Behind a high fence, 20 minutes east of Pretoria, the Afrikaner enclave of Kleinfontein stands as a postcard from the country’s bitter past and is now entangled in a very present-day dispute.
Moving into the gated community of around 1 500 white Afrikaners entails rigorous screenings and motivational interviews to co-opt residents on an ethnic, linguistic and religious basis.
But the community of Afrikaners – descendants of the first European settlers to South Africa – is accused by the municipality of not respecting zoning regulations.
False claims
The administrative dispute comes at a delicate time as Pretoria is anxious to appease Washington’s false claims of persecution against white South Africans.
On a recent Saturday, hundreds of blond children faced off in games of tug-of-war and sack races as Kleinfontein’s residents – many dressed in typical khaki clothes – marked a harvest celebration.
“To apply for membership you must look like a Boer (farmer) Afrikaner,” said Jan Groenewald, one of the community’s founders.
Yet, he claims Kleinfontein does not use race as a basis for membership.
Afrikaner-led governments presided over the brutal race-based apartheid system that oppressed South Africa’s black majority until 1994.
In the 1980s, during the violent last years of apartheid, Groenewald was second-in-command of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, AWB), a neo-nazi group that committed several deadly attacks on black South Africans.
He claims he now rejects the political violence and murders and left the group in 1989, albeit without renouncing the idea of an independent Afrikaner state.
‘Occupy land’
The founders bought the land that would become Kleinfontein in 1990, four years before the country’s first democratic elections. The area has “a historical value” as it was the site of a battle against British troops in 1900, Groenewald said.
“If you occupy land in great numbers, there’s no way that you can force those people out,” he told AFP.
Guarded by white security guards and self-sufficient, Kleinfontein likes to present itself as a counter-model to the challenges facing the democratic South Africa, plagued by extreme inequality and high crime rates.
21-year-old Sune Jansen van Rensburg moved in three years ago with her parents following a “traumatic” break-in attempt at their previous house in Pretoria.
“If my child walks around my home, I want them to interact with people with the same values and way they see the world,” said the teaching student, whose brother-in-law grew up in the small enclave.
Kleinfontein has had up to 1 700 residents but lost some to internal conflicts.
One woman, who inherited her late father’s house but is unable to sell it, is suing the community for R2.18 million.
“She objects to their narrow definition of Afrikaner people,” her lawyer Daan Schoeman told AFP.
Architect of apartheid
Today’s 1 500 residents represent only a tiny fraction of the Afrikaner population, which is estimated at around 2.6 million out of South Africa’s 62 million inhabitants, according to the 2022 census.
The dispute with the municipality is more existential: according to Kleinfontein’s deputy president Dannie de Beer, the city considers the settlement illegal and has argued that residents should be paying rates 300 times greater, based on zoning regulations.
The municipality did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
De Beer claims the “punitive taxation” is politically motivated.
“Next year is election year, the ANC have to show that they are strong and that they accommodate the radical left,” he said.
AfriForum
De Beer himself has long opposed Nelson Mandela’s party, whose rallies he used to disrupt as a student at the University of Pretoria.
His friends from that time include Frans de Klerk, who founded the other infamous Afrikaner enclave Orania, and Kallie Kriel, the leader of right-wing Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum.
At the entrance to Kleinfontein stands a bust of Hendrick Verwoerd, a former Prime Minister considered the architect of apartheid.
“Maybe we haven’t developed as quickly as the rest of the world,” admits Rian Gennis, who chairs Kleinfontein’s board of directors.
“But we like things to be as they were.”
