They told the journalists “the church is only for whites”.
According to Africa Review, the journalists were on an assignment and decided to attend a Sunday service before returning to Pretoria but they were intercepted by a church leader, identified as Mr Theunis Oukamp, at the door who said allowing black people into an all-white church would be violating the “rights of Afrikaans people. I am now in a difficult situation. You know that Orania is only for white people, this is why we are here. You must understand I know you want to serve God and everything but I have to protect the rights of Afrikaans people. So I cannot let you in, you guys can go to any other church, but this one is only for white people'.
Orania, the city where the church is located is an Afrikaans-only South African town located along the banks of the Orange River, in the arid Karoo region of the Northern Cape Province.
The president of the South Africa Union Council of Independent Churches, Archbishop Modiri Patrick Shole, expressed shock that there was still segregation in the body of Christ, 23 years after apartheid ended, he said,
'we don’t discriminate in church because before God we are one whether white or black. I find it weird that we still have discrimination in the church".
