"Ten years on, Orania fades away," announced News24.com, a famous South African media company, in a rather unfriendly tone. However, Alma Steyn, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast called Herberg Oranje and a member of the first group of immigrants to this town, said rather optimistically, "The town only had 79 people over a decade ago, but now there are close to 600. It means we're still growing, though slowly."

Is that true? Or let's ask the same question in another way: Is the growth of this so-called "bastion of racism" good for the town itself and the whole nation?

A controversial town

In 1990, the unassailable policy of apartheid in South Africa started to disintegrate as blacks woke up to their political rights. Feeling threatened by the change, a group of Afrikaners formed a company, the Whistling Shareholders, and bought 4,000 hectares (9,880 acres) of land from the local government for over 200,000 rand (US$67,000). They intended to set up an independent homeland for Afrikaners.

Since photographer Liu Yen-yi and I were the only hotel guests, Alma's husband Renus would talk to us from time to time about the early days. According to him, Orania was just a stretch of arid land; even the local government had given up managing it. When the first settlers came, they led in water from the Orange River and farmed the land like their ancestors, the Boers (Dutch people who came to South Africa in the 17th century). When the blacks came into power, the Afrikaners became the minority in this country. Now their mission is to protect their Afrikaner tradition.

We looked down from a high point in town, and the area appeared withered and yellow. After the sun set, the over 100 homes along Road 369 were as dead as a cemetery. However, the town seemed like Utopia from another angle.

"In Johannesburg, I had to worry constantly about the safety of my children," said Josua, who moved here four months ago. He opened a liquor store called the White Home near the town's entrance. "But now, they can go bike riding anywhere after school." His two sons, seven-year-old Joshua and ten-year-old Michael, brought energy to the town, occupied mostly by senior citizens.

The shadow of the past

There are countless small towns in the world, but the attention on Orania is rather extraordinary. The town was founded for Afrikaners only--blacks and coloureds are not allowed to move in. The quiet town has had no peace.

"Media companies from over 17 countries came to interview us from January to August this year alone." Renus wasn't very happy about the coverage. "They tried to belittle us by saying that we were a bunch of racist lunatics. Anyway, just because we're the descendants of Dutch Afrikaners, we have to shoulder all the original sins."

One of those sins is a statue standing on top of the highest hill in town. This small statue is just about one meter (3.28 feet) tall, but it has seriously affected both blacks and whites in South Africa. It commemorates Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid in South Africa.

Verwoerd's odd sense of superiority and his fear of being a minority in South Africa led him to protect the privileges of the Afrikaners in South Africa. After becoming the prime minister of South Africa, he devoted wholeheartedly to start the apartheid. In addition to passing the infamous Pass Laws, which stipulated that blacks and whites could not sit in the same car and that the blacks could not stay in cities after sunset, he also passed the Group Areas Act, which restricted the blacks to their "homelands" to keep them away from the white areas and the centers of politics.

These inhumane measures that Verwoerd passed for the comfort of his descendants seem to be preserving a bad outcome for them instead. Take the Group Areas Act as an example: the townspeople moved to Orania out of their own free wills, but the area is as barren as the fragmented pieces of land that the blacks were forced to accept after the whites had occupied the best land in the country. The lonely town has hardly any contact with the outside world; it is virtually another kind of prison.

What is worse is that even though Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966 and apartheid was abolished 10 years ago, the notoriety of apartheid is like a shadow that clings permanently to the Afrikaners.

Following like a shadow

Nevertheless, it is no wonder that the people of Orania are considered racists, because the statue of the Father of Apartheid stands on the most prominent spot in town. What makes the matter worse is that Orania has its own administrative body, which is not under the jurisdiction of the South African government. The town even issues its own currency.

One Saturday morning, we attended a church fundraising event to interview Carel Boshoff, the town's founder. There, people were selling homemade cakes and cookies or old tableware that they didn't need anymore.

"Hello!" What surprised us the most was that despite the widespread rumors of racism, the photographer and I, both Chinese, were greeted warmly since we were classified as "honorary whites" by the Afrikaners.

"Try our traditional pancakes! Only Afrikaners add cinnamon and brown sugar to them!" Their English has a strong Afrikaner accent. Actually, they only talked in English during our visit.

"How much?" Just as I was about to pay, I realized that I didn't have any of the local currency.

"Can I still pay in rand?" I asked cautiously.

"Of course, why not?" Ted's bright smile immediately melted my concern.

We walked around the huge activity center. All the buildings in Orania were simple and plain, like the down-to-earth and friendly Afrikaners.

"I am Trienie from Pretoria. I was in charge of a Bible study group in Pretoria." People introduced themselves to us voluntarily.

"I'm Elize. We met when you arrived." We would never forget her tall figure and white hair.

But the person I remembered the most was a 13-year-old girl. We were standing in front of a shop selling South Africa's famous Rooibos red tea when she approached us timidly. "Are you from Taiwan? Can I change Oranian currency for your money?"

Her voice revealed her desire to be in touch with the outside world. Her voice started to shake our opinion that these people were racists. But half an hour later, when we finally saw Carel Boshoff in a chamber of the activity center, the "current" of the crowd pushed us to another direction.

A beautiful but impossible dream

With Einstein's white hair and deep wrinkles, Boshoff was once a professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Pretoria. He can speak three black dialects and was once a clergyman in Soweto, a huge black community located near Johannesburg.

However, his identity as Verwoerd's son-in-law is truly astonishing. That also explains why the town still attracts a lot of controversy despite so many explanations.

"Many people are curious about us," said Boshoff, who is almost 80 years old. His blue eyes appeared a bit blurred behind his glasses. "Many of them focus on the political aspects, but what I want to say is that we just want to maintain our culture and tradition, which are in danger of extinction."

Boshoff took an example of one educational policy established by the black government to prove that his worries were justifiable: "Before 1994, over 3,000 schools in South Africa taught Afrikaans, but after the African National Congress came to power, the figure dwindled down to 200."

During our interview, Boshoff stood up and opened a thick curtain. He pointed to a heliport not far away and said that Nelson Mandela came here by helicopter in 1995 to reassure the villagers. "Personally, I really respect him," he said.

Then he put down the curtain and changed his tone of voice. "However, he will never understand us. Afrikaners have been here for 300 years, and we have developed our own culture. If we follow the path that the blacks are taking, I'm afraid that our children won't recognize their Afrikaner culture." This was why they wanted to build their own nation within a nation.

To help us understand their Christian belief, which was tied to the Afrikaner tradition, Boshoff suggested that we attend a prayer service in the town church the following day. On that day, the town's residents, devout Calvinists, had started entering the church before 10 o'clock in the morning. The church was very plain, without any statues, flowery paintings, or any high arches. It only had a cross, a vehicle that passed on the prayers from the preacher and believers to the distant Father in heaven, standing catty-corner behind the podium.

However, the content that the preacher quoted that day from the Bible seemed to echo what Boshoff had said on the previous day. Abraham obeyed God's order to move to an unknown land. There was nothing there, and survival seemed impossible. However, God promised Abraham that someday in the future, his descendants and wealth would be like the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the seashore.

A communal economic system

Boshoff is not Abraham, and Orania's current condition is very distant from the prophecy in the Bible. But based on the same belief, more Afrikaners have moved into this town for the past 13 years. However, unable to adapt themselves to the Puritanical lifestyle in town, many city dwellers later moved out. For a long time, the little town was like a hotel, with more people moving out than people staying on.

In addition, the unemployment rate in South Africa was 40 percent in 2004. There is no exact figure for Orania, but close to one third of the town's population depend on their retirement pensions, so the town's economy is not promising.

"I usually help other people fix their computers. When there aren't enough teachers in school, I also help teach math there." We met Chris at the church. He had kindly lent us his computer since the only Internet cafe had closed down due to bad business.

Like Chris, many people in town hold more than one job. Take Renus' gardener, John, as an example: he fixes bicycles and does gardening for other people to make a living.

"In some ways, we live like a community in a communist society," said Carel Boshoff II, Carel Boshoff's eldest son and provincial leader of the Freedom Front in the Northern Cape. He has voiced the problems of the town's independence in the past, but the voice was rather weak and no one cared about it.

"In town, we try to give each other jobs, from building homes, laying down hydro and electricity, to paving roads. 'Self-reliance' has been our slogan."

Because they insist on self-reliance, they refuse to hire black workers, so local residents could have all the job opportunities. Therefore in Orania, it is the whites who do the farming, which is quite different from the past when Afrikaners lived rather luxuriously and had many black workers in their homes.

"So, is the hearsay true that you refuse to let blacks work in your town?" Everything in this town is tangled with racial problems.

"I have to honestly admit it," Boshoff II replies, "but now you should know why."

Communal prosperity

But do I really know the answer? Or, does the answer change as time goes by or as political power shifts from one racial group to another? The friendliness of the townspeople brushed away our watchfulness, but at the same time some locals' criticism of the blacks seemed appropriate from a certain viewpoint, but also rather frightening, as though it foreshadows an uncertain future.

Renus was as positive as other people about the town's future, but they might have forgotten something: with proper education, the future of the blacks might not be the same.

"Orania faces a great challenge ahead." On our last day, Eleanor Lombard, the spokesperson for the Orania Movement, accompanied us to the town's walnut field, where we caught some photos of farmers working, and then saw us off. "However, we're still full of hope, because this walnut field which we started a few years ago with only one seedling is now full of adult trees. And it is bringing us close to US$8 million in profits a year!" As the photographer was taking pictures, Eleanor couldn't hide her pride.

"If you happen to use this photograph," she smiled, "you can write the caption, 'This walnut field symbolizes Orania's thriving future.'"

I also hope so. But the precondition is that if Afrikaners thrive again and become the dominant group, they still have to respect multiculturalism and give everyone a fair chance.