South Africans and their overly ambiguous Constitution are a confused bunch, and I want to think that the furore over the honest remarks by Charlize Theron is more about the discouragement of breaking ranks among white people than Afrikanerdom.
You see, after the native problem and solution projects, the democratic problem is to unite Afrikaners and the English, on the basis that black incompetence and stewardship of a formerly white-led South Africa is more dangerous than the history of the Anglo-Boer War.
This explains the nervousness of many when a notable white and beautiful compatriot like Charlize Theron simply states the obvious. But anyone who believes that the Afrikaans language is growing and becoming accepted is living in the clouds.
Despite all that the apartheid government did to promote Afrikaans, the language is playing second fiddle to English, as more and more black people want nothing to do with Afrikaans.
The only people who have passion for Afrikaans are those black people who see it as a tool for their survival and acceptance by Afrikaners and coloureds. I have always liked Afrikaans, but could not study and learn it effectively in my childhood because there was no opportunity to do so under the conditions of spatial planning still with us.
However, this was gradually dampened by the details of our struggle history and on hearing that the k-word was associated with mainly Afrikaans speakers. I do not believe that Afrikaans should be destroyed or phased out, but it is not a lie that it is a dying language, whether acceptable or not.
Methinks that if Afrikaans can shake off the racist blanket and apartheid link, it will be an accepted language that symbolises the first success story of unity between black and white heritage. I understand that, as a dialect of Dutch, Afrikaans was perfected by black Cape slaves, and then adopted and mastered by a confederation of Dutch, French speakers and other whites of European heritage.
But I do think that there is no reason for Charlize Theron to be vilified as she spoke Afrikaans until the age of 19, and has seen its relevance in a much broader and clearer way than those who still live under the imaginative bubble of its dominant existence in white South Africa.
Moreover, Charlize made our country and Afrikaners proud when she associated herself with her Afrikaner identity on the world stage. Perhaps the majority of those white people most offended are those who continuously see many destitute black people effortlessly learn and speak Afrikaans (in addition to their primary African languages and English), while they in turn see no “logic” in learning African languages. Hence the illusion.
* Khotso KD Moleko Mangaung, Bloemfontein.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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