“Afrikaans belongs to everyone who speaks it — white, coloured, Indian, black — and we should take it back from the purists. As for the Taalmonument, which architecturally presents language development in ethnic phallic-like silos rather than, to use Neville Alexander’s imagery, a large flowing river to which various linguistic tributaries contribute, such dead concrete should be displaced by a living taalbeweging that is inclusive and where the full weight of today’s Afrikaner capital is put behind having new writing stables, book clubs, theatre production, awards systems, media programming and publishing.
Indeed, Afrikaans for all is already beginning to happen.
We do not have to begin from scratch. The Suidoostefees has been a dynamic platform of great creativity over the last decade and more. More recently, the annual Tuin van die Digters held at the Breytenbach Sentrum in Wellington is one powerful indicator that there is a concerted effort underway to make Afrikaans more inclusive when it comes to script and playwriting for film, theatre, short story and book publishing.
There are other initiatives and projects underway too, including the various mentorship and writing programmes sponsored by the Jakes Gerwel Foundation at its Somerset East Retreat. With Covid-19 on the wane (it is not done with us yet) there is room to lift the spirit in our land beset by stagnation and decline with an Afrikaans-inspired cultural renaissance.
The sterile debate about whether Afrikaans is an indigenous language (of course it is) or not defines the language as a problem rather than as an opportunity to craft and shape an inclusive South African expressionism.
You see, we humans live through our language, it defines us. Like music, language is inherent and not incidental to our nature. DM“
Dr Wilmot James is a Senior Research Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University in New York City, an Honorary Professor in Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Trustee of the Jakes Gerwel Foundation.
