Vereniging van Oranjewerkers

Vereniging van Oranjewerkers ("Association of Orange Workers", sometimes shortened to simply Oranjewerkers) is a South African white separatist political movement that seeks a homeland for Afrikaners.

History[edit]

Formed in 1980 by Wally Grant, H. F. Verwoerd junior (the son of Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd), Carel Boshoff and C. J. Joost, the group bemoaned the over-reliance of South Africa on a black workforce and sought to set up Oranjegroeipunte (Orange growth points) where the group would buy up land to settle unemployed white people on.

Morgenzon[edit]

Such a scheme was set up in Morgenzon.^[1] Oranjewerkers bought the town in 1982, and in the mid-1990s its population was 400 whites and 6,000 blacks.^[2]

Alongside this they also developed the plan of bolwerke ('bastions'), or privately owned farms whose landowners would undertake to stop utilising black labour.^[1]

Aftermath[edit]

Eschewing the party political route, the Oranjewerkers became more of a research group, undertaking a series of studies of the demographics of the country. Leading member Hercules Booysen termed their mission as dinamiese-konserwatisme, seeking newer ways to implement the old ideas of apartheid and the creation of a Volkstaat.^[3] Similar plans for redesigning the map of South Africa have been suggested by the group from time to time.

In fiction[edit]

The organisation features prominently in Larry Bond's tale of a fictionalised Cold War conflict in South Africa, Vortex. By the novel's conclusion, they have succeeded in reaching their goal for an autonomous Afrikaner state under a post-apartheid government.

See also[edit]

• Orania, Northern Cape

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Description in Afrikaans