What does Akrikaans media say about contemporary Afrikaans culture? The question serves as the point of departure for the June issue lead writers, and the answers are nothing if not thought provoking.
The most provocative place to start has got to be page 20, where Andy Davis opens his piece on the broadcast sector with a wry anecdote about Toast Coetzer, writer (quite inadvertently) of the newspapers feature. Referring to this “all round stoute kind”, Davis recounts how a few months ago he watched Coetzer get up on stage at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees and launch into a poem entitled Die Volk Is In Die Kak. Notes Davis: “A few years earlier and that poem, in front of that crowd, would have caused a riot. This year, the crowd’s response was largely ambivalent. You could read the look on most faces, telegraphing thoughts like ‘hier gaan ons weer’.”
Can we take the crowd’s ambivalence as a sign that die volk are indeed in die kak? Coetzer is a little more circumspect about things in his feature writing than he is on stage, and the observations he elicits from stalwart Max du Preez and the current Afrikaans newspaper editors suggest that the titles, in providing a platform for wide-ranging debate, embody a progressive and robust cultural sensibility.
Sean O’Toole, in his feature on Afrikaans magazines, takes Huisgenoot as the measure and ends up with a similar assessment. Huisgenoot, he writes, was launched ten years before the recognition of Afrikaans as the country’s second official language, and for most of its lifespan played a key role in reinforcing a nationalist and racist worldview, but it now runs editorial that “presents a radically revised vision of what South Africa can achieve.” O’Toole argues that magazines like Insig, Visi and porn title Loslyf also fit this mould, delivering a message that fortifies the cultural relevance of the sector in general.
And another thing Afrikaans media does – because there’s just no other way – is carry a whole lot of locally produced content. Davis stresses the point in the broadcast feature. But then there’s another point Davis stresses, and despite the undeniable transformation it’s a point that applies across all Afrikaans media: the voices of the 3,5-million non-white Afrikaans speakers remain noticeably absent.