Edition: U.S. / Global

ORANIA JOURNAL; A Homeland? White Volk Fence Themselves In

Published: May 8, 1991

The discredited and dying doctrine of apartheid has found sanctuary in a prairie ghost town where white supremacists dream of carving out an idyllic homeland for Afrikaners fleeing the inevitability of black majority rule.

"We're in a period of history where we are very anxious to have a plan for the survival of the Afrikaner nation," said Carel Boshoff, 63 years old, a former theology professor who heads the movement committed to creating a "volkstaat," or nation-state, for South Africa's white Afrikaner minority.

"Orania is a very tiny little 'dorpie'," Professor Boshoff said, using the diminutive Afrikaans word for small town, "but we realize that we should start somewhere."

Orania, set amid scrubland more hospitable to sheep than people, was built by the Government in the 1960's for whites carrying out irrigation projects that tapped the cocoa-colored waters of the adjacent Orange River. In time, they began pulling out and the weeds and dust encroached on the prefabricated houses. 'You Don't Buy the Passengers'

Professor Boshoff's movement bought Orania and 1,167 acres on which it sits a few months ago and set to work restoring the dilapidating town. The tidy-up included the eviction of about 500 residents from a mixed-race township just over the hill. Mr. Boshoff wants to convert it into a retirement village for aging Afrikaners. The original tenants, some of whom lived there for 23 years, were trucked to another town more than 100 miles away.

"They can't understand it, because all these years the white and black people were staying here," said Pieter Fisher, the 46-year-old school principal in the voided township. The removal, he said, hit the children hardest.

"There will be a great deal of bitterness that will stay for the rest of their life," he said, "and they will never forget it."

Professor Boshoff's followers contend that they can do what they want with their town, which was reportedly purchased for about $850,000 from a previous owner, who in turn bought it from the Government.

"When you buy a motorcar, you don't buy the passengers with it, do you?" said Chris Smit, a gaunt 54-year-old with a tattooed chest who was renovating one bungalow. "This is private property."

His co-worker Pieter Oberholzer, 26, said a black man would be allowed to drive past Orania but not to stop for fuel or food.

"If his car breaks down, he just will have to push it out of town. Otherwise . . ." Mr. Oberholzer completed his sentence with a brittle laugh.

People of color are unwanted in Orania even as hired labor. Mr. Boshoff said Afrikaners must learn to cope without their black servants. Quick to Vent Prejudices

His call for white self-sufficiency would give pause to many whites dependent on black help. Orania's apostles argue that doing one's own chores isn't that bad.

"To me, good hard work is a privilege," said Mr. Smit, a boilermaker and welder by trade. "It's healthy. It keeps you bodily fit. Because people don't work that hard, that's what makes them fat."

"You have a black working for you and they mess it up," Mr. Smit said.

Some other whites were as quick to vent their prejudices. Loudewyk van der Merwe, 56, an electrician who was rewiring the town auditorium, told a rambling tale about how his father, who quit his farm for the mines years ago, left 32 donkeys in the care of a black laborer who later sold them. High Technology in the Veld

Professor Boshoff, a soft-spoken academic who taught at the University of Pretoria, wanted his nation-state to encompass Namaqualand, Bushmanland and the Karoo, semi-arid regions that he said included 30 percent of South Africa's territory but only 10 percent of its population. Creating a whites-only homeland around Pretoria or Johannesburg, he said, is no longer feasible.

"To try today to move millions of people is just impossible, so our idea is this," Mr. Boshoff said.

President F. W. de Klerk has ruled out a white homeland, and the African National Congress has rejected racial partitioning of the country. But Professor Boshoff said he hoped that a black government would accept white secession as an alternative to armed rebellion.

"As far as I read the signs, it's a small price to pay," he said.

Mr. Boshoff limned his vision of happy God-fearing whites prospering from a dimly defined high technology that would transform Orania into a sort of Silicon Valley on the veld.

He predicted that his homeland's population would swell to two million Afrikaners. So far, only 14 families have settled in Orania.

"There's no work for a man," complained Mr. van der Merwe, who lives in Pretoria. He insisted that he would settle in Orania if he could find a steady job.

Professor Boshoff, who commutes from Pretoria, said more than 50 of the town's 84 houses had been sold.

Most Afrikaners show little interest in retreating to a rustic backwater whose brightest attractions are the stars at night. Other South Africans, black and white, have derided Professor Boshoff's project as unrealistic.

"If they want to protect their Afrikaner culture, they must teach it to their children," Mr. Fisher said.

Mr. Boshoff, who from 1980 to 1983 headed the Broederbond, a secret society that advanced Afrikaner interests, spoke mystically of his "volk," variously translated as nation or people. A refuge, however remote, for the Afrikaner was preferable to their diaspora, he said.

"They may live in Argentina, they may live in Chile, they may live in Australia or Canada," he said, "but they would destroy the nation."

Photo: "We are very anxious to have a plan for the survival of the Afrikaner nation," said Carel Boshoff, a former theology professor, who heads a movement to create a nation state for South Africa's white minority. He pointed to a map outlining the proposed territory. (Christopher S. Wren/The New York Times) Map of South Africa highlighting Orania