The white separatist town, founded by members of the protestant Afrikaans-speaking minority as an enclave within post-apartheid South Africa, has kept itself to itself during the campaign.
The 2,800-strong community is a dot on the map in a majority black nation of almost 60 million.
But Orania symbolises the determination of some rural Afrikaners to go their own way — an attitude that their leaders say could be strengthened if this week's vote sees radical left parties enter government.
FILE—Bronze busts of former leaders of South Africa Paul Kruger, JBM Hertzog, DF Malan, JG Strydom and Hendrik Verwoerd, are displayed in the tiny whites-only town of Orania, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, May 27, 2024.
Wynand Boshoff, an MP and leader of the Afrikaner FF Plus party in Northern Cape, told AFP that the development of parallel Afrikaner structures could be seen as a "pre-emptive response" to what he sees as the marginalization of his community.
"I think a process which is busy happening at the moment already is that Afrikaners are becoming all the more self-reliant," he said, describing how white communities are trying to develop their own services, such as electricity.
According to opinion polls, the African National Congress (ANC) is on course to lose its absolute majority for the first time since the advent of post-apartheid democracy.
If this happens, the ANC may be obliged to form alliances with leftist firebrand Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or former president Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).
FILE—Students look on during their lunch break at the Orania CVO School, in Orania, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, May 28, 2024.
Malema has, in the past, pushed a hard line on redistributing white-owned land and Zuma's speeches have focused on black economic empowerment and on denouncing European colonialism.
The center-right opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has dubbed a possible tie-up between the ANC, EFF and MK a "Doomsday Coalition," predicting chaos and corruption.
Separate future?
President Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC insists it is on course for a solo victory without EFF support and accuses the DA, led by white politician John Steenhuisen, of wanting to turn the clock back to the days of apartheid.
But this political ferment has failed to stir up Orania, whose white residents are more than ever convinced that their future is separate from the rest of the nation.
FILE — Carel Boshoff, son of the founder of Orania Carel Boshoff, and grandson of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, poses in front of a portrait of his grandfather at his office, in the tiny whites-only town of Orania, May 28, 2024.
"And I actually expect it not to survive anyhow, because South Africa is an artificial union of quite divergent areas and populations," Boshoff said.
In 1991, when apartheid was in its death throes, Afrikaners — descendants of 17th-century Dutch colonizers— bought up 8,000 hectares (19,000 acres) of land on the banks of the Orange River.
The privately-owned town has an autonomous status within North Cape province and has thrived — its population is now around 2,800 people, with new arrivals needing approval from the town.
This has led to accusations of racism.
Boshoff, the 53-year-old grandson of the assassinated apartheid-era prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, says the town does not expect South Africa to "explode" but to drift apart.
Nevertheless, he warned that the election to fill the Cape Town parliament — 870 kilometers (540 miles) from Orania— could remind Afrikaners of the end of apartheid.
"It's as if people don't realize we lost the country 30 years ago. But if the EFF or MK becomes part of the government, then suddenly they will realize we lost it," Boshoff said.