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Bittereinderdag (Bitter-ender Day) in Orania.
Nothing Ever Happens in Afrikaner HeavenThe anniversary solemnly marked on a rocky hilltop last week by the residents of Orania is not observed by many South Africans. Bittereinderdag (Bitter-ender Day) commemorates those among the Boers who refused to abide by the peace agreement concluded by their leaders more than a century ago, and fought to the bitter end against the advancing British Empire. But the townsfolk of Orania, a privately owned community populated by some 600 white Afrikaners who, like their forebears, never accepted the peace deal made by their own leaders that brought black majority rule to South Africa, use the day to rededicate themselves to the fading ideal of a separate Afrikaner nation state. During the transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s, Orania's founding fathers envisaged the town as the center of a new Volkstaat (People's State) that would emerge as a refuge for the country's 2.5 million Afrikaners who were expected to flee the post-apartheid society. And although only 600 Afrikaners followed them, they remain undeterred. Posted by: Besoeker 2007-06-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=191567 |