Orania is not heaven BY Pieter Krige

[Nat Quinn]

Pieter Krige

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Orania is not heaven

Anyone who knows something of our people, will with this knowledge quickly beaam the “not heaven” expression. Of course, it was also one of the first comments that I, after my family and I decided to embark on the move to Orania, heard from an Oranian. With the description of Orania as an Afrikaner-Farmer’s place, I was not under any illusions, after all, I was born as one, raised as one, and became a person in Pretoria at an Afrikanerkerk’s university. The Afrikaner is a hard-headed nation, made up of probably the loudest heads from Europe, made up of groups of ancestors who have things in their history like a Hundred Year War, and not on the same side. Someone asked me recently, in the empaier’s language quite: “But who exactly are these Afrikaners… ” “It’s complicated… ” I start, and after a few Sarie Marais, De Wette and Van Riebeecks, actually also end up but again with the same… “complicated. ”

Of course, from a theological perspective, the “not heaven” expression is eternally applicable to all places in this temporary begging. After all, we were all received and born into sin, so heaven is reserved only for the chosen pardoned Cross people; after this temporary one has been exchanged for us with the eternal one. But the “Urania is not heaven” does not refer to things so deeply theologically, it is actually but an expression that had to prepare me for a reality that is not always moonshine and roses, although here in the Karoo we have enough of both too; moonshine and pink it is.

We have enough opinions to triple our population, I usually have two or three and enjoy arguing with myself on the sleepless nights. I wrestle internally like my people wrestle internally. “Not heaven,” and not always easy, and sometimes even hard as hell.

After my preparation for an important meeting, and the Orania-own usual two or three meetings in preparation for the meeting, we usually find once again that our goal and aspirations are precisely aligned, but the way there is sometimes less clear.

I am sometimes grateful that Orania does not have a party-political system, there would have been very easily and probably 1652 parties.

I do not know if other nations can also differ and argue with each other as we do, I do not know the others so intimately, also in a sense are not very interested in their internal structures and systems, in their relationships. But we, I know us pretty well.

A thinker of another nation, very skillful politically and philosophically, recently told me that they look at the Afrikaner today with longing and even jealousy. We are so well organized and unified, everyone in structures working together for the cause, one big lower that pulls together into the future. I’m smiling, but it doesn’t help him right.. I think he is right.

Despite the fact that Orania is “not heaven”, something is happening, and what is happening is work. And when one works and does things, you make mistakes, and mistakes make people angry and provide opportunity for attacks. Sometimes there are even things that are right, that are going well, that everyone actually agrees with, that we can argue about.

I knew and expected all these things, after all, we are a bunch of hard-headed Afrikaners of which I am also one. I didn’t make it to heaven, by grace I will also make that last move one day, but moved to reality. A reality that offers growth and hope, a reality within which my faith, language and culture are not only allowed, but recognized and expanded. I moved to a reality that is growing. I try to drive through all of Orania about once a month, and each time I am amazed, that in spite of our stubbornness, there is tangible and visible growth; growth that our people so desperately needs in this broken world. Growth that offers hope in the temporary, perhaps despite our stubbornness, perhaps because of it.

There is power in our differences. Reitz writes in his book Commando, “and every farmer warrior was his own general.” ” “Complicated… “I answered the Englishman. We are just a difficult bunch of people that God has come to make a new nation here in Africa. In spite of this, maybe because of this, I continue to build.. Because this bunch of hardekoppe, I love, just the way we are, because I am part of this.

In our non-heavenly Oranialaer, Afrikaner-Boerevolklaer, waving many flags, but this nation, this “complicated” bunch of people, planted here at the Suidpunt, born here under the Southern Cross, these are my people, and I am proud of them… and I love them.

I recently realized that it was the yoke and the way forward that led a bunch of Afrikanerosse to pull together; not their own free will, needs and desires, but the task imposed on them, and the yoke that ties them together. I probably don’t have to say much about the yoke placed on us as a nation within the current circumstances, nor about the task at hand. The only thing is, and this is a gróót thing… Forward into the future.

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