analysis
Rembrandt Klopper
Soon after Afrikaners handed power to the black majority in 1994 curious anecdotal reports emanating from black communities in the greater Durban region suggested that instead of being stigmatised by black youths as the language of the oppressor, Afrikaans had a surprisingly positive image.
According to these anecdotal reports, increasing numbers of black youths wanted to do Afrikaans as a school subject and were in fact complaining that it was being unilaterally dumped as a matric subject by principals and teachers.
These rumours needed careful, systematic investigation and a survey carried out by Pramesh Khalawan, a PhD student at the University of Zululand (Durban), has revealed unexpectedly favourable attitudes among black Durban matriculants towards the study of Afrikaans.
Khalawan surveyed 412 black learners studying Afrikaans as a matric subject at second language level at eight secondary schools in the Durban area.
Because the matriculants were taking part in an anonymous survey in their last year at school, they knew they could express frank opinions without fearing any repercussions. This meant that the results of the survey give a true reflection of how the polled black matriculants really felt about the status of Afrikaans as a school subject.
A surprising 75% of the respondents indicated that Afrikaans should be introduced as a second language somewhere in primary school. More than half of them felt that Afrikaans should be introduced in the foundation phase, while a mere 22% felt that it should be introduced only in the intermediate phase. Only 3% felt that Afrikaans should be studied only in the senior phase.
This illustrates a significant deviation from the stereotypical image of Afrikaans. Afrikaans has been stigmatised as the language of the oppressor since the 1976 Soweto uprising and the enforced use of Afrikaans in black schools was prominently cited as one of the triggers that sparked the uprising.
The negative attitudes towards Afrikaans were in part caused by the educational policy of the government of the day that enforced Afrikaans as a compulsory school subject, as well as a compulsory medium of instruction for half of a learner’s matric subjects. Learners were required to do subjects like biology and history in Afrikaans, and they had to pass Afrikaans in order to pass matric.
The rejection of Afrikaans in 1976 can be seen as a surrogate attack of disempowered persons on those who were empowered. By rejecting the cultural emblems and institutions of those who hold power, subjugated individuals can move the conflict from the physical to the ideological domain in an attempt to command the moral high ground.
Clearly the formerly disempowered have been empowered and one result is a more positive attitude towards Afrikaans.
The results of Khalawan’s research are corroborated at national level by a report released in September last year by the Pan South African Language Board (Pansalb). Its survey on language use and language interaction in South Africa revealed that, after Zulu, Afrikaans is the home language of the second-biggest group of South Africans; that most people preferred communicating in Zulu, but that they would settle for Afrikaans as a second choice rather than English.
South Africa has consciously opted for a system of cooperative learning to help forge a new South African identity. This means that persons in positions of authority and trust may not impose decisions that restrict the options of learners without their consent and the informed consent of their parents. We believe that present efforts to roll back Afrikaans as a matric subject are taking place under the mistaken assumption that Afrikaans is ideologically stigmatised, and that there will be no reaction to its downgrading.
Afrikaans entered the 20th century as a language of low regard, with an image of a kitchen patois. It engaged in a three-cornered fight for survival against English and Dutch, the official languages of the day, but after four decades briefly attained the status of a higher function language, a language of culture and science, eventually supplanting Dutch as a language of parliamentary and legislative record, along with English.
In order to function as an emblem of white Afrikaner identity, the language was consciously standardised at about the time of the National Party takeover in 1948. Elevating Afrikaans as symbol of white Afrikaner identity ensured that the language would be targeted as a symbol of oppression during the 1976 Soweto uprising.
The results of Khalawan’s survey and those of the 2000 Pansalb survey show that the shadow of the Soweto uprising is still being cast over Afrikaans in the minds of some ideologues in positions of authority and trust, but that this probably is not the case for most black South Africans, particularly the young ones.
Rembrandt Klopper is professor at the Centre for Cognition and Communication at the University of Zululand (Durban)