A group of Afrikaners has called for amendments to the Constitution to protect minority rights Howard Barrell
A group of prominent Afrikaans-speaking intellectuals has called for a “new historical agreement” to protect Afrikaans and other minority languages and cultures in South Africa.
It has called for urgent amendments to South Africa’s Constitution to entrench the rights of cultural minorities. They argue that what protection the Constitution currently offers them is wholly inadequate.
The intellectuals are all members of the Group of 63, which was formed at a three-day summit in Hammanskraal in May this year. The group voiced its views on the future of Afrikaans and the Afrikaans-speaking minority in a lengthy declaration released in Johannesburg this week.
The significance of the group is the breadth of the political spectrum it represents. It brings together Afrikaans-speaking luminaries associated with both left and right in the past. It includes in its ranks Herman Giliomee, former academic now full-time political commentator and writer, Johan Degenaar, the former University of Stellenbosch philosopher, and ZB du Toit, prominent Afrikaans journalist and thinker.
The group states in Thursday’s declaration: “The democratic settlement of 1996, which gave shape to a one-party dominated system without sufficient protection for minorities, is apparently already dated. It will … have to be reviewed to offer much more meaningful political, economic and cultural space to minorities like the Afrikaans-speaking community.”
In the declaration entitled (in its English translation) The Question of the Afrikaans-speaking Minority, the Group of 63 is at pains to state that it is not seeking confrontation with the government.
“Interaction with the government must necessarily introduce a process for a new historical agreement between the governing majority and the Afrikaans-speaking minority. Interaction with the government need not, and hopefully will not, take place in a spirit of competition or even conflict, but one of mutual understanding, involvement and goodwill,” the declaration says.
“A non-negotiable point of departure is, however, that the current political dispensation must urgently be reformed and democratic development must be taken a drastic step ahead,” the Group of 63 says.
The group says it is not seeking to separate Afrikaans-speakers from the rest of South Africa. Instead, it argues that Afrikaans-speakers and other cultural minorities must be allowed their own cultural “space” within the new democracy while at the same time being full participants within broader society. Increased cultural “space” and protection will best address acute feelings of marginalisation and alienation among Afrikaners, the group argues.
There are four significant building blocks in the declaration. One, the group seeks to situate demands for group cultural rights for Afrikaans-speakers alongside similar cultural rights for other minority languages such as, say, Venda.
Two, the group sees the democratisation of Afrikaans-speaking culture as part of its struggle. A founding principle was an end to any racial distinctions between Afrikaans speakers, and it proposes to challenge authoritarian, patriarchal and other ideas it sees as inimical to a democratic Afrikaans culture.
Three, the group believes the vehicle for taking forward the struggle for greater Afrikaans language and cultural rights cannot be any of the existing political parties, whether in government or opposition. Instead, this struggle must be waged as a cultural struggle in contact with the government.
And, four, the group believes the emphasis it places on group rights is consistent with an international trend. It argues that there is a growing body of opinion that a framework of liberty based on individual rights alone is very often inadequate in dealing with the special problems of multicultural societies such as South Africa.