Beau bares racist resort plan

From the koppie overlooking Orania in the Northern Cape, Hendrik ­Verwoerd stared stonily down at the motley group of white men having a nude braai. The wors was first-class, and De la Rey blared in the background.

‘I could feel the statue’s eyes burning into me,” recalls Beau Brummel, South Africa’s most single-minded proponent of the glories of the naked human form. ‘But you know what, I’d been waiting a long time for HF to see me kaalgat.”

Three weeks ago, Brummel visited Orania to investigate setting up a nudist resort in the volkstaat. He believes the Northern Cape’s unique natural beauty will entice nudists worldwide, and plans to invite David Beckham and Richard Branson. He wants the resort up and running by year-end.

The trouble is that he insists black people will not be allowed in. Even the citizens of Oranje have attacked his proposal as a racist joke. ‘Orania is a very tolerant community, which allows for individual differences, but racism will not be allowed,” said Orania Beweging spokesperson Eleanor Lombard, who added: ‘We are children of God.”

Interviewed at his Bronkhorstspruit home, Brummel said Orania’s founder, Carel Boshoff, had called him and accused him of being racist. ‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he boomed.

He says the resort idea came from two Orania-based ex-nudists who often patronised Beau Valley in the Waterberg, Limpopo. ‘Most who came in those days were Afrikaners. Even nationalist politicians visited; Pik [Botha] was a regular visitor,” Brummel says, quickly adding that nudist resort owners never ‘expose” clients.

Beau Valley was liquidated in 1997, and he blames its demise on his decision to go non-racial.

‘In 1993 the ANC Youth League visited holiday resorts in the Waterberg to check if they were whites-only. It was a time of reconciliation and after meeting them I thought what a great idea to allow everyone to come,” he said

‘Sadly, my shareholders didn’t see it that way, and refused to pay levies. They also sued me.”

‘Now we will walk naked in Africa again, like our ancestors,” said Brummel, also an enthusiastic evolutionist.

The South African Human Rights Commission roasted Brummel in 2002 when he tried to create a whites-only nudist resort on the KwaZulu-Natal coast called ‘Jane’s Jungle”. Shutting the resort after a day, the HRC said: ‘The reasons given for denying black people access were extremely racist and showed stereotypical apartheid thinking.” Brummel’s defence had been ‘rambling, irrational and incoherent”.

Naturist conviction, it seems, is not his motive for trying a second time. ‘There’s big money here with the coming 2010 World Cup,” he explained. ‘Opening a multiracial nudist resort is almost impossible — it buggered me up last time.

‘It’s difficult enough getting people of different races who’re fully clothed to live alongside one another,.”

Brummel insists nudism has little attraction for black people, and that white customers did not like ‘the competition” offered by black nudists.

‘I’ll fight the commission in court if I have to,” he says. ‘They’re against me because they’re controlled by Muslims who don’t like the idea of a nudist resort. And Orania will fight with me.”

And if Orania continues to balk? ‘Then I’ll go to the neighbouring farms. Africa will have a nudist resort again.”