I was brought up semi-schizo, with my Afrikaans mother and very English dad and going to a super-conservative Afrikaans school while living in an English suburb. But that was nothing compared to what was going down a few years later, when the “struggle” really came to a head in urban environs. By that time I had gone forth and multiplied, had published verse in my beloved mother tongue, and considered myself one of the Afrikaans avant-garde (or avant-guano, as my friends and I preferred to call it, as most of our ideals had been shot to shit by the ardent right wing fools). And even then I saw the death-knell coming.

I still wrote in Afrikaans, doggedly, but found myself using English as a lingua-franca in my daily life. One was proud of one’s work, but disgusted at what our poor co-opted culture had been reduced to by a minority of blind idiots with big guns and bigger chips on their shoulders. So I became embarrassed by my culture. Not for what it really was, but for the hideous crimes that were being perpetrated “in the name of the Afrikaner”. So I started to draw distinctions. I was no Afrikaner, though I spoke and loved the language. Now really, when one is forced into that sort of nitpicking, then the stench over Denmark has spread much too far.

So how could I encourage my children to use the language of the oppressor? Their feelings were unformed. Not political, really, yet…. But still they were embarrassed by the language and chose not to speak it, and I chose not to embarrass them by intimating my origins (easy enough with a surname like Hawkins – who’d know a “filthy Dutchman” lurked beneath?). But this isn’t on. I could not sit idly by and watch the slow puncture administered to my culture by the rabid few, and so I kept writing, as I still do, and I still pride myself in my work in Afrikaans.

And I grow increasingly pleased to see and hear more and more people of all colours and creeds using, abusing and playing with the wonderfully playful and colourful language I love so much and which seems to be ready to survive the crippling blows dealt to it by it’s own people.

And so I would like to close this with a poem I consider quite iconic to my thinking at the time – around 1990.

witbrood (raak nou duur)

ek koop my oes kultuur halfprys
maar darem tuisgebak
my woorde ondeurdig met voorbedagte raad gepleeg
intens soos hartkloppens
deurdig die ruk van holtes voor my oog

ek hakkel tussen woorde deur die seer
die groot hartseer wat oor my aarde witbors maak
my ore dor van daardie hees gelag
vind slaap my moeilik soos ek dongas deur gedagtegange trap

want my trane loop hol oor jou bokkie
en los is al my snare

The thing about writing this, is that in a perfect world, I’d address the language in isolation, as just a means of expression. But it’s almost impossible without invoking the association with the white nation in South Africa that call themselves “Afrikaners”. We’re made up of all kinds of european and (although few will admit) some eastern and african DNA, put into a melting pot, adding some kitchen dutch.

There’s little common ancestry, just a bunch of people that ended up banding together on the southern tip of Africa after leaving a boat or two.
I guess at that point, the only thing that truly binds the Afrikaner nation, as the name suggests, is the language. Most people feel like they want to belong, and I guess Afrikanerdom is as close as they’ll ever get.

It’s the language that my forebearers chose to shove down the throats of native people and other immigrants during school. I’m sure the other writers will testify to that. Let it just be noted that it’s not the most popular tongue around.

When thinking “Afrikaans”, one can’t help but envision crappy music made by crappy artists. A stiff-upper-lip puritanical culture punctuated by brandy and fistfights. Police beating protesters, and “volksliedjies” that have conveniently lifted music and loosely translated lyrics from europeans. Let us not forget everybody’s favourite K-word.

I guess that’s why the language seems like such a hodge-podge of connotations for me. Seldom original, and totally unique.
Leeching off of other cultures, then adding spice.

Even in the mouths of Afrikaans youth (and myself), the language is often interspersed with english, and seems to lose it’s boundaries and become nondistinct.
I think of the oft repeated joke: “Hey Piet, wat is die engels vir spanner?” (Hey Piet, what is the english for spanner?)

My forefathers would absolutely cringe at the thought. After all, it was the “rooinekke” that put their families into concentration camps and burnt down their farms.

Yet I cannot help but get all mushy when reading Afrikaans poetry, and marvel at the expressive power of the language. It seems so far removed from being forced to read the old Afrikaans standby “Kringe in ‘n bos” in a classroom. Can I think of another great afrikaans book? No. Seriously, I can’t. And it wasn’t all that good either. At best I can describe 99% of Afrikaans culture as a little “weak”.

I stood in Hatfield square two weeks ago to watch a series of Afrikaans rock bands perform. They’ve set out to re-write the rules about “Afrikaans”. I guess they feel shackled by a past they didn’t create. I know I do. But then what IS our identity to become?

I hope they succeed, in something, but the crowd made me uneasy. It was almost like warping back in time 15 years or so.
I hadn’t been to such a pale party in a while, for a moment I lost hope… but then maybe they all just feel as disconnected from the rest of the world as I do.

I guess this piece of writing says it all. It’s confused, it’s all over the place. Not even an Afrikaner can totally make sense of it all. At times it’s a language, it times a culture, at times a nation.
It doesn’t seem to have a place and yet does. It’s speakers ended up being on the receiving end, the pointy end (sometimes both) of a lot of crazy shit. Hopefully those artists will prevail and Afrikaans will become something else.

Maybe they’ll just confuse the matter even further.

Maybe it will always be seen as the language of the oppressor, and the internally repressed.