Under South Africa’s old regime the Afrikaans magazine market was fiercely contested territory. Rich, white, homogenous; the coloured community was ignored and it was an advertiser’s dream. Naspers built a mighty empire out of serving it, and over the years many others shared in the loot.
In the early ’90s the political compass swung around and things looked a lot less rosy for Afrikaans speakers. But ironically enough, this turned out to be a boon for those publishing in Afrikaans. The market was still just as rich, and because a significant proportion felt culturally threatened they tended to cling to the language. The Afrikaans term is “trek laer”, harkening back to the days when Voortrekker ox wagons were drawn in a circle when danger threatened.
It may have been more bunker mentality than cultural revival, but Afrikaans products were well supported. Dinner party talk featured lists of companies who were still advertising in Afrikaans versus those who had stopped doing so. The lack of an Afrikaans magazine on the coffee table was tantamount to cultural treason.
Eleven years on the mood has shifted dramatically. Today, magazine editors say, counting on language loyalty is a recipe for disaster.
“There is no loyalty to put your trust in,” says Hennie Stander, editor of Maksiman magazine (ABC 17,876 Jul-Dec 2004). “Not even when it comes to Afrikaans Christians. You’d think that Christians would be fairly conservative and would stick by you even if you messed up. But if that happens they will write you off and find something else to read in the blink of an eye.”
Maksiman is a men’s magazine that espouses Christian values. It is arguably the only Afrikaans magazine aimed squarely at men and only men, but Stander says there is no mental language barrier for his readers. Besides some tussling for a limited number of advertisers, his competition is not Afrikaans at all.
“Our competition is not local magazines, not even local English titles,” he says. “We compete with imports like New Man magazine,” or other foreign titles that flood newsagent shelves.
Language is also not a competitive advantage at the very top of the market. Elmari Rautenbach is editor of Insig (ABC 13,062 Jul-Dec 2004), home to some of the finest Afrikaans writing around. She echoes Stander’s sentiments.
“Ten years ago it may have been true that Afrikaans speakers felt that their language and culture was threatened, and maybe you could have cashed in on that. I wouldn’t say that was still the case five years ago, and it certainly is not true today. You are competing on a level playing field now.”
With the passing of the “laer” mentality came a general broadening of horizons. Far from being insular, Afrikaans speaking magazine readers are now looking beyond their own culture and beyond the border in a way not seen for more than a generation.
“There is a new self worth and self assurance among Afrikaans speakers,” says Rautenbach. “That also means that people are looking beyond their own and being more critical. Take Karen Zoid [a popular Afrikaans rock singer]. She doesn’t compete with other Afrikaans artists, she competes with Avril Lavigne. We have to reflect that.”
Bun Booyens, editor of Weg (ABC 62,471 Jul-Dec 2004), the fast-growing travel magazine well known for its legal battle with Getaway (that saw it change its name from Wegbreek) has the same belief for a different reason.
“People are intensely interested in the rest of Africa. Before their universe ended at the Limpopo river; everything beyond that was the home of the total onslaught. Now they want to know about Mozambique and Tanzania and Kenya. They want to read about it because that is where they are going, where they are taking their families.”
Booyens ascribes his magazine’s success partially to its unplanned tapping of this sentiment and its local equivalent, the “reinterpretation of the landscape, with people taking ownership of the places they love again without the guilt of denying it to others.”
Weg is one of a small group of niche, middle-market magazines that have been attracting a bigger readership than could have been expected, even given the favourable economic climate. The common denominator behind this niche’s success? None aim for the lowest common denominator.
Booyens agrees that people don’t buy his magazine because of the language in which it is printed. (“No Afrikaans speaker these days buys a magazine because of loyalty to the language,” he says). However, he believes the way in which the language is used is very important.
“This is a time in which the public use of Afrikaans is on the decline, like in the business world, for example. That makes the private and personal use of Afrikaans all the more important. People, now more than ever, want to read good Afrikaans, pretty Afrikaans. They don’t want the crass language they have been confronted with so often because people thought that plugged into their culture. They want lyrical language.”
Rautenbach uses nearly identical words when she explains why Insig is not seriously considering an English translation despite regular calls for one and a significant English readership. These adventurous readers may not grasp the nuances of the language used, but with Afrikaans having chucked its “language of the oppressor” status they find it an exotic experience, “a little like peeping through a keyhole to see another culture.”
Translating Insig would see a major differentiator, its playful use of language, lost.
“If we interview [SABC news head] Snuki Zikalala and give him a hard time we can use the headline ‘Snuki op die kole’ [a pun combining a popular idiom, a play on Snoek fish and a reference to the popular Afrikaner pastime of braaiing]. If we do something like that we actually get letters from people who enjoyed it. Try to translate that into English and it falls flat.”
Naspers did not let issues like that stand in its way when it started translating its weekly into English as You. The two titles remain the largest and second largest magazines in the country respectively (at ABCs of 340,570 and 222,845, Jul-Dec 2004), and they provide a fascinating look into the differences between English and Afrikaans speakers. Aside from some superficial tweaking, You is virtually a direct translation of Huisgenoot, yet the demographics differences go well beyond language and race.
You, for example, has a greater female bias than Huisgenoot. Both magazines are mostly read by 35- to 49-year-olds, but Huisgenoot‘s second largest readership group is over 50, while You‘s second largest group is between 16 and 24. You has a higher pass-on rate than Huisgenoot.
A lot of cultural hypotheses could be drawn from such statistics, but Anfra Mostert, who handles research for the two publications, warns against reading too much into the numbers. Huisgenoot is going strong towards its hundredth year of publication, after all, while stripling You is barely out of its first quarter century.
One thing that has emerged clearly from research, however, is the distinct lack of interest in politics across both publications, she says.
“When we ask people if they want more political stories included in the magazine both readerships say they can get that from newspapers if they want it… Politics may have played a big role in the lives of Afrikaans speakers in the past but it just isn’t top of mind anymore. Both groups want entertainment and self development from us.”
Another clear message is the rampant multilingualism amongst Huisgenoot and You readers. There is a 17 percent overlap between the two magazines, which Mostert says points to both bilingual families and parents who intentionally buy the counterpart magazine to give their children greater exposure to their second language.
Huisgenoot and You dominate the entire South African magazine market in no uncertain terms, but there are two Afrikaans magazines that are consistently near the top (or indeed on top) of a large and hotly-contested segment: the women’s titles Sarie and Rooi Rose (at ABCs of 137,970 and 119,994 respectively, Jul-Dec 2004).
The broader women’s magazine market is vibrant and highly segmented; brides, home makers, career women, teenage girls all have focused titles available to them. Afrikaans women – who make up a relatively small demographic — are no exception. Yet on average Sarie and Rooi Rose have a clear lead on the competing English titles, despite vicious competition with each other.
The two beat the likes of Cosmopolitan (117,255), True Love (114,793) and Glamour (92,552) in circulation (Jul-Dec 2004). And like some of their smaller Afrikaans cousins, Sarie and Rooi Rose focus on quality writing with an unabashed poetic turn.
But while some publications are profiting from their understanding of the new Afrikaans speaking market, little is known about the future of the sector. Young Afrikaans speakers are not well catered for and do not have any real magazine buying culture. An early indication of whether that will change as they age may be the July issue of Seventeen magazine, when 7,000 directly translated magazines will go head-to-head with the English version in selected spots.
“We have done some research but at the moment there is still a question mark around how teenage girls will take to buying in Afrikaans,” says Seventeen publisher Sam Sneddon. “This is a one-off test, but depending on the outcome we may do an annual repeat with a special edition, or maybe something more.”
If teenage Afrikaans speaking girls trample each other for copies of Seventeen in their first language, however, Sneddon says it will not indicate any form of cultural divide between Afrikaans and English teenagers. Quite the opposite.
“The youth are very universal. In that age group cultural divisions really do fall away. And I think that will hold true for this generation as they age; I foresee that they will take this amazingly inclusive philosophy forward.”
The homogeneity of teenage culture may make translated magazines an easier sell, but it also means that there probably won’t be a return to the free ride Afrikaans publications had in the early ’90s. Instead, magazine publishers can expect a lot more online competition for Afrikaans readers in coming years.
“We have a reasonable percentage and growing number of Afrikaans home language speakers across our sites,” says Russell Hanly, who heads the online business of Media24, which encompasses both English and Afrikaans content. “Frankly, though, that is not a market that is [well catered for]. Outside of a few examples, mostly [within Media24], I have to scratch my head as to where these people are being serviced. Based on that, I would expect new developments there.”