Another year, another Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, and another opportunity to buy a T-shirt in defence of volk and taal. Last year, it was ”praat Afrikaans of hou jou bek [speak Afrikaans or shut up]”. This year the fashion statement is a cheap, white T-shirt bellowing ”100% Boer” with an old South African flag serving as an illustration of what it means to be ”pure Boer”.
At first, one might have thought that the wearers were really advertising ”100% Boerewors”. But no, here were individuals proudly proclaiming a pure, organic ancestry, unfertilized with the blood of local slaves and servants.
Afrikaans: the language of the oppressor — that’s how many people see it. It is indeed the language of Hendrik Verwoerd, PW Botha and Eugene Terre’Blanche. But it is also the language of Beyers Naudé, Bram Fisher and Antjie Krog. And it is the language of Jakes Gerwel, Hein Willemse and Willie Bester.
We do not reject English because it was the language of the coloniser any more than Mozambicans reject Portuguese or Zaireans reject French as languages of conquest and oppression. Whatever their methods of introduction, whatever conditions led to their hegemony, colonial languages are now part of our heritage.
Whatever its past, Afrikaans is also part of our cultural landscape. No one person or group owns the language. It is contested in the way that it is spoken — and language is the very vehicle for the contestation of ideas, values and perspectives on the world, about the language itself and the people who use it.
A language cannot be an oppressor, but the people who use it can be. When people have a choice, they can embrace or reject a language.
Many white Afrikaans speakers are concerned about perceived threats to their language — such as when universities close their Afrikaans departments, education in Afrikaans is downgraded or Afrikaans is removed from parts of public life.
Yet Afrikaans is doing superbly precisely because of a past that has economically empowered its primary users, and for whom language and the arts are integral components of their identity.
Afrikaans literature sells better than English literature, while that of most of the indigenous African languages is commercially unviable. Afrikaans musicians have excellent markets and many programmes on KykNET, a channel on DStv, are dedicated to Afrikaans arts and culture.
Afrikaans arts festivals attract more private-sector sponsorship than other festivals, and Afrikaans actors, writers and directors are held in high esteem and their work supported with enthusiasm.
There are more organisations and resources to promote Afrikaans than there are for any other language. Afrikaans newspapers and magazines provide some of the best coverage of the arts, and Litnet, an Afrikaans website, is probably the best arts-related site in the country.
These hardly speak of a language that is about to die. If Xhosa, Venda, Sotho and a host of other languages have been able to survive despite hundreds of years of denigration — and without anywhere near the resources and political advancement and protection enjoyed by Afrikaans — then Afrikaans speakers need to recognise that their language is in a very healthy position.
From this position, Afrikaans speakers can engage with others and share their undoubted talent, their vast experience and resources for the greater, national good.
There are Afrikaans models that can be appropriated further to develop and promote other indigenous languages. And this will probably do more to build respect for and an appreciation of Afrikaans and its users than thousands of arrogant T-shirts or defensive newspaper articles and conferences.