The image of Afrikaans in South Africa (part 2)

During Apartheid the image of Afrikaans was severely damaged by short-sighted politicians who chose to make a political issue of Afrikaans. Andries Treurnicht, the Minister of Bantu Education in 1976, forced Afrikaans as a school language on black children. This became a banner of the student protests of the seventies and as such entrenched the perception of Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor. This was aggravated by policies of the Nationalist Party, which simultaneously promoted Afrikaans and often associated the injustices of Apartheid with Afrikaans. Gradually but relatively quickly, the stigma earlier attached to English was replaced by the slogan that Afrikaans is the language of oppression.

Language and ideology

The position of Afrikaners and Afrikaans can be compared to that of German speakers after World War II. Just as the German language is not responsible for National Socialism and what was perpetrated by the carriers of an ideology who used and promoted German, so the Afrikaans language is not responsible for Apartheid and what was perpetrated by the carriers of an ideology who used and promoted Afrikaans. But, as a young language, Afrikaans does not have as many centuries and as many millions of speakers as German to help it overcome the burden of a totality transfer of all that was bad about an ideology and its practice to a language and its use.

Catharina Loader about the Football World Cup 2010:
		Are you interested in football? I don't know much about football, but I'll definitely learn more about it during the World Cup. Are you going to follow the matches? Yes, certainly. What would be you dream final? France against South Africa.

This resentment against Afrikaans and Afrikaners in some sectors of black South African society was recently accentuated even more extremely by members of the ANC’s Youth League singing songs calling blacks to "shoot the Boer" - meaning white Afrikaans speaking people in general ("Boer" with a capital letter) and farmers in particular ("boer" without capital letter). Condemned as hate speech by the South African High Court, this song is often translated from its vernacular form into English so as to be understandable and to convey a statement. The fact that this kind of anti-Afrikaner outburst is only meekly softened under pressure of bad publicity, but is nevertheless allowed to continue under the guise of a "historical tradition from the struggle", augurs threateningly for the future of language equality in South Africa.  

Afrikaans speakers in opposition to Apartheid

The diversity of Afrikaans speakers is often ignored when discussing this subject. Afrikaans speaking “Coloureds” as victims of Apartheid were more in numbers than white Afrikaners who supported Apartheid. Likewise ignored is the fact that the huge injustice of cheap black labour was exploited to the full by industry and mining, dominated by English speaking industrialists. Furthermore ignored is the fact that there always was a small but vocal Afrikaans speaking opposition to Apartheid and that those who took the initiative to abolish it and apologise for it, were also Afrikaans speakers.

The future of Afrikaans

During the years after 1994 the Afrikaans speaking community developed both successful and less successful projects to promote Afrikaans. After eight years of planning, the Afrikaanse Taalraad (ATR) was established in 2008. Its goals are to promote a process to safeguard the position and status of Afrikaans in South Africa as well as internationally on an inclusive, non-racial basis.

Several role players, such as socio-linguists and authors, are positive about the future of Afrikaans. Although much pressure is still brought to bear on Afrikaans, that also is the case with other South African languages. Afrikaans is a strong language with a strong literature and enthusiastic speakers. The changing demography of the Afrikaans community due to factors such as racial integration, emigration and language transfer, creates new challenges but also opportunities to develop Afrikaans as a modern language of the 21^st Century.

English as lingua franca

At the moment the country's lingua franca is English and it is used by the government and in business and commerce. Official forms like the income tax forms and similar documents are, for example, distributed in English. English is the dominant language in public and commercial life, as one can see in the press, on radio and television, in educational institutions, in the courts and in all government services. Informally people use their mother tongue but formally speakers of languages other than English have to fight for a fair hearing and fair opportunities. This fact is obviously a source of tension because these speakers do feel that their mother tongue and therefore their rights as citizens are disregarded.

Catharina Loader teaches Afrikaans language and culture in the Department of European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies. She was born in South Africa. Her mother tongue is Afrikaans.