Every generation, so the song goes, blames the one before.
Fledglings leave the nest and fly off to establish their own new lives.
Which makes it all the more interesting that the white Afrikaner-only enclave of Orania is so attractive to its young people.
Undoubtedly, many of them feel comfortable with what they know and what they have been brought up with – perhaps a sense of racial superiority; certainly a sense of racial uniqueness.
As the settlement marked its 35th anniversary, there was much to be proud of – especially how the homogenous society has built itself into an almost self-sufficient, if not strictly speaking autonomous, community.
It’s an achievement because this place – alongside the Orange River in an area which would charitably be called arid and inhospitable – is not for soft people.
This vision of an Afrikaner Volkstaat – for that is what it is – is shared by an increasingly influential array of right-wingers, although they use softer phrases like “self-determination” and “cultural independence”.
That group is increasingly outward looking – in contrast to their happy-by-the-river compatriots – and has the ear of the global right-wing movement, whose icon at the moment is US President Donald Trump, the man who has promised Afrikaners sanctuary from persecution with United States “green cards”.
Some of the more extreme elements in that movement will, clearly, not be happy with settling in such a tough place as Orania – and some believe a proper Volkstaat should encompass not only the Western Cape but, also the richest agricultural regions in the country.
That, they should realise, is not going to happen.
South Africa is a unitary and not a federal state… it says so in our constitution.
At the same time, though, Orania should be welcomed by all of us as another fascinating piece of our kaleidoscopic nation.
