Kleinfontein, Gauteng’s own 'Orania lite' facing battle to stay alive

JOHANNESBURG - The whites-only, Afrikaner settlement of Kleinfontein is facing a battle to survive following the newly published valuation roll by the Tshwane Municipality.

The roll has the 900-hectare enclave estimated to be worth around R290 million, up from about R21 million it was valued at in the previous one.

The increase in value is likely to see the settlement go from paying about R50 000 a month in rates to about R2 million a month.

Last year, the Gauteng High Court declared "Orania lite" to be an illegal settlement that was not compliant with the Tshwane Municipality’s land use regulations.

"They are proposing a ridiculous tax which is basically closing down Kleinfontein, should it go ahead," said Dannie De Beer, Kleinfontein spokesperson.

"I can equate it to a land grab. I can equate it to an eviction."

VALUATION ROLL

Every 4-5 years, every municipality must publish a general valuation roll.

The roll has details of all rateable properties in the municipality and the higher the property’s value, the more the rates it will be charged.

The Tshwane Municipality recently published its valuation roll in March this year, with the previous one having been done in 2020.

The municipality has received about 4000 disputes from residents accusing the city of over-inflating the value of their properties.

At the time of publication, EWN had not received a reply from the municipality.

However, ActionSA, which is part of the multiparty government in Tshwane, said the property values in the capital increased by 24.7% this year, compared to 37.5% in 2020.

At a recent media briefing, Tshwane Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya said the city had noted the frustration over the new valuation roll.

Moya said that’s why the draft budget for the 2025/26 financial year included a 4% decrease to property taxes.

"It’s good that property values go up. Secondly, we have tried to cushion that increase by reducing property rates," she said.

Residents who want to dispute the valuations of their properties have until 2 May to do so.

'ORANIA LITE' HISTORY

Dannie De Beer, Kleinfontein spokesperson and a member of the board of directors, said the settlement had already registered its disputes.

In an interview with EWN, De Beer said the new property valuations would effectively kill the Afrikaner settlement, which was already struggling to stay afloat.

"We have been taxed to death," he said. "The motive of this, one can only guess, is the politics of the day. (Maybe) Tshwane is angry at us as a community."

The idea of Kleinfontein started around 1990, shortly after the then-President FW De Klerk made a public statement that he intended to bring about the end of Apartheid South Africa.

The release of Nelson Mandela during the same year gave credence to De Klerk’s pronouncements.

With these political developments, there was a sweeping belief among right-wing white groups in the country that creating an independent homeland for Boer / Afrikaner people within South Africa was no longer possible.

In 1992, the Afrikaner political movement, Boere-Vryhyeidsbeweging (BVB) established Kleinfontein by buying four farms on the eastern side of Pretoria, near Bronkhorstspruit, just one year after Carel Boshoff purchased a small town in the Northern Cape that would later be known as Orania.

The farms were held in a close corporation, whose member interest was bought solely by three BVB members - Jan Groenewald, and Hennie van der Walt and Niël de Beer.

The three men would later be known as the "Founding Fathers of Kleinfontein".

Niël de Beer, now a frail octogenarian, has relinquished all his interests to his son Dannie.

Dannie said Kleinfontein was established around the same values as Orania - an exclusive enclave for Afrikaner people grounded in self-determination.

"Orania is often called our sister town, we are called Orania lite at times jokingly," he said.

"The difference between Orania and Kleinfontein is Orania bought a complete town with all the infrastructure already installed. They had a sewage works, town hall, rugby field and several houses, roads – they started off far ahead of us."

Despite the initial hurdles, the founding fathers were desperate to expand Kleinfontein, buying up more and more of its neighbouring farms.

Today, Kleinfontein is made up of nine separate land parcels, totalling close to 900 hectares of land.

Afrikaners who wanted to stay in the enclave bought a stand and would be allowed to build their properties on the stand without owning their houses.

Like Orania, Kleinfontein is fully self-sufficient, meaning it has its own waste collection, sewage, water works and purchases electricity directly from Eskom instead of the municipality.

This is funded through monthly levies paid by Kleinfontein residents.

However, the expansion of Kleinfontein has not been smooth sailing.

In 2022, four disgruntled Kleinfontein residents took the settlement to court, alleging its expansion was unlawful and it was not providing proper services.

Judge Adrian Vorster concurred, saying the Kleinfontein land had been zoned "agricultural" and not "residential", so it was unlawful for people to live on it without proper authorisation from the municipality.

"The rate at which the settlement expanded outstripped the rate at which the KBKB (Kleinfontein Boerebelange Köoperatief Beperk) could expand basic services and infrastructure, leading to inadequate water supply, degradation of road infrastructure, and inadequate sewerage systems," said Vorster.

"To address the infrastructure problems, the directors of the KBKB increased levies, which led to ever-growing discontent amongst residents."

KLEINFONTEIN ZONING

Documents viewed by EWN, show five of the nine land parcels under Kleinfontein are classified as "agricultural" while four are "non-permitted".

The "non-permitted" basically means the properties are not aligned with the municipality’s land use or town planning regulations.

It is mostly the "non-permitted" land parcels whose values have significantly shot up.

One parcel was valued at R855,000 in 2020 and is now valued at R54 million, representing a 6215% increase.

De Beer is unequivocal about what this valuation would mean for the future of Kleinfontein if it remains as is past the 2nd of May.

"It will kill us," he said.

"There is such a thing as you can't escape death and taxes but be realistic, is Tshwane (municipality) ready to have 500 elderly people living on SASSA grants?"

De Beer said the settlement was in a fight for its life. Much of the roads around the settlement are gravel and can only be negotiated by big cars.

De Beer said the board of directors now face the difficult choice of using its reserves on fixing some of the roads or putting it towards the legal challenge it's anticipating against the Tshwane metro.

Despite all this, De Beer said it's "unlikely" any of the Kleinfontein Afrikaners would be taking up Donald Trump’s offer to be refugees in the United States of America.

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