Based on an article by the same writer, first published in Afrikaans on OntLaer/Substack on 4 June 2026.
Literally millions of South Africans struggle daily to find work in an economy that is stagnant and has been for many years, mainly on account of the totally growth-unfriendly socialist policies of the ANC-in-government.
At the same time, however, a revolution is under way that too few people in South Africa are taking seriously enough.
There are technologies capable of advancing the lived experiences of at least those minorities suffering on account of the ANC’s hegemonic grip on, and racialisation of, South African governance. They can create escape routes for themselves.
I refer to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robotics), which will not merely replace some jobs and create many new kinds of jobs, but will completely rewrite the rules of economic and cultural survival. They will also have a major influence on politics.
In our case, that includes the “politics” of minorities and minority groups that are blatantly discriminated against and marginalised in South Africa on racial grounds through legislation and governance practices.
In a world where routine labour is increasingly performed by machines and robots, an ever-greater premium is placed on people who can create, innovate, adapt and collaborate within trusted networks: the builders.
For marginalised minority groups with high levels of education, an entrepreneurial history and some cultural cohesion in South Africa, this shift need not only be a threat. It could represent one of the greatest opportunities for genuine self-determination since 1994.
We have already seen how central control by the ANC-in-government has failed in South Africa.
At the same time, we unfortunately experienced a kind of self-imposed censorship among minority groups, and whites in general, after the 1994 transition to democracy. This lasted for almost three decades, on account of historical guilt and the decency to give the new dispensation a fair chance to succeed.
After all, the 1994 transition happened with the blessing of a majority of the minorities that governed South Africa before 1994, as determined by the referendum regarding a new constitutional dispensation.
Over 32 years of “freedom for the nation”, the illusion of reconciliation between minorities and the majority unfortunately became evident, mostly because the new powers that be, the ANC, abandoned attempts at reconciliation after the death of Madiba.
It was instead replaced by contempt for anyone not part of the ruling elite, but especially contempt for whiteness and for Afrikaners in particular. That contempt did not take long to translate into active and very clearly targeted discrimination through racial laws and government practices.
Now a new question arises:
What if the future does not belong to the largest numbers, but to those who are smart enough to build their own digital and economic spaces?
What if Digital “Oranias”, enclaves in cyberspace where we all increasingly live in any case, are created to supplement physical communities and individuals with a network of specialised expertise, experience, innovative mindsets, building and creating attitudes, data utilisation and value addition?
Such a network could be spread across the country, yet still have a common foundation: the self-assertion and self-determination of the marginalised minority.
This article examines how AI, robotics and technology in general can help bypass, and even replace, South Africa’s current twisted, biased and imposed inter-group dynamics; what new doors these technologies open for small but highly skilled minority groups; and, most importantly, how we can practically build Digital “Oranias” to protect our own destinies, identities, cultures and other freedoms denied us by a racist ruling class.
Before readers ask the same question that everyone asks about the real Orania, I will give the answer.
Yes, people from the majority group would be welcomed if they wanted to join the Digital “Orania”. Conditionally, of course, just as in the real Orania.
Orania is open to people who feel that they can subscribe to Orania’s values. The Orania community, however, must give its stamp of approval. This is its form of democratic rule by the collective.
Digital “Oranias” could do something similar by electronic means.
A blockchain-type vetting method could be used to ensure consistency, democracy and little or no opportunity for manipulation once the blockchain parameters have been set.
Part 1: The Automation Wave and Its Impact on South Africa
As indicated above, global forecasts show that AI and automation will displace millions of jobs, while new roles will simultaneously emerge.
This has happened during previous revolutionary periods: the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the digital revolution.
In South Africa, with its already high unemployment levels, the impact will be particularly sharp on semi-skilled and unskilled labour in manufacturing, administration and routine services.
For minority groups, this means a double reality.
Many of us are already in professional, technical and agricultural sectors where skills matter. Yet BEE, cadre deployment and state decay are driving capable people out of the public sector and, increasingly, the corporate sector in South Africa, forcing them to move beyond South Africa’s borders to find succour where their skills are appreciated and their ethnicity is not a restraining factor.
Brain drain is a reality, as the statistics prove.
At the same time, the demographic shift, a growing low-skilled majority versus a shrinking highly skilled minority, creates precisely the conditions in which scarce human capital becomes ever more valuable.
AI does not so much favour the masses as it favours concentrations and networks of talent, trust and rapid adaptive capacity.
Small, cohesive communities have an inherent advantage here: faster decision-making, lower internal friction, and the ability to switch quickly to and adapt to new opportunities.
Part 2: New Opportunities for Highly Skilled Minorities
The automation era punishes large, sluggish, low-trust societies, but rewards small, highly skilled networks and concentrations.
South African minorities possess exactly the characteristics that now matter: high literacy, a tradition of self-help, having largely been on our own for the last 32 years, and a culture of responsibility and innovation.
Several specific opportunities deserve mention.
Agricultural Technology and Food Security
Many commercial farmers are already leading with precision farming in South Africa, including farm monitoring with drones, AI predictions for harvests, and advanced water management.
In a country with rising food insecurity and water scarcity, these skills are becoming of ever greater strategic value.
Competent non-governmental agricultural organisations already play a dominant role in our agricultural sector as a whole and perform sterling coordination work.
Education and Language Technology
The development and expansion of AI language models is of critical importance.
The more we develop and control the data and AI models relating to content such as language, history and culture, the better we can simultaneously control the continued existence of our cultural heritages in business, education and even daily use.
Private universities in South Africa are on the rise.
With regard to a minority group such as the Afrikaners, we fortunately have initiatives in the educational sector such as Solidariteit’s School Support Programme, as well as the incredible successes of Sol-Tech and Akademia.
Minority-group organisations can be linked and connected in order to establish the Digital “Oranias” envisaged here.
This must be a larger, more comprehensive and coordinated network for minority interests, including all professions and the business sector, in order to protect the identity, culture and freedom of minorities.
AI agents can do much of the heavy lifting by maintaining the network through the collection, sifting, sharing, dissemination and coordination of information among network members.
Online Work and Global Niche Markets
Highly skilled members of sidelined minorities, working as digital nomads, can serve global clients while remaining in their own local communities or enclaves.
They can simultaneously plough value back into those communities and enclaves through referrals and recommendations that benefit the wider network.
Such specialised skills will also be available for the benefit of the non-enclaved rest of South Africa, which will remain in great need of these services if it is to maintain a semblance of a modern economy.
This requires knowledgeable and highly skilled people who understand local South African conditions.
The marginalised white minority group has considerable cultural capital as a result of historical bonds and the shared experience of having been pushed aside and discriminated against.
Those shared attributes reduce transaction costs. This is something extremely valuable that large, fragmented societies do not possess.
In our new world, it need not be the largest or most numerous who win, but those who adapt and collaborate quickly, and who understand and utilise the technology.
Part 3: Technology Is Not Neutral
Large platforms and AI models are trained on global, ideologically coloured data.
This creates an epistemic disadvantage: South African minorities’ history, values and narratives can be marginalised or characterised as “problematic”.
Platforms such as Google and Meta have repeatedly removed content or suspended accounts critical of racial policy, self-determination or demographic realities.
If we remain completely dependent on these systems, our own narratives and success stories risk being left out or distorted.
Part 4: Practical Strategies for Building Digital “Oranias”
Digital “Oranias” could simultaneously be parallel and dispersed digital spaces where we exercise control over elements such as data, content, language, education and training, communication, economic activities and the professions.
From these digital spaces, human capital can then be incorporated into physical communities, or made available to individuals wherever they find themselves in South Africa or abroad in the diaspora.
Again, AI agents can perform all or most of the tasks of integration.
Various agents can be coded to cooperate in order to ensure convergence between the network’s intent and its practices.
As with the “open” membership of Digital “Oranias” explained above, the services rendered to members of Digital “Oranias” would not be restricted to members only.
An AI agent, or group of agents, could maintain a database of service providers outside the Digital “Oranias” too, comparing their service records and prices with similar services available from inside the network.
It could then make recommendations regarding service providers on that basis.
This would encourage competition and preserve freedom of choice regarding service providers.
Part 5: In Conclusion
Self-determination in the 21st century, in the age of artificial intelligence, no longer needs to be a prisoner of political domination.
Nor does it need to be a prisoner of domination by numbers.
Nor is it restricted by physical or geographic constraints.
Digital self-determination is almost irreversible and is not subject to national policymaking and approval. In other words, it does not require majority approval.
The collapse of the South African state makes innovative thinking non-negotiable if we are to avoid going under together, and if we are to retain what is our own and what is precious to us.
While others wait for salvation from above, we must build from below, with technology as our ally.
The challenge is great, especially for our younger generation and our highly capable professionals from minority groups, who must buy into the idea of creating Digital “Oranias” in cyberspace.
They must decide to use their specialised technological expertise and management skills to establish and drive the creation of these Digital “Oranias”.
This article gives an overview of an idea whose time has come in the current South African situation.
The opportunity is greater than the challenge.
Let us not be the victims of the future, but the architects of it.
The time is now to build innovatively, in extremely modern and future-oriented ways that are resilient against hegemonic state control.
Piet du Plessis is a retiree with a long history of applied socio-economic development. A liberated Afrikaner who has moved beyond self-flagellation, he believes that he has been freed to live out his cultural pride and values and to proclaim them openly when appropriate.
"[M]arginalised" minority groups? How? Where?