A proposal

A town, fully staffed and funded.

Great Trek is a register of South African families who intend to relocate together, as one group, to a single host country - and to build their own town there at their own cost. This document is the current state of that proposal. It is public, it is updated live, and every figure on it can be checked.

Figures as at 14 September 2026

Download the skills inventory (CSV)

2 Families enrolled Each has verified an emailed code. Unverified enrolments are not counted.
6 People
4 Working age (15-64)
2 School age (5-19)

Combined estimated investment

R9 250 000

USD 499,500 EUR 460,650 GBP 392,200 AUD 760,350 NZD 826,025

Converted at rates dated 2026-09-01. Held fixed so a published figure does not move.

How this figure is calculated
The sum of each family's self-declared band. Closed bands contribute their midpoint; the open top band contributes its lower bound, so the total understates rather than overstates. Families who chose not to state a figure count as zero. This is a self-declared estimate, not an audited figure, and we describe it that way to every government we speak to.

What we are asking for

An allocation of land, a legal pathway for the families on this register, and a planning partnership with your own departments. That is the whole request.

What we are offering

  • A verified, named skills inventory mapped to ANZSCO and ISCO-08.
  • Declared private capital, brought in at the point of arrival.
  • A town built and paid for by the people moving into it, designed alongside your planners.
  • A settlement designed to add capacity rather than consume it - its own power, water and services.
  • A build that is documented in the open and can be studied and repeated.
  • Taxpayers. Every family on this register has paid its taxes in full in South Africa and expects to do the same wherever it is invited.

What we are not asking for

We are not asking for housing, for social grants, for subsidised services, or for a place in an existing queue. We are not seeking asylum or humanitarian status. We intend to arrive on ordinary terms, under your law, and to pay our own way from the first day.

On infrastructure

We will not claim a settlement of thousands has no impact - no honest proposal could. What we are offering is that it is self-funded from day one, and designed to add capacity rather than consume it: its own generation and storage, its own water and wastewater treatment, its own school and clinic, built to serve the town and sized with room to spare.

Integration and local spend

The skills inventory above describes what arrives, not what stays sealed off. A town of this size is a continuous local customer: weekly household spend, construction materials by the thousand tonnes, contractors and labour on the build, and the professional services no group of this size can supply for itself - medical, legal, financial, insurance. Our own professionals will register and practise under your rules alongside yours, not instead of them. Our school and clinic are sized with room to spare and built to serve the area they sit in. And we pay income tax, company tax, rates and VAT in your jurisdiction, at your rates, from the first year.

We will not claim everything is sourced locally from the first day. Some specialist materials and some of our own trades arrive with us, and year one leans harder on what we bring than year five does. The commitment is to the direction, and it is measurable: each year, more of what the town consumes bought from the country it sits in.

Employment

Beyond the skills inventory, 1 families on this register currently run a business, and between them employ 10 people in South Africa today. Those are not jobs we are asking a host country to provide. They are jobs these families already create, and would be in a position to create again.

Self-declared, counted once per family so a household with two business owners cannot count the same staff twice. Families who did not state a figure count as zero.

The skills inventory

Every occupation enrolled, mapped to ANZSCO and ISCO-08 so it can be read against a national shortage list without re-keying.

Occupation Category ANZSCO ISCO-08 Total Working Retired Studying
Other professions (4 people) 4

Occupations with fewer than 5 people are combined into this row. In a group this size, one unusual job title can identify a person, and we would rather publish a slightly blunter figure than do that.

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 Town
The Town Illustrative concept rendering

Current status

No government has agreed to anything. No land has been allocated. What exists today is the register on this page, growing in public. We will publish which governments we approach and what they say.

Contact

info@great-trek.co.za

Enrolling registers your interest. It is not a visa application, it is not an immigration service, and it gives you no immigration status or right of entry to any country.