Employing sentiment analysis for gauging perceptions of minorities in multicultural societies: An analysis of Twitter feeds on the Afrikaner community of Orania in South Africa

Orania: A white homeland in post‐apartheid South Africa

“…Hagen (2013, p. 121) describes Orania as a community with a “strong focus on Afrikaans as language.” According to Kotzé and Senekal (2018, p.2), the idea of Orania emerged out of White fears that Black liberation would “eradicate minority rights, languages and communities.” Kathleen Mcdougall (2013, p. 17) writes in her PhD that Dr Manie Opperman, who until 2011 was the mayor of Orania, explained to her that one of the biggest White fears that led to the establishment of Orania was “aggressive acculturation, where Afrikaners would not only forget their language but forget their cultural roots.” (p. 17) Seldon (2014, p. 33) explains that conservative Afrikaners bemoan the reduction of Afrikaans language in government official communication as well as “on packaging and in the commercial sphere, and particularly in schools”.…”

“…Notwithstanding the racist history outlined in the previous sections, the people of Orania would have us believe that the idea of a former chairman of the Broederbond, who happened to be Verwoerd's son‐in‐law, purchasing land to establish an Afrikaner volkstaat that pays homage to wickedly great White racists–such as Hans Strijdom, DF Malan, HF Verwoerd, JBM Hertzog and Paul Kruger–is an anodyne act. Moreover, instead of challenging this narrative, some White academics like Aja Delvecki and Alyson Greiner (2014, p. 164) uncritically portray Orania as a small town with an undeserved “maligned” reputation due to “misunderstandings” and “negative press” which they claim the “town has endured … from its beginnings.” In their study, Kotzé and Senekal (2018, p. 3) present Orania as “the target of fierce criticism” and claim that Orania “does not exclude anyone based on race”; rather, the residents of Orania are interested in preserving and “focusing on Afrikaner culture.” Kotzé and Senekal (2018, p. 3) conclude that the residents' “focus on Afrikaans culture” has “led to Orania becoming a synonym of racism.” As a result, “Orania is often depicted in the media as a racist town, a leftover of Apartheid populated by white people who refuse to abandon their prejudices” (Kotzé & Senekal, 2018, p. 3).…”

“…Rather than view Orania for what the town is, that is the is the custodian of White separatist ideas, some White scholars present Orania as some kind of haven for Whites who want “to escape the crime and insecure life in the rest of South Africa” (De Beer, 2006, p. 109). Kotzé and Senekal (2018, p. 2) assert that “part of the reason for Orania's recent growth” has to do with “crime, farm attacks and threats of violence by black political leaders”. Seldon (2014) correctly points out that this narratively conflates the absence of Black people in Orania with safety and order.…”

Semi-supervised learning approaches for predicting South African political sentiment for local government elections

“…There are only a few cases of published work centered around South African political sentiment using machine learning approaches. Kotzé et al [10] presented work on using social media data to extract sentiment and perceptions towards one of South Africa's Afrikaner minority communities -Orania. Twitter Archiver was used to collect over 10 000 tweets relating to the community.…”

Die eerste 40 jaar van Orania

“…Uitdagings en suksesse word ook aangeraak, sowel as die volgehoue media-aandag wat dié dorp ontvang. Kotze (2003), Steyn (2005), De Beer (2006, Pienaar (2007), Blomerus (2009), Hues & Morgan (2010), Hagen (2013), Cavanagh (2013), Seldon (2014), Haleniuk (2015), Walterová (2016), Kotzé & Senekal (2018), Senekal (2019), en Kotze, Schoeman, Carow & Schmitz (2020).…”