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