Free Republic

From a distance, Orania looks like any other small town in rural South Africa. But once inside, the visitor is struck by an obvious difference. Everyone here is white. And in a country where menial work in wealthy areas is typically done by black employees, white people here mop supermarket floors, wield leaf blowers and harvest the nuts on pecan farms. Orania residents are 100-percent white in a country that has declared an end to racial segregation. The history of this incongruity dates back to 1991, when apartheid was in its death throes. White Afrikaners -- descendants of 17th-century Dutch...

In the sparsely populated Karoo desert in the heart of South Africa's Northern Cape, the spirit of apartheid lives on. I spent a few days in Orania, a town established in 1991 where no black people live. I was part of a BBC crew, including Zimbabwean journalist Stanley Kwenda, who were accredited to visit.

'Welkom in Orania' proclaims a mural, painted in white, blue and orange. But this South African town, in the remote Northern Cape province, does not extend its welcome to everyone. The colour scheme on the wall - accompanied by the community emblem of a boy pulling up his sleeves - harks back to the old apartheid flag. Orania, one of the last outposts of racial segregation, is a whites-only enclave. Around 1,000 people live in the rural community, established in 1991 during the last years of apartheid.