Old Takkies Indaba

Afrikaans. Jong, you either love it or you blerry hate it.

The mere mention of the word conjures up images of my school classmates wincing in dismay as our Afrikaans teacher announced that the following week’s homework was to prepare a “mondeling” on some relevant topic. Kids would go to truly staggering lengths to get out of those classes. Even more remarkable was the number of suburban dogs that were partial to the taste of Afrikaans homework…
Personally, my allegiance falls on the love side of things. But then, I did get a lucky break when it comes to being “tweetalig”.

In the December of 1981, my family emigrated from Zimbabwe to South Africa. I was seven years old and had never heard a single word of Afrikaans. As fate would have it, we moved directly to Sasolburg in the Orange Free State. Afrikaans heaven, ne?.

My very first memory of the language sees me weeding the garden on our first Saturday in South Africa and the woman across the road (sixty-ish, buxom and an original Afrikaner) calling me repeatedly.
“Meisie! Meisie!” she trilled from across the street.

Of course, I had never heard the word before and so ignored her, assuming she must be suffering from dementia and talking to someone else. Eventually, she pushed open her garden gate and hurried across the road to our fence, all the while calling me “Meisie! Meisie!” She was holding a tart of some sort (turned out to be my first exposure to “melktert”: god, I love the Afrikaners) and she broke into a full speed account of what I now suspect may have been “Welcome to the neighbourhood! Etcetera, etcetera.”

Peering up at her from my crouching position in the flower bed, her looming figure and incomprehensible language seemed downright terrifying. So I did what any self-respecting seven year old would. I burst into tears and ran into the house, crying for my mom.

Needless to say, once our well-intentioned neighbour had figured out that none of us spoke Afrikaans, she immediately switched to English and all was well.

Luckily for me, things got a little easier after that. My entire family, parents included, embarked on a journey of extra Afrikaans lessons. My brother and I were also enrolled in a dual-medium school (two Afrikaans and one English class for each standard) and I think this must have been the crux for us, because we then made quite a few Afrikaans-speaking friends. And once you are happily playing with friends, learning a language is a natural byproduct.

As we had moved directly from a different country to a strongly Afrikaans part of South Africa, I was never exposed to the cultural differences between English and Afrikaans speaking South Africans. My parents never scorned the Afrikaans community, we were never made to feel like outsiders as English-speakers and so everyone was the same in my world.

It was only when we left Sasolburg for Johannesburg, three years later, that I became aware of the stigma that was attached to Afrikaans in the English-speaking community. When people heard that I’d lived in the Orange Free State for three years, their response was often a sarcastic “shame!”

Not being particularly street-smart at age ten, it took me a long time to work out why they felt sorry for me. I could see no difference between living in Sasolburg and living in Johannesburg. Well, except that in the Free State we were allowed to go to school barefoot (do you know how liberating it is to walk around without shoes on ALL the time?). Unfortunately, this was a fact that, when mentioned by me, served as the ultimate proof to my English schoolmates of just how backward the Free State was.

As my school career progressed, I started to cotton on to the fact that the Afrikaans community was viewed, certainly by the British-English community, as inferior (then again, and I say this with a strong British influence in my upbringing, to whom have the Brits ever not felt superior?). However, when I watched my teenage schoolmates sit in an Afrikaans lesson, trying their hardest to translate a sentence, or a poem, it was not derision or sarcasm that I saw on their faces: it was fear.

I subscribe to the widely promoted view that a lack of understanding produces fear, and fear in turn produces loathing.

Now if there’s one thing our society can do without, it’s more fear and loathing. So, if you’re afraid of Afrikaans (or Afrikaners, for that matter) why not take a fresh look? Having studied one or two more languages since my school days, I can now say with confidence that Afrikaans is beautifully expressive and often hilariously easy going. Where else would you find a word like “vleispaleis” to describe a gorgeously muscled guy? Where else do you find the powerful storytelling of Herman Charles Bosman and Andre Brink? Or the comic brilliance of Evita Bezuidenhout?

There is so much more out there that you’ll miss if you cling to your misconceptions.

Stop the fear.
En begin nou weer.