Speaker 1: White.
Speaker 2: Choose a Volkswagen service for your Volkswagen commercial vehicle the
same reason people hire Cattle the builder, or Gary the painter,
or Shame the electrician. Because our technicians know how to
meet your vehicle's needs like you meet those of your customers.
And we only use one hundred percent genuine parts with
a two year warranty, so you know you're getting the best,
just like your clients. Book your Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle service
today at Volkswagenservice dot Ie.
Speaker 3: Us pigeon.
Speaker 1: See everything when we're flapping around up here, well almost everything.
Speaker 4: See Burning Certain fumes releases invisible toxic pollutants which can
trigger asthma and lead to serious illness.
Speaker 3: So if you're going to light a fire in your home,
make sure to.
Speaker 1: Use low smoke fuel. Oh and never wing at burning rubbish.
Choosing low smoke fuel is better for all of us.
Let's clear the air for everyone, and remember.
Speaker 3: To clean chimneys and heating appliances at least once a year.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the Government of.
Speaker 5: Ardens, meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly,
flapping his.
Speaker 1: Wing dig down in a forest, man.
Speaker 5: It gonna cause a tree fall letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody see it. Nobody see you don't need no
man like you, and you got backed for FLA. That's
wain Man. Don't black a dang on the panel? Mann matter? Man?
Speaker 5: All right, you're a stridam Welcome to the show. How
are you doing?
Speaker 4: Man, I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for the opportunity and I'm
looking forward to have a good conversation with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm likewise I always enjoy talking to you South Africans. Uh,
you were even among your countrymen, particularly impressive. You can
highly recommend it. So if you could describe who are
you and what do you do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if there are some of your some of
your viewers who haven't heard of the community of Urania.
I think South Africa has been in the limelight in
the past few years, especially with the American interest growing
into South Africa South Africans again Africans specifically, But the
truth is that the challenges that we are facing today
in South Africa is not something that is all that new.
Speaker 1: It's something that.
Speaker 4: Anyone who were willing and able to try and look
into the future and try to predict certain things could
see quite a few years back to an extent that
the founders of this project is community. Okay, so Urania
is a very specific community, and that is a community
that already in the nineteen eighties started in terms of
ideological context, and it was people who said they see
that change is coming, and that change is going to
be possibly catastrophic for Africaners as a group, as a nation,
as a people what we call in Africans a folk
to survive and in order to survive what is coming,
it is not enough to just be pragmatic. You need
to establish something lasting. You need to actually go out
and do some triage and establish something before the worst happens.
And there is a set of let's say, rules that
they created in terms of what is necessary for us
as a people to survive.
Speaker 1: And that is what the effort is.
Speaker 4: It is an effort of the both the survivability of
a people as well as the freedom of a people.
And our argument broadly could be described as what must
we change about ourselves, what must be sacrificed, what must
we sit as non negotiable rules for the next generations
to thrive.
Speaker 1: So in the.
Speaker 4: Nineteen eighties, already before a major political change happened in
South Africa. These people said, Okay, what we need to
do is if we want to survive, there's only one way,
and that is to be a demographic majority in an area.
If that is the conclusion, then there are certain requirements,
most important probably being the idea of owned labor. And
I think we can maybe discuss that in length later
in this conversation, because that is the most cardinal policy
of Urania. That is the most necessary thing in terms
of Urania's survival and we as a people survival.
Speaker 1: So we said, we need our own piece of land.
Speaker 4: On that we must build own institutions, and that must
all be done with our own labor.
Speaker 1: And that is the way forward.
Speaker 4: Urania has been established ideologically in nineteen eighty eight, physically
in nineteen ninety one when land was purchased, and ever
since then that the big and daunting task of actually
bowling institutions, erecting infrastructure and and and continuing a life. Yeah,
in this part of the country. It's been a very
interesting journey.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so several things there. Uh One, you know, you
describe the sort of forward looking nature of it, right,
the idea that this that there was this negative event
coming over the horizon. Uh, I have your countryman on
quite regularly, but just for the sake of the argument,
was that prediction correct?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: What did you know the people who founded this sea coming?
And what is life like in the rest of South Africa.
I understand that a lot of the coverage is over
the top, you know, particularly from shall we say, you
know American and Canadian influencers. I'll leave it at that,
but we're they correct in that gas.
Speaker 4: I think there are a few arguments to be made,
but in general for the African people, there's two specific
things to look at. One is uh standard of living, safety,
security and so on, which declined general public services, ability
to integrate into the general public life, which which happened
to now be a dangerous inserviceable and many things that
I think your your your viewers possibly can't can't even
comprehend that, the lack of service delivery, thrash piling up
in the streets, rolling blackouts, you know, many negative things.
But but even that is not the main factor for me,
and it's not the main factor for can I say
the true believers of Grana, the people who believe in
this idea and the solution. The true thing, The true
issue is a loss of freedom. The loss of freedom
and the loss of the ability to craft your own
future that goes with it. It is bad to live
in dire economic circumstances.
Speaker 1: It's dire.
Speaker 4: It's bad to have opportunities taken away from you. It
is bad to have the risk of being murdered or
being raped or being robbed constantly. And it is bad
when the streets of South Africa are overflowing with sewage
and things like that. Obviously, they are still some islands
of excellence and we can also speak about that maybe,
but in general there's a lot of decline, specifically in
regards to infrastructure. What is worse than all those things,
Arguably one of the worst fates they could possibly be,
is to not be in control of your own future,
not having the opportunity to take the responsibility to be
in a certain extent, to be someone sitting on the bench,
not participating, to be just someone in the crowd looking
as other players play out the game. That is your
future and the future of your children and the future
of your people. That is a worse fate than just
having bad civil delivery or insecure environment and that is
to somewhat our collective fate. It's not necessarily our individual
faith right. So individually South Africans Africanas still have opportunities
in the country. I don't deny that. I also think
that they still have international opportunities. Many of them immigrate
and they go seek on an individual basis, they go
and seek better time. On the individual basis, they go
and they say, listen, eighteen murders per day in a
country is just not normal.
Speaker 1: We need to get out of here.
Speaker 4: Far murders and the brutality that goes with it's not normal.
We need to get out of here. The fact that
there's one hundred and forty plus laws based on race
is bad.
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here.
Speaker 4: All. The fact that in the heights of load sheading,
which is somewhat better now, but in the heights of
load cheating we had up to twelve hours without electricity
a day is so bad that I would rather go
to Australia, Canada, America, Britain wherever. That is an individual choice,
and it's good and people should have their choice, as
they should have the choice to now take up the
American President Donald Trump's offer to immigrate to the United
States as refugees.
Speaker 1: They should have those options. Those are individual options.
Speaker 4: Those are choices that individual or an individual family or
an individual couple can make and they can go look
for a very future.
Speaker 1: If that if individualism was all there is to life.
Speaker 4: These sample opportunities in Southern Africa, South Africa and its neighboring.
Speaker 1: Countries, as well as there is of the world, especially
the West. But that is not what we are looking for.
Speaker 4: That is not what we want, it's not what we
dream of, and it's not what we want to achieve
in South Africa. Is it's possible to buy yourself quite
a luxurious lifestyle, even even to some extent a safe lifestyle,
by privatizing service delivery and paying on top of your
taxes just much more, to privatize your security, to privatize
your water, to privatize your electricity and so on, and
just live behind big walls and go out to certain
areas and still have a good and luxurious life.
Speaker 1: It is possible.
Speaker 4: Those are individual solutions, as is refugee status in the
US or immigration to the anglosphere in general. What we
are looking and it's one of the things that people
misunderstand about Tournia. That's not what we are looking for.
We want a public life. We want our language to
flourish in a collective scenes. We want our people to
flourish in terms of their religion, in terms of their values,
in terms of what they believe in a collective scenes,
not only in individual scenes. There must be public spaces
that are African or Christian spaces. If you don't have that,
you just have an individual, privatized future for yourself. And
it's not necessarily selfish. It can be selfish, but that's
not our end goal. We want to make an area
that is free, that is that is that is Africana
and that is Christian and that we can live and
thrive on. If there is no public schools where your
language and your religion has been put first, if there
are no public spaces where your children can plain their
own languages, if there are no higher education, university level education,
and public churches where.
Speaker 1: Those things can thrive, then you.
Speaker 4: Might have an individualized future, but you don't have a
future for people. And that is the key, in my opinion,
for the success of for Ania and what we want
to do and what we want to achieve.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the immigration, and you know, as an American,
I am of two minds about it. One, we have
quite a lot of immigration to my country, and if
you know, more of them were people like you and yours.
Quite happy about that, right, given the you know, given
the system as it is. But at the same time,
I see that being sort of a path to cultural annihilation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: You have people who move out of a community based
off of that you know, common ancestry, that language, that culture.
And okay, sure there may be a neighborhood that's you know,
forty fifty seventy percent South African, but the schools those
children will go to will be Westernized for good or frail.
You know, they will be Americans, they will be Brits,
they will be Australians in a generation or two. And
so I understand that that is an individually rational decision, right,
you might well live better in Melbourne than you could
and you know some city in South Africa, and so
individually that makes a great deal of sense. But when
we look at this collectively, right, you you know, whoever
this is as a like a bearer of culture, someone
who is part of something bigger than themselves.
Speaker 3: It's a feeling, fixing you to the road, filling every sense,
the bold dynamic lines you can't ignore, and smarter technology
that guides and connects you. Cooper Layon powered by petrol
diesel or next gen plug in hybrid pure driving Exhilaration.
Explore our latest offers, including the Coopra five year warranty
at Coopraofficial dot Ie Coopra design.
Speaker 5: That moves many of those individual rational decisions, well, they
don't look so rational anymore. And this is something I
think that many Westerners, particularly Western angles, have a hard
time with this idea of viewing themselves as a part
of a collective. Obviously, this is not necessarily what I
brought you on to talk about, but I'm curious if
you have any thoughts about that transition from viewing yourself
as simply one guy, maybe your family too, as part
of a culture, and if you could explain, do you
think that being a minority group has something to do
with that view?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good, that's an interesting question. Let's start.
Speaker 4: I want to start by stating the following very important
announcement though me specifically, but African daiss in general aren't
that well.
Speaker 1: In English. If we were to.
Speaker 4: You know, in terms of English language skills, if we
were to immigrate to the United States, for example Minnesota
and open a preschool, we would spell it learning center.
So that would be a net positive for the United
States in my opinion, even though we have our handicaps.
Speaker 1: That's me true.
Speaker 5: I would say that's sort of damning by fate praise right,
grading yourself on that scale.
Speaker 4: Right, So no, but don amore note And the reason
why I said that is I think Africanas moving to Australia,
the US, England, Canada, they make fantastic Americans, They make
fantastic Australians. They make they make great Candy's people. And
I see some of my former classmates or university friends.
I see them on social media and I see that
they are now celebrating Australia Day. They are celebrating in
America the fourth of July, and they are giving it.
They're all they want to be patriots. They they they
immediately adapt to their new host country and they try
to be the best possible Americans that they can be.
There are many people immigrating to such countries, horrible immigrants.
They don't want to integrate, and that might be the
saving of them as a collective culture, for better for worse. Africaners, however,
make great immigrants. They want to adapt. They understand that
it's a privilege to be in the new host country,
and for that reason they give their all. They cannot
integrate their children into the new culture fast enough. They
cannot celebrate and paint their faces with the American flag,
Australian flag or whatever fast enough. They do long own
they missed, they missed the African sunset, and the animals,
and and and and the people and the and and everything.
Speaker 1: But they integrate, and that is fatal. That is quite
fatal to us.
Speaker 4: And as you correctively said, there might be a neighborhood
that is still quite South African orientated. Even I know
that there are some military companies in the Middle East,
for example, in the UAE and someone where where the
engineers have meetings in Africans, because so many of the
best engineers just immigrated there for a better pay check.
And I have a tough time blaming them, because they
looked out for their own fine acial beast future and
that of their children, and they buy the lifestyle that
they can they and so on, because they have great
skills and it's you know, scar skills and so on. However,
they might hold out. They might speak Africans to their children.
Their children will marry Australians, Americans, Englishmen, they will go
to school in the language of the host country. They
will adapt to the politics of the host country, they
will have friends with the values of the ost country.
They will stop being what they are now, they will
not be Africanish anymore. And if you have an individualistic,
capitalistic worldview, and it's very easy to translate kind of
free market thinking away from the marketplace into the marketplace
of peoples and say, well, it is a better investment
for myself, better in individual investment for myself to now
be an Englishman or American or Australian. And in the
marketplace of nations, my new host nation won the competition.
And for that reason, my old culture will die. It
is not it is not competitive commercially anymore in the
competition of nations.
Speaker 1: And that is tragic. And I do not agree with that.
I think it is important to preserve what we are.
I think.
Speaker 4: As a as a Christian, you know, all of us
even are sinful, sinful Christians. As a Christian, I believe
my people was placed on this earth by the Lord
and should exist. And I don't think it's just merely
a transactional relationship between my culture and another culture which
can currently give me more, give me, give me, you know,
advantages and safety and money and an opportunity. I think
I'm must give my efforts and the efforts of those
in my community to preserve what we have here, not
only to preserve it, to build it out. It is
a slow depth to just preserve. It is the mistake
of mainstream conservatism to just try and conserve fifty years
ago or twenty years ago, ten years ago, that is death.
Speaker 1: You need to be conservative in your identity, but progressive
in your ideals. You must go forward.
Speaker 4: If you do not go forward, it's nose tachnoian, it's
only falling behind. And for that reason we try to
build out our culture. Yeah, and it comes back to
what I said the introductionary remarks, and that is that
if you do not have a public Afrikaans space, if
you don't have a city square, if you do not
have a school where the values are not only preserved
but actively pursuit actively, there must be an active effort
to expand it. If you don't have that, your culture
is dying. It might you know, slow deaths, one hundred
years death, but it is dying. And for that reason,
we opted out as African Honiss and South Africa, the
Urania people. We opted out of mainstream party politics. We
opted out of just institutional fighting back, which is also
very important and necessary. We opted out of many of
the mainstream debates, and we said, if we want to survive,
we must bold a city for our people. We started, Yeah,
and one of the most add parts of the country.
For many this would be considered desert. And it's an
in jest and joke and jest many times referred to
the media and South Africa and other South Africans as
you know, running into the desert. It's dry enough that
you can say, it's hot enough, it's forty degrees cells yesterday,
it's it's you can you can you can call a desert.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's added, it's try. It's a tough life.
Speaker 4: But if we do not do that and go to
an area where there is demographic hole, demographic vacuum, and
pick commem a demographic majority in such an own area
and build a city with Afrikaans and African or families
with the values that we shae that you hear it
at home, and then you go to school and you
hear that same values and that same beliefs and that
same religion at school, and you go to church and
you have the same message, and you go to play
or socialize or have a beer at the pub and
you year the same message.
Speaker 1: You cannot do that.
Speaker 4: If you can't create a public order in terms of
a city, at least, at the very least for your
culture where you can live it, then you do not
have anything. Then you just have a you have a
faint memory of what your culture used to be.
Speaker 5: I will admit, given that it's on the second week
of roughly negative fifteen celsius here doesert doesn't sound half bad.
But in all seriousness, I'm glad that you brought up
the kind of marketplace mentality to your own culture, because
this is something that is sort of endemic in the
American conservative movement. And look, I grew up around these people.
Speaker 1: I love them.
Speaker 5: I have a great deal of affection for them. They
are my people. But ultimately their beliefs are suicidal. The
things that they say, the things that they hold are
paradoxically what's killing them. You know, they whine and moan.
You can use a ruter word there about you know,
the woke left. But they are ultimately conserving, as you've said,
the same ideas that they purport to hate, just slightly
out of date. You know, they would be woke in
nineteen sixty four even. And to me, when I criticize
those people, it's not out of hatred. It's not that
I want them to fail. It's exactly the opposite. And
it's why when I look to your people, when I
look to other projects in South Africa, the solidar are
taught the other things, I see that as being a
rational and clear headed response to many of the same
problems in both for our nations. One of the things
that I want to bring up talking about the market,
and you mentioned this earlier when talking about labor, is
that in both my country and yours, there are very
cheap ways to build things right. You can hire people
who are not legally here, you can go for kind
of the lowest better and get something built quickly and cheaply.
So why is that something that you at Urania have
specifically avoided. What's the thought process, how do you get
things done? And again, how much if this matters right,
how much more expensive is it? And why is that
worth it?
Speaker 1: Good question.
Speaker 4: I I sometimes have trouble explaining the owner labor principle
to Americans in some states and Europeans in genital because
they just have a different mentality towards that altogether, although
I believe it is changing in Europe specifically also in
news worth migration. Yes, mass migration is political, and I
don't want to take any of the blame away from
the politicians selling out people in terms of just bringing
more and more immigrants into the countries. That is, that
is that is also fully on the shoulders of such
politicians doing such things. But there is an economic side
to it a few sites. One is the fact that
the European population not having enough kids, so you need
to bring in young immigrants, you know, in order to
keep the economy going, and the need for labor for
doing the jobs that that native Europeans don't want to
do anymore. So the immigrants they're willing to do it
because they send the money to in regards to a
great exchange rate, they send it home and their families
live well because they are willing to sweep the streets
or take away the trash or do the jobs that
other people don't want to do.
Speaker 1: So that there's that. However, it's not.
Speaker 4: As progressed as it is in South Africa. So just
a quick note in trying to explain this to a
European Austrian guy.
Speaker 1: While a guy, I used this.
Speaker 4: Quite quite often because this little event really helped me
understand Urania from an outside perspective as well. So at
this Austrian gentleman here, and I I wondered, how am
I going to explain the own labor principle to this guy?
He doesn't have the context in regards to how much
what we call Nuronia foreign labor is a thing in Africa,
how much that kind of colonial mindset transferred into South
African modern day South Africa under the old regime in
South Africa, but also under the new one. And how
I'm going to explain to this guy He probably does
all his own house work and everything and so on.
And I said, okay, this is how it works. We
believe Africana should do all their own labor and so on.
And he said, oh, well, I see it as this
tell me if I'm correct, I say, let me air.
Speaker 1: He said, Okay.
Speaker 5: What you did is.
Speaker 4: You realized that if you use the cheapest possible labor,
you individualize the revenue, but you socialize the cost. That
the most spot on explanation of this thing I've been
working with my entire life. Yes, you individualize the revenue,
meaning that if you are a business owner of any
kind and you have access to the cheapest possible labor,
the effect of that is you make more money.
Speaker 1: That's a fact.
Speaker 4: That means that in South Africa they asked all opportunities
to make some money, especially with labor being so cheap. However,
you socialize the cost, the cost that comes with cheap labor,
especially the cheapest possible labor. So for many people, with
the constantly rising minimum wage in South Africa, it is
socialized approach to that. Many people illegally bringing people from
Zimbabwe or from Malawi to come and work for them,
willing to work for even less and outside of the
framework of legal employer employer relationships. But with that comes
issues foreigners coming into the country willing to work for
almost nothing. It's just the next iteration of what we
had in South Africa that is a skewed labor relationship
where africanners and anyone else who could afford it now also.
Speaker 1: Including a growing and growing black.
Speaker 4: Metal class in South Africa, just get in a very
unequal manner people to do everything. So you've got someone
to tend to your garden, you have someone to clean
clean your house, and people that work in your factory
or whatever. And then they cannot understand how in private life,
in the financial what portalized the business sector, they have
complete control over these people in the manner that they
see fit. Some some in very firm, fair ways, very
very good and nice ways, other in very unfair and
very ugly ways in labor relationships. But the day the
election comes, then suddenly the middle class business owner and
the absolute bottom of the socioeconomic class worker their interests
don't align anymore. And suddenly this guy votes for a
kind of revolutionary party. He votes for expropriation without compensation,
he votes for extreme politicians. And this people can't understand it.
Me as a minority, I'm but I'm the business owner,
I'm the farm owner, and so why does this person
that I can pay next to nothing to do my work?
And he needs to obey all my orders. Why can
he now have equals, say in the election. But not
only that, but other problems comes with it. As that
Austrian guy told me, you socialize the cost, so that
person willing to work for undrodrand maybe heasies well the
people you are well off, I can just steal that
stuff and go again and get to a new employer,
can help give information that leads to a farm attack
or a farmer. So that's the cost is socialized. It
impacts all community theft and whatnot that can come with it,
but also culturally and also very specifically politically, because if
it's a one man, one vote democracy, it is the
number of people that counts, not the level of education,
not the level of effort that you put into the business,
not the good or bad decisions. It's just one man,
one vote, and for that you then socialize the cost,
so you individualize the revenue. There's money to be made,
and I think you see it in the United States
as well, people saying well, I'd rather have the cheapest
possible guy campaint my roof, or tend to my garden
or bolt something for me.
Speaker 1: But I just don't want them politically involved.
Speaker 4: Well, the fact is they are, even if it's election
or not election, if it's a culture, if it's crime, whatever,
there is an influence. There's a price tag that comes
with cheap labor.
Speaker 5: This is a conversation that I've had multiple times. I
recently had on Lucas Potkin, a man who is producing
things fully within the US. And you know, one of
the things he spoke about is that the there's a
lot of interest in sort of exaggerating the cost of
employing Americans. And he says, you know, the constant number
you hear is double. It will cost double, It will
cost double, it will cost double. And he says, it's like, no,
it's not. It's around thirty percent, which is more right.
I'm not going to say that that's an insignificant discount,
but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that much.
And in addition, not only do you pay a little more,
but you get to create a community of people in
rural areas who traditionally don't have access to steady employment,
who can you know, support their families, have something that
they make that they are proud of. And sure, you
can't point to that on a balance sheet you can't
pull up in your shareholder meeting and say, oh, you know,
there are now eighty people with good jobs who can
spread their money around and have something to be proud of.
So I think that's a definite part as well, right,
that myopically focused on that one variable, right, the revenue
at the expense of other things. And in this conversation,
you know, everyone always goes to the trades, which are
certainly very important for you know, blue collar workers to
have dignity to have something they can support their family on.
But one of the interesting dynamics in America is this
has started to happen to traditional white collar jobs. You
have companies like Amazon and Apple and Google just in
the last couple of weeks laying off tens of thousands
of highly compensated Americans and hiring roughly double the amount
of workers from India. Again, that same sort of behavior,
and even in relatively you know, kind of unseerious jobs
like I think of you know, how many people who
you know, how many girls that I went to college
with that after school, you know, worked as a nannie,
worked as an all pair, you know, took a job
for a good wage, right sixty or seventy thousand dollars
a year to mind the children of you know, a
pair of high powered lawyers or something like that in
Chicago and New York. And sure those jobs still exist,
but you know, now many of them are you know,
girls from Brazil or other countries who were happy to
work for you know, forty cents on the dollar, which
is a princely sum where they are from. And sure,
you know that individual girl may be perfectly fine, perfectly
good at her job, but that opportunity is you know,
taken from somewhere else. And again that's not the most
serious job, right, that's not the most important thing, per se.
But you see that same pattern over and over and
over again. You know that idea that you know, we
will simply apply the law, the the logic of you know,
the open marketplace to people, turning you know, labor into
a commodity in that way. And one other thing that
I think needs to be said is that you know,
you mentioned the fact that you know, oftentimes these jobs
are you know, low status. People don't want to do them.
But I think a large portion of it is people
won't do them for the wages the market is producing.
You know, I think of in America, there are certain
trades which are gated, right, you need to have, you know,
a license or a bond or something like that. And
it's this interesting relationship where those trades are still a
high status and highly compensated. You know, electricians and plumbers,
they are always the ones you here mentioned, whereas others
that used to be trades. You know, people who you know,
hang grywall, roofers, things like that, those have been completely gutted.
Even in my own instance, I think, you know, when
I was an early teenager, you know, many of the
guys a little bit older than me worked as roofers
in the summer, and they make good money for a teenager.
By the time I was old enough to do it,
that job was exclusively for Hondurans and people from El Salvador.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do it.
Speaker 5: There's no way you couldn't communicate with them.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't. There's some certain valuable life skills and business
skills and endurance skills and work skills that falls away.
Speaker 5: Right, And you mentioned, of course, you know that you
were doing this differently at Rania, and obviously I think
a large, like a huge advantage to that is if
you are living out in the desert, out in the
middle of nowhere, it's helpful to have a whole crew
of men who knows how everything works. But can you
speak a little bit now that we're done complaining, I
guess about both you know what you guys do right,
and then how that has proved to be an advantage.
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, we haven't discovered the magic wandet
we I think we're making good progress, but we have
a challenges as well. So so we do have our
challenges aroun Now it's not the event, it's not perfect,
but but I think we have found certain things that
definitely pays off already and will do more so on
the long run. So very important thing that you mentioned
is that societal integration, whether you are a pair or
nanny or a rufer as a teenager, it's a part
of social development. And the interesting thing of South Africa's
and I think also the future of the West, is
that a lot of these advantages that you get in community,
if you make enough money, you can just buy your
way into it. You can you can buy your way
into a good school for your kids where they socialize
other kids in the same situation. So you spend as
little as possible money on your labor, as much as
possible on your kids and whatever. They get good opportunities
to get a good school.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's a that's an.
Speaker 4: Economically defined community, very actually very isolated. In the same
people you know complaining about Urania being quote unquote so isolated,
isolates their children in these elite schools, elite colleges and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But there's no whole society.
Speaker 4: These kids don't necessarily have the interaction with poverty in
their own ethnicity or maybe opportunities in their own environment.
And that is why our public approach is so important.
So it must be a whole, it must be an
entirety of a society. And that's the first thing. Second
thing is skill development. And I must say not only
during the final stages of the previous regime, but also
still in this regime, many well off africaners has gotten
to a point where they lost blue collar skills. My grandfather,
for example, was a fantastic bricklayery, was a man that
could work with steel very very well and with wood,
great craftsmen. But the generation after those people lost such skills.
So we need to and and the generations after that
obviously of course as well.
Speaker 1: So we need to.
Speaker 4: Rebuild that and for that reason, we created a college
in Ornia specifically focusing on these skills. You mentioned electricity
and plumbing to the very relevant courses here as well
as farming farm diploma farming. So we must actively go
out and pursue the education of that those skills. And
we do live in a commercial world, so you must
make it successful enough so that it could bring in
people just coming for the commercial value of such an education,
and you keep as many of the people here, but
if they just come for the studies and living, and
it's also find they bring money into your economy.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 1: In the community to.
Speaker 4: Try and uplift people, people who maybe come from poverty
and so on, we have certain programs to we try
and get them formalized training. People who've been maybe working
on a construction side on a farm, get them formalized training.
And we have a very important program to help people
become homeowners rather than perpetual renters. So we try to
take people from a perpetual renting future and try and
make them homeowners, which is very very important. It puts
down roots, It commits to the community and so on.
But you also empower that person and the next generation
if they come from bad circumstances, you create, incentivize and
create circumstances in which they can prosper in terms of
day development generational development. At the end of the day,
we still need to centrally enforce it.
Speaker 1: We try to.
Speaker 4: We try to create culture, internal new culture and new
what we call a new a arbates perdiellum or a
new labor context.
Speaker 1: I guess, so that it becomes a cultural thing and
it is working.
Speaker 4: We can definitely see that people staying or on for
over a certain amount of time keeps that keeps the
newcomers accountable in terms of labor practices. But the stage
we still centrally enforce labor practices. We just enforce the
fact that in Urania only africaners work, and that is
the way that you change the culture. It's necessary to
do otherwise on the short term, before it becomes a
real cultural depth. I think it already started developing, but
it's so important that you manage to enforce it to
make it possible that people really really adhere to the
principle of africaner only labor it's non negotiable. And as
it went over the past thirty years, we did see
more and more community based approach to that where the
local government doesn't have to keep newcomers accountable, but more
and more the people are stepping up and saying, this
is how it works. We will not accept your bringing
in foreign labor to our community.
Speaker 5: We do it.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 4: If it costs you ten thousand trans more to put
up a small roof or to whatever it is, what
it is, you do not privatize the reven socialize the cost. Here,
we socialize the advantages of owned labor. So that's been
very important to us.
Speaker 1: So I would say training and education.
Speaker 4: Secondly, the idea of creating a stable living and a
stable environment for people who are in blue collar jobs.
Try to make them homeowners, to help them participate in
the community and so on, and have integration of all
classes in the same area. And then finally the idea
that both the local government and the community must keep
the rest of the citizenry responsibly accountable for their labor practices.
Speaker 5: You mentioned home ownership. Obviously that's been in the news
in America and honestly over most of the anglosphere. Housing
has become extraordinarily expensive here for any number of reasons.
But the conversation, in my mind, it's sort of missing
several elements because, you know, home ownership in itself again, right, Okay,
so you've moved from an asset to you know, being
an eternal renter. That's certainly important. But you touched on
something that I think is perhaps the most important part,
which is one having something at stake, being a part
of culkin in the game exactly. You know, if you
were a renter, you you know, the town starts to
go downhill. Oh, you can move down the street, you
can move across the nation. Your lease may be twelve months.
You can tough it out for a few and go
somewhere else. You can be this sort of nomad, this
person from nowhere who's just at just as at home
at you know, at Vienna or Portland or Washington, d C.
Part of that be honest like rootless cosmopolitan class, and
in my mind, that is another form of that cultural
death we were talking about earlier. You really are nothing.
Then you were simply an atomized consumer, and you can
go where your consumption is the most you know, easy
and pleasurable. You have access to, you know, however many
you know, goods and services you want to consume, and
it's generally one of the things that I hate about
going to certain cities like London is the worst for this,
but also I look to places like you know, Austin, Texas,
you know, which used to be this kind of quirky
small town and has become sort of a second Los Angeles.
You know, it looks almost identical now. It's very odd
and in that you see obviously the death of culture
for those individual people, but also that place is no
longer what it was. It's no longer something unique. It
becomes just another outpost of that kind of globe market place.
And it's one of the things that I say this
as someone who's a product of it. You see very
strongly in the in the death of regional accents. My
great grandmother died not too long ago at you know,
her mid nineties, and she lived a very long life,
but she had a very specific regional accent which came
from you know, a certain area of a certain state.
The way that she said, you know, water was different,
that all of these little things that spoke to being
from a certain place, being of a certain culture. And
sure you know I grew up. I still am, you know,
very close to where she was born in the grand
scheme of things. But you know, I could minus a
few pieces of syntax. I could be from Milwaukee, I
could be from California. My accent has been completely and
totally rounded off. It sounds like an Internet American. And
sure you know I would be artificial. If I, you know,
got out my cowboy hat and tried to lean into it,
it'd be fake. But you see that sort of atomization
and the advantage to owning property, the advantage to being
tied to a place is that you can't do that.
Sure you could sell your house and move, but it's
way harder to do. You know, very few people you
know buy and sell homes every year. It tends to
both anchor you to a place, but also make you
care about a place, because you know, as someone whose
state is going through a very dramatic political upheaval. For
the negative, I am committed. My roots are here, especially
if you have children. All of these things and being
part of that renter class. And I don't blame people
for it. It's a very hard thing to climb out
of it sort of pulls you into that culture of nowhere.
So if you could, could you go into that program
a little bit, because it actually something I haven't heard of,
and I'm kind of interested to see one why you
guys think it's important to give people a place that
they own, but also how you go about helping people
with that.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, it's actually quite complicated, becau it's not an
easy program, and I wish we could do much, much,
much more than the current rate. Interesting thing is it's
such an augomiation of different approaches that came together in
a very complex system, and I think the one anchoring
thing is the fact that there is the world to
do it, The idea to do it, the wish to
do it, and everything else is secondary all the ways
that we achieve it. So it'd be quite complicated to explain,
but I'm going to try because there are so many
moving parts, one of which is the fact that we
have our own bank and our own local banking system,
which is a cooperative bank, meaning that every person with
an account at the bank becomes a shareholder at the bank.
You can vote at the bank for interest rates, for
both of directors, all those things. So there's a certain
connectiveness there as well, long history there, but that's an
important aspect. The second thing to say is that there
are institutions worth commercial visions, but not only such, so
their goal is to make money to go on, but
developing property still in line with what we want to
achieve as a community. I don't know what to call it,
maybe something like a free market with breaks on. So
you still have the ambition and intention to have commercial
success as one should have. Any ambitious person should should
want to have some level of success, but not to
the cost of all other things.
Speaker 1: So first you have the banking system.
Speaker 4: Then you have these commercial entities, but with the ambitions
of further in the community course. Then you have your
own town council, which are local government they were involved
as well.
Speaker 1: And then you have.
Speaker 4: Something not unique to African honers, but I think unique
in terms of the impact that it has in our
survivor currently and our cultural development, which is institutions like
the solidarity movement of Reforum and so on, both on donations,
monthly recurring donations, making them kind of meet up political
organizations or semi political organizations in the sense that they
are very widely represented, but they bring in a monthly
revenue from a bunch of contributors on a political scenes,
on a political social scenes, making development possible. So you
have the bank, you have the local government, you have
the internal commercial entities, and then locally and outside of Urania,
you have entities that bring in donations for the cause
of the people and turn that into commercial success. You
have all these lined up, and then with the basis
of that, what we did was the following. The Helping Fund,
which is Urania Movement.
Speaker 1: Where I'm affiliated, is our specific institution for.
Speaker 4: What shall I say, looking over the needy, But we
do it in terms of long term empowerment rather than
short term satisfaction and so on, So we don't do
really do food parcels and and and you know, short
term solutions. We try to focus on education, training, long
term things. We brought in donations to make special industry
loans possible so that people could at the bank in
terms of a normal commercial transaction get a loan, but
the twenty five percent deposit is covered indust free or
twenty percent deposits from the Helping Fund, so they still
pay back and that helps the next person, but that
part at least is interest free. Then you have the
local government working with commercial entities in some of the
older developments, and the commercial entities working on their own
and some of the newer developments like Faglie to make
it possible to serve it plots as cheaply as possible.
They are quite small, so that scale scaling as possible,
and then then put this unique kind of housing and
plots in the market, specifically for people who becomes a
first time ownern So you have the bank blending out
the money, you have this institution with donation support making
industry loans possible for the deposit part, and then you
have the commercial entities developing the land and making it
available for a much more affordable price. In some of
all the developments I think we did, the value of
the plots being sold was about twenty to twenty five
percent of market value, and there was also special arrangements
for the loans for the construction material. In many cases,
people built their own houses specifically because many people of
that socio economic status were in the construction sector, which
is one of around now's big economic sectors, so they
were able to with the weekends also build their own houses,
paint their own houses plaster, and so on.
Speaker 1: And that's basically the program.
Speaker 4: It's it's very very it's many levers and machines and
gears into one system. Is quite quite complicated to just
explain in simple terms. But you do need the banking system.
You do need the commercial developers that does it for money,
because that's a good incentive. You do need the donation
based entities such as the helping fund which we have
to run a movement or some of the other ones
at solidarity or so. And you do need the the
the person themselves having access to funds to do the
development and the willingness to do the development. So and
the local government of course, if I haven't mentioned that, so.
Speaker 1: Many gears go into this machine.
Speaker 4: But regardless of value structure it, I would suppose many
other ways to structure it here and elsewhere. Regardless of
how you structure it, there must be a collective will
to achieve such.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: If it's if you don't have the collective world to
do it. If they have will isn't day, there will
be no plans to be made. But if the will
is day, you can with whatever means you can make
the plans.
Speaker 5: So as we sort of you know, come into the
last segment of this interview. Uh, the coverage of your
town is quite interesting. Right wing distance across the West
are very interested in it for obvious reasons. But uh,
the mainstream press is not exactly kind to you for
obvious reasons. Of course, I'm curious what is what is
your interaction with outside observers, whether that is you know
the government of South Africa, whether that is you know
the press, because if you if you read the coverage
in the mainstream media, for whatever that's worth, Uh, it
doesn't seem to be accurate. So one, do you think
that there are so many people angry at a town
of three thousand people in the literal middle of nowhere?
Not to be rude, but it doesn't seem to be
the most relevant thing on the face of the earth.
And also, what is your interaction with the government like
because you know, given Bee and some other policies, it
seems as if they wouldn't be incredibly supportive. I'll put
it that way.
Speaker 4: That's a mouthful in terms of what I have to
react in a matter reply, but I'm going to try.
Let's start with the government relationship and then end with
the media relationship, and with media I mean all that
are interested somewhat out of proportion of our community. First,
the government, I.
Speaker 1: Would say.
Speaker 4: Someway between neutral and hostile. Neutral in the sense that
the normal government officials, people just doing their jobs over
there are don't really care that much. They don't really
care about Toronia. If we work together and the and
the relationship and the and the you know, there's reciprocity
of respect and so on, then then they finally just continue.
Speaker 1: Politically, it's somewhat different.
Speaker 4: So so officials in government not that much of a problem,
but politician is a very big problem. But Toronia has
got this unique position where it is in because of
the fact that as the government changed, African has still
had a a at a very big.
Speaker 1: Kind of power share.
Speaker 4: We still had the military, we had the police, we
had very politically involved people, very capable leaders. And at
that stage, uh political pressure that was put on the
new government forced them to acknowledge that a right to
self determination must be acknowledged on the long term and
that was written into this African constitution very very very
small and scrapy and not with a lot of attention
to it, but it is there and and we do
use that as well as we can. On the other hand,
you know the practical attacks from the eff they killed
the boy, killed the former party, or the anc themselves.
We just saw the Premier of the Northern Cape attacking
Urania again, so you have that. It's a very complex relationship.
The important thing is we're not doing anything illegal. We
are totally alternative, I think, much comparable to our great
ancestors tearing the Great Trek Whup. They didn't rebel against
the British or they did try, but it was very
short lived, as many other citizens of the British crown did.
They just packed up their things and they moved two
thousand kilometers away from the British center of power and
created new republics. They outside of a British there of influence.
It was not an illegal deed per se, although the
British tried to classify it as such. It was not illegal.
It was also not passive. It was an active It
was an act of creating your future, of making up something.
But it was not armed rebellion. It was just moving
away and starting something new. And in that sense, Urania
has a very unique problem to tackle. It's very you know,
what do you really do about it. If people say, well,
we're going to take up more responsibilities and expect less
and less the state, So that is the one side
of the queen.
Speaker 1: Then the media thing.
Speaker 4: So obviously a lot of coverage from YouTube is to
mainstream media, and I think so much has been said
about Irania, but in most cases people totally misunderstand us
because they are unable to break out of this kind
of duality, whether that reality is free market versus communist,
black versus white, progressive versus stuck in the past, Democrat, republican,
far right, far left, and the media and the mainstream
cannot break out of that thinking.
Speaker 1: They either think we.
Speaker 4: Are these kind of super racist KKK members, you know,
burning crosses and hating other people, and that's their only perception,
and they cannot understand us in any other way because
that's only as far as that dual minded perception of
life goes. All their perception is just New South Africa,
you know, everything that is good also Africa everything that
is bad, and you know, we are They just believe
that everything was fine and one hundred percent in Africa
until the bad colonizers came and the Dutch and then
it was hell on Earth until Nelson Mandela himself came
down from heaven surrounded with or a big halo or
something and just made everything perfect again. And now these
people stuck in the past don't want to, you know,
embrace their inbornation.
Speaker 1: So it's such a simple minded.
Speaker 4: Duality view on life that they cannot understand it on
And because they cannot understand it, because they're limited by
their perceptions, limited by their own understanding of what is reality,
they don't know what to make of it because it
doesn't fit in. On the one hand, these people are
supposed to be stuck in the past. Super Rice is
super super bad. On the other hand, Urania is establishing
relationships with tribal communities in South Africa that wants to
move away from the ANC government's spheres of power traditional
tribal communities. On the other hand, Urania is progressive in
our solutions for energy, for example, progressive and our solutions
for community and upliftment. A journalist wants it, but it
seems like everybody in Ironia is woke. And I told her,
you know, yeah, but not in the way that you
journalists understand wokeness. We are woke in terms of understanding
what we want to achieve for our people. And because
the mainstream media and some of the alternative media cannot
break out of this duality limiting perspective, they cannot understand
this new position outside of their you know, I almost
wanted to say simple minded approach. It is something totally different.
It is it is outside of the mainstream kind of
commercialized understanding of life, understanding, transactional understanding of relationships. Even
if we're on it cost us, even if even if
we lose a bit of our own money or our
own opportunities, it's still worth it. And they cannot understand that,
even if we don't have access to the cheapest possible labor,
and for that reason, the same things cost us more,
it's fine, and we do it and we want to
do it, and they cannot understand that. And simultaneous going
forward in life, expanding our services, expanding our opportunities, creating
new things. So, because RONA doesn't fit into that, they
need to be negative. And what do they do when
they then they are negative? They just refer back to
the simplest version of the argument, labels racism bad, you know,
stuck in the past, things like that. So but we have,
I think, to some extent, learned to to use the media,
and every journalist thinks are going to be smarter than
the previous one. But I think some of the people
Mournia now use the media instead of the media using us,
and we get our message out and we sometimes even
take them for a bit of a playful right, and
and and and and catch them in their preconceived racism.
I don't know if you remember that one debate in
not debate, some kind of American talk show, I don't
know what it's called. Maybe it was the view of
something where these ladies were speaking about the Donald Trump
presidency coming up, and they said, you know, if he
wants all the foreigners out, who's going to clean his toilet?
And then she realized what she said, and you actually
catch these people out on their their own, you know,
fossilized all ancient ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: And that is quite a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Ben, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so
much for coming on the show. If people want to
find you, they want to find your work, what's the
best way for them to do that.
Speaker 4: Well, they can check out just Urania on Facebook, they
can follow my Twitter just at uist Stratum. They can
follow Urania bevieng Urania movement just En Afrikaans on YouTube,
or they can check out our website www dot Uranai.
Speaker 5: All of those will be down in the description. Highly
recommend everyone check it out. As far as my stuff,
the Jay Burdens Show could find anywhere you listen to podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube.
The show is viewers supported. All right, you can throw
me a few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack or
gum Road and for your money you get all the
episodes early with no ads. I know the ads are annoying,
but they pay my mortgage. I did the math on
this and it comes out to I think twenty cents
an hour of content. It's really not a bad deal
if I do say so myself. I realized being a
full time internet influencer is embarrassing, but uh, you know what,
I try to at least be the hardest working pot
caster on the Internet. I think I've cleared that.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: Otherwise, you can check out our sponsor, Axious Remote Fitness Coaching.
JD is very good at what he does. He's a
small businessman. You should support him for all of the
reasons we explained earlier in the show. Again, man, thank
you so much. This has been a great conversation.
Speaker 1: Appreciate the Times for the opportunitdis was enjoyable.
Speaker 5: Never went home. Keep your head up. I can't last forever.
Speaker 1: Good night.
Speaker 5: Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out.
You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great.
You love the host, You seek it out and download it.
Speaker 5: You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even
going to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a
podcast ad. Did I get your attention?
Speaker 5: You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising
from libsynads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements,
or run a pre produced ad like this one across
thousands of shows. To reach your target audience and their
favorite podcasts with libsynads, go to libsynads dot com.
Speaker 1: That's l I B s y n ads dot com
Today