[Image: Wikimedia Commons]
As South Africans clinked glasses and cut cakes to mark 100 years of Afrikaans, a less festive crowd wondered whether the language would even survive another decade, or even another year, in any meaningful way.
But enter EFF MP Carl Niehaus, per an article in The Citizen, who surprisingly stepped up by professing love for Afrikaans. “I grew up speaking Afrikaans; it’s my mother language. I like the word mother tongue because the first language I learned was Afrikaans from my mother,” he said.
“We should be careful not to use Afrikaans for political and racial purposes because it damages the language.”
And in case anyone missed the shot at right-wing nostalgia, he said, “The whole idea of sovereignty and exclusivity in the far right community was downright wrong.” He didn’t hold back on the school segregation debates either:
“Afrikaans shouldn’t be used in schools to keep a school white or create whites-only areas. The majority of Afrikaans-speaking people are not even white.”
Niehaus, perhaps trying to outdo the Freedom Front Plus at their own game, threw in this for good measure:
Afrikaans should be recognised as one of the 12 official languages in South Africa and “must be respected and used in that sense, not for exclusivity”.
Meanwhile, back at the FAK ranch…FC Pelser of the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations (FAK) waxed poetic about ancestors and duty. Afrikaans is the “language of the Afrikaner ancestors and, if they did their duty, it would be the language our children speak for hundreds of years to come”.
FAK is not just talking, they’re singing and rolling the dice. Literally.
“In 2025, we are reminded once again to cherish our most beautiful mother tongue in all its creativity,” he said, while plugging Skryf’it, a songwriting competition, and an Afrikaans 100 board game with Spoetnik. “Afrikaans 100 is not just a festival. It’s a reminder to cherish our language and celebrate it every day.”
Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder dialled up the drama, saying “Afrikaans’ fight for survival continues. This language journey is fuelled by the extraordinary love that Afrikaans speakers have for their language: a love so great that a lasting monument was erected to commemorate it and so deeply rooted that enemies of Afrikaans underestimate it to their detriment.”
That love, he warned, nearly got squashed in 1994.
“Afrikaans was nearly eradicated with the dawn of democracy… the ANC, and even the DA, proposed that English should be the country’s only official language.”
Luckily for Afrikaans, FF+ stood their ground.
“As a result, South Africa now has 12 official languages. But as the Afrikaans saying goes ‘Die skyn hiervan bedrieg [appearances are deceptive]’.”
Mulder’s concern now? The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (aka the BELA Bill), which he claims could be Afrikaans schools’ death knell. “By the end of last year, only 1,303 of the about 25,000 schools in South Africa were still Afrikaans single-medium schools – a drop of 15% from 2012…”
Mulder added a grim but real note on language death: “A language can easily disappear when it loses its higher functions.” If it vanishes from courts, schools, books and banks, parents stop teaching it, and just like that, a language withers.
Political analyst Piet Croucamp said starkly that Afrikaans is in an identity crisis.“Afrikaans has managed to end up in a form of schizophrenia about its origins and legitimacy as a source of communication…”
Why? “It’s because of its association with apartheid in the past and with a degree of white privilege as it is now.”
And here comes the forecast: “I can’t imagine it would still exist in a significant way in 30 years from now…”
Demographics, he warned, don’t lie. “The realities of demographics in 30 or 40 years from now mean that Afrikaans-speaking people would be less than two per cent of the population.”
So, while Afrikaans may still have some fight left in it, the jury’s out on whether it can keep dancing beyond this centenary, or if it’s just doing a slow waltz into obscurity.
[Source: The Citizen]
