A new country is a long way to go alone.
So we are going together.
Great Trek enrols South African families into a single, coordinated move: thousands of people, one host country, one new town built from the ground up. Every family that enrols makes the proposal stronger.
About four minutes. No documents, no payment, no obligation, and you can change or delete everything later.
Already enrolled? Update your family
Counted so far
Updated 14 September 2026, 19:15 SAST. Every number on this page is real, and has never been reset.
The idea
One family is a story. Ten thousand is a proposal.
A single family's application is one of millions. A verified group of ten thousand people, with a named skills inventory and declared capital, is something a government's immigration and trade departments will take a meeting about. That is the entire idea. Everything else is detail.
Enrol together
You list who would come, what they do, and roughly what your family would bring. It takes minutes and commits you to nothing.
Count ourselves
Those enrolments become one document: how many people, which professions, how much capital, what we are offering to build.
Be invited
We take that document to governments and ask a single question: would you like this town, and these people, in your country?
Why we are going
What we are looking for.
These are the reasons people give us. We have kept them to facts that can be checked, with the source named, because the point is not to argue about this country. It is to be clear about what we are looking for instead.
The findings above are public and can be checked at source. There is also an independent archive that collects three decades of documented cases in one place: VoetsekANC.co.za - a public archive of documented cases
We do not run that archive and we do not speak for it. We link it because the record it collects is a matter of public documentation, and because nobody should have to take our account of this on trust.
“I am not angry about it. I just looked at what my son's first ten years of work would look like here, and I could not make the numbers come out.”Riaan, mechanical engineer, Gqeberha
We paid for this.
We are law-abiding taxpayers. We have paid what we owe, every year, without arrangement or avoidance. We are not asking to be excused from that anywhere - we will pay our taxes in the country that takes us, at whatever its rate turns out to be. What we are asking for is the ordinary other half of the bargain: that the money is not stolen, and that it buys the services it was collected for.
We are not campaigning against South Africa. We are not asking anyone to join us in anger. Most of us will keep family, friends and business here, and we hope this country comes right. This is a decision about where to build the next forty years. It is not a verdict.
The plan
We are not moving into a town. We are building one.
The host country assigns an area of land. Our planners, engineers and builders go first and design it with them - not near an existing town, not competing for existing housing. A town designed once, properly, with everything we now know about materials, energy and water.
The kind of place planning departments fly people in to look at.
Where it starts
Assigned land, surveyed and agreed with the host country. Nothing built, nothing promised, everything still to decide - together.
The four stages
Assigned land, surveyed and agreed with the host country. Nothing built, nothing promised, everything still to decide - together. Illustrative concept rendering
Street pattern graded in, plots pegged, services routed. The advance team works alongside the host country's planners from the first week. Illustrative concept rendering
Our own builders, electricians, plumbers and engineers. Local labour and local suppliers alongside them, paid at local rates. Illustrative concept rendering
Homes of three sizes in one material language, a school, a clinic, a high street. Built to be studied, and to be lived in. Illustrative concept rendering
What we bring
We come fully staffed.
Doctors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, engineers, nurses and builders - and the capital to pay our own way. We are not asking to be housed. We are asking for somewhere to build, and we will pay for it.
The count opens with the first family. It has never been seeded and never will be.
Integration
Fully staffed. Not self-contained.
Bringing our own trades and professions has been read before as meaning we would arrive sealed off from the town next door. It would not work, and we would not want it. Several thousand people buy things every day, and almost all of it has to be bought where they live.
We buy where we live
Food, fuel, clothing, furniture, hardware - the weekly spend of several thousand people, in local shops and from local suppliers, from the first week.
We build with local materials
Cement, brick, timber, steel, glass and fittings bought from the host country wherever it can supply them. A town is thousands of tonnes of material, and it is cheaper and faster to buy it near where it is going.
We hire locally
Our builders and trades work alongside local labour and local contractors, paid at local rates. The businesses that come with us hire locally too - that is what the employment figures on this site are about.
We use local professionals
Doctors, lawyers, accountants, banks, insurers, agents. We bring some of our own and they will register and practise under your rules - but no group this size supplies all of its own professional services, and we have no intention of trying.
Our services are not only ours
The school, the clinic and the sports fields are built to serve the area they sit in, not a fenced population. They are sized with room to spare, and that spare capacity belongs to the neighbours.
We pay tax where we live
Income tax, company tax, rates and VAT - in the host country, at its rates, from the first year.
Where we are asking
Nine countries. We only need one.
We have no agreement with any of these governments yet. This is the list we are approaching, in the order the enrolment tells us to. Families rank their preferences - but we move together, as one group, to whichever country makes the best offer.
The sequence
How this actually happens.
Enrol and count
Families enrol. The skills inventory and capital figure build in public, where anyone can watch them grow.
Publish the proposal
The numbers become a formal document: who we are, what we bring, what we are asking for, and what we are offering to build.
Approach governments
We approach the nine, in the order the enrolment points to. This is the stage where this either works or it does not. We will publish which governments we approached and what they said.
Negotiate terms
Land, legal status, timelines, what we fund and what we do not. Nothing about this is a visa scheme - it is a development agreement with people attached.
The advance team
Planners, surveyors, engineers and builders go first, and design the town with the host country's own departments.
Build
Infrastructure, then homes, then schools and the high street. Local labour and local suppliers throughout.
Move
Families arrive in waves, into houses that exist, in a town where they already know their neighbours.
Enrol
Add your family to the count.
Four minutes. Four people or fourteen - add everyone who would come.
About four minutes. No documents, no payment, no obligation, and you can change or delete everything later.
Already enrolled? Update your family
Your details
What we ask for, and what we never do with it.
We ask for as little as the proposal needs
No ID numbers. No addresses. No exact net worth. We do not even store the names of the people in your family - only ages, occupations and health bands, which is all the proposal ever needs.
A stolen database would be unreadable
Names and email addresses are encrypted before they reach the database, and the key is not in the database. If someone stole a copy, what they would get is a list of ages and job titles with nobody's name attached to it.
You can delete everything, for real
One button on your profile, and your family is gone from the count permanently. No email to send, no one to ask.
Plainly
What Great Trek is - and what it is not.
It is
- A register of families who want to move together
- A proposal to build and pay our own way
- Open to every South African family, without exception
- Run in public, with numbers anyone can check
- Free to join, and free to leave
- A town that buys, hires and pays its tax where it is built
It is not
- A political movement or a party
- A refugee or asylum programme
- A visa service or an immigration consultancy
- A fundraiser, an investment scheme, or a church
- A promise that any government will say yes
- A gated compound, or a settlement that keeps to itself
For governments
If you are reading this for a government.
The full proposal - headcount, skills inventory mapped to ANZSCO and ISCO-08, declared capital, the development model, and what we are and are not asking for - is public and kept current.
Questions
Questions we get every day.
Is this real?
It is a real register with real numbers, and it is early. No government has agreed to anything, and we say so on every page. What exists today is this: a growing, verified list of families, their skills and their capital, and a plan for what to do with it. Whether it becomes a town depends on whether a government says yes - and we will publish the answer either way.
What does it cost?
Nothing. There is no fee to enrol, there never will be, and we will never ask you for money. If anyone contacts you claiming to be Great Trek and asks for a payment, it is not us.
What if no country agrees?
Then it does not happen, and we will tell you plainly rather than letting it fade out. You will have lost four minutes and nothing else. We would rather say that now than promise you something we cannot control.
Are you building a gated enclave?
No, and it would not work if we tried. A town of several thousand people buys food, fuel, materials and services every day, and almost all of that has to be bought where the town is. We bring trades and professions, but no group this size supplies all of its own - we will use local doctors, lawyers, accountants, banks and contractors, hire local people and local firms, and pay our tax in the host country. There are no walls in the plan, and the school and clinic are built to serve the area they sit in.
Who is behind this?
South Africans who decided that leaving one family at a time was the worst possible way to do this. The people behind it are named on the principles page, with a real contact address.
Is this only for certain South Africans?
No. It is open to every South African family - whatever your background, language or community. We do not ask about race anywhere on this site and we never will. There are no quotas and no screening of that kind.
What happens to my data?
Your name and email address are encrypted before they reach our database, with the key held outside it. Your family members are stored as ages, occupations and health bands with no names at all. You can delete all of it yourself at any time.
Why is it called Great Trek?
"Trek" is one of the few South African words the whole world already uses. It means a long journey, made on purpose. That is the sense we mean, and it is the only sense we mean.
We are aware of the other one. The nineteenth-century trek was one community moving away from a government it rejected, and it ended with people taking land that other people were already living on. This is the opposite of that in every respect that matters. We are not taking land - we are asking to be invited onto it, to buy it, and to pay to build on it. We are not leaving to be left alone - we are leaving in order to join a country that already exists, under its laws, on its terms.
Great Trek is open to every South African family. Every one. There is no screening by race, language, religion or politics, there are no quotas, and there never will be. If you are South African and you want to go, this is for you.
The count is open.
Every family that enrols makes this more real, and makes the answer easier for a government to say yes to.