Three decades ago, these streets were ablaze as protesting youths pelted apartheid police with bricks and stones, angered by a government plan to force Afrikaans on them as a language of instruction.
Scores died as police fired bullets into a crowd of thousands of young people, many still in school. Rarely can a language have evoked more bitterness.
But today Afrikaans — a modern version of the Dutch spoken by settlers who arrived in South Africa from the 17th century — appears to have outgrown its painful past, as a new generation shapes black language.
In Soweto — the township southwest of Johannesburg where those uprisings erupted on June 16 1976 — the ”language of the oppressor” is still spoken, intermingled with local dialects to form a motley African pidgin.
”Township speak” reflects how times have changed in post-apartheid South Africa. Once used to exclude outsiders, today it reflects multiple influences to convey the more carefree humour of urban youths.
If someone compliments you on your ”G-string”, they are using township lingo for a 2001 BMW 3 model car. Invited around for a bit of ”Jesus and his brothers”? That’s J&B whisky.
Township patois predates 1976 and was born in mines, prisons or slums, where people from different cultures blended.
Evolving in the 1950s into ”tsotsi taal” (gangster language), it has more recently emerged as ”scamto”, as a new breed of urban township youths add their own twists to the decades-old hybrid, still peppered with Afrikaans.
An unmarried couple living together are ”vat-en-sit” (”take and stay”, from Afrikaans). The BMW is a ”kara”, from Afrikaans ”kar”. To fix the house, you might need a ”skroof” (a nail, from Afrikaans ”skroef”).
Older people who remember that June day in 1976 are also using Afrikaans. Antoinette Sithole, who is pictured in one of the iconic images of the time, is one.
Her 13-year-old brother Hector Pieterson was killed in the uprising and a picture of his lifeless body in the arms of a fellow protester — with her alongside him — came to symbolise the cruelty of that era.
Sithole says black people’s relationship with Afrikaans preceded apartheid, and will outlast it. She remembers it as the tongue her parents’ generation brought from the countryside when they flocked to Johannesburg in search of prosperity.
”Most people are still talking Afrikaans, especially in our diverse language,” Sithole told Reuters. ”I don’t think it will just die, because some words we speak are in Afrikaans. It’s fun … it has been here for long.”
‘Language of the opressed’
If some blacks harbour an enduring affection for Afrikaans, there are whites who are more anxious about its future.
Many — angered by the scrapping of Afrikaans-only universities and schools, as well as plans to do away with place names that honour Afrikaner heroes — frequently complain that their language and culture are under threat.
Under apartheid, Afrikaans enjoyed a revered status as the language of a large part of the white minority. In the new South Africa, it is only one of 11 official languages.
Nonetheless, some cultural pundits say non-white South Africans can now freely enjoy the language liberated from its tainted past and are helping Afrikaans to thrive.
Afrikaans is the third most widely spoken language among South Africa’s 45-million people, according to Afrikaans culture group ATKV. About 80% of the population is black.
ATKV says research shows 12,5-million South Africans over 16 understand it. That includes 27% of blacks, over 90% of the coloured community and 86% of whites.
”Afrikaans is the language in which a major part of our population lives from day to day. It’s the language we dream in, do business in, pray in and joke in,” said Christine Brits, who is white and ATKV’s head of marketing.
Elna Boesak, a journalist who recently tracked the history of Afrikaans for a radio documentary, said long before it symbolised white oppression, it was the ”language of the oppressed”.
She argues it was formed in the mouths of slaves who arrived at the Cape from the 1600s from Madagascar, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Indonesia and needed a medium to communicate amongst each other and with their masters.
Their influence is heard in modern Afrikaans words like ”piesang” (banana, from the Indonesian ”pisang”) and ”maasbeker” (believed to be a mish-mash word referring to Mozambicans).
”Afrikaans was a language that created an incredible amount of pain, because any tool in the hands of a system based on evil will become a tool of oppression,” Boesak said. But she added it was also used to rally slave uprisings, and protests in the anti-apartheid movement.
She believes Afrikaans will live on because it shares centuries of deep-rooted history for all South Africans, whether black or white.
”I think why white people are more and more concerned is because ownership of the language is being re-established in the mouths of the people who shaped it,” said Boesak.
”If you speak to black people, they will tell you this language is blossoming.” – Reuters