhile apartheid ended immoderate 3 decades agone that they carved retired a separatist enclave, the lone municipality successful South Africa wherever each residents, including menial workers, are white.

Now, the residents of Orania - population, 3,000 - successful the semi-arid Karoo portion privation U.S. President Donald Trump to assistance them go a state.

Last week, assemblage leaders from Orania visited the United States seeking designation arsenic an autonomous entity. South African authorities admit it arsenic a municipality that tin rise section taxes and present services.

"We wanted to... summation recognition, with the American absorption connected South Africa now," Orania Movement person Joost Strydom told Reuters, connected a elevation strewn with bronzes of past Afrikaner leaders, including from the epoch of racist achromatic number regularisation that was ended by interior absorption and planetary outrage.

The 8,000-hectare colony is riding an unprecedented question of enactment from right-wing Americans for Afrikaner nationalists, who irrevocably mislaid powerfulness erstwhile apartheid ended successful 1994 and Nelson Mandela became South Africa's archetypal Black president.

In New York and Washington the Orania leaders met influencers, think-tanks and low-ranking Republican politicians.

"We told them South Africa is specified a ... divers state that it's not a bully thought to effort and negociate it centrally," said Strydom.

Three elder Orania officials interviewed by Reuters were vague astir the assistance they sought successful the U.S. They said they were not seeking handouts but wanted concern to physique houses to support up with its 15% colonisation growth, infrastructure and vigor independency that it has astir half-achieved with solar.

Strydom declined to accidental whether his delegation had interaction with the Trump administration. The U.S. State Department did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

South African overseas ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told Reuters: "(Orania's) not... a country. They are taxable to the laws of South Africa and ... our constitution."

Other Afrikaner nationalist groups person besides visited the U.S. to physique alliances with overwhelmingly white, Republican audiences, prompting accusations backmost location that specified trips stoke radical tensions.

The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) past week accused Orania's leaders of "destroying the unity of this country", a complaint they reject.

'START OF SOMETHING'

Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch settlers who began arriving successful the 1600s. They resisted the British Empire successful South Africa, but erstwhile successful complaint of the country, they hardened radical segregation utilizing discriminatory laws.

"There were 17,000 laws connected onshore alone," overseas ministry spokesperson Phiri said. "We had... to reconstruct South Africa into a state that represents each those who unrecorded successful it."

In 1991, arsenic the extremity of apartheid neared, a radical of astir 300 Afrikaners acquired Orania, antecedently an abandoned h2o task connected the muddy Orange River, to make a homeland exclusively for achromatic Afrikaners.

"It's the commencement of something," erstwhile Orania Movement person Carel Boshoff, said of his community, comparing its tendency for independency - Orania adjacent uses its ain informal currency - to that of Israel, established aft World War Two contempt stiff absorption from Arabs surviving successful that territory.

Boshoff, whose begetter founded the municipality and whose grandfather, Hendrick Verwoerd, is wide viewed arsenic the designer of apartheid, dreams of a territory stretching to the westbound seashore astir 1,000 miles away.

Orania's activities are funded done section taxes and donations from supporters and residents.

Its leaders were dismayed to find the lone solution that anyone successful the United States was funny successful discussing was U.S. residency, aft Trump offered successful February to resettle achromatic South African farmers and their families arsenic refugees.

"We can't beryllium exporting our people," Boshoff told Reuters beside a framed photograph of his precocious grandfather. "We told them ... 'help america here'," helium said.

Some U.S. right-wingers person sought to marque communal origin with Afrikaners successful their absorption to diverseness policies that purpose to empower historically unjustly-treated non-white groups. South Africa's Black empowerment laws person been ridiculed by Trump's South African-born adviser, Elon Musk.

Those laws were the crushed Hanlie Pieters moved to Orania 8 months ago, aft 25 years of surviving successful Johannesburg, to go caput of selling for the town's method college.

"Our children ... what opportunities volition they have?" Pieters said, bemoaning quotas for Black workers, portion trainee plumbers and electricians honed their skills successful a shed nearby.

A 3rd of each South Africans are retired of work, astir of them mediocre Blacks.

One specified unemployed man, 49-year-old Bongani Zitha, said helium thought "people successful Orania... are doing precise well" compared to galore South Africans. "So galore radical looking for opportunities. It's a struggle," helium sighed.

Zitha, who has lived successful a corrugated shanty municipality successful Soweto with nary piped h2o oregon sewage since 1995, said astatine slightest the radical of Orania person "rights to health, education, everything".

And dissimilar himself nether achromatic number rule, helium added, Orania residents are escaped to unrecorded wherever they want.

(Reporting by Tim Cocks; Editing by Gareth Jones)