Afrikaans: the Language of Black and Coloured Dissent • Introduction Afrikaans, the official language during South Africa’s Apartheid era, often occupies a politicised space as the ‘colonial’ language of the White Afrikaner oppressor. Indeed, Afrikaans has a violent and racist history of oppression during the eras of White Afrikaner nationalism and Apartheid. [1] Afrikaans is therefore generally associated with White Afrikaans speakers (White Afrikaners) and perceived as a ‘White’ language. [2] The history of the oppression of Black and Coloured people by White Afrikaners, especially during Apartheid, is well-known. Afrikaner hegemony and the utilisation of the language during Apartheid to discriminate, dominate, and repress cannot be disputed. The 2015 and 2016 #AfrikaansMustFall protests (part of the #RhodesMustFall protests) underscore the extent of White Afrikaner hegemony and the need to ‘decolonise’ the language. The #AfrikaansMustFall protests have unsurprisingly drawn comparison with the 1976 protests against Afrikaans: both movements resisted oppression by White Afrikaner hegemony. [3] Heritage activist Patric Mellet comments on the reason for the 1976 protests against Afrikaans: The rebellion against Afrikaans in 1976 was against Afrikaans, the white oppressor’s language. Forced on people as a language, a medium of instruction in schools. You’re hearing commands, you’re hearing abusive language, and so on, and you’re supposed to learn in this. So it was a natural thing for young people to say: “To hell with Afrikaans.”’ [4] The 1976 uprisings against Afrikaans Image source However, it is important to recognise that Afrikaans was also employed as a language of liberation during Apartheid (by White and Black/Coloured speakers alike). This article focuses on the Black history of Afrikaans in this regard. [5] The majority of Afrikaans speakers in South Africa are not White. [6] Fifty percent are Coloured people. [7] Indeed, there is a large body of work that focuses on the contribution of foreign slaves and indigenous Khoikhoi to the historical formation of Afrikaans: these population groups were subjugated by the colonists and discriminated against during Afrikaner nationalism and Apartheid, and yet their contribution to the language of their oppressors is documented and accepted. [8] Therefore, Afrikaans occupies a somewhat awkward place in South Africa’s linguistic historiography, it ‘is at once the language of the conqueror and the language of the oppressed’. [9] Rather than focusing on the oppression of Black and Coloured people by White Afrikaans speakers, this article focuses on ways in which oppressed Afrikaans- speakers historically employed the language ‘to express [B]lack resistance’ in the eras of colonialism, Afrikaner nationalism and Apartheid. [10] Afrikaans: A White/colonial or African language? Afrikaans is the third most spoken language in South Africa. [11] Jansen argues that the language can be regarded as a unique ‘African-Germanic’ language: it did not originate within European borders and it ‘is spoken primarily in Africa’. [12] [13] [14] Afrikaans is also defined as a (southern) African creole language, spoken in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. [15] Due to its association with White Afrikaner nationalism and Apartheid, Afrikaans is popularly perceived as a ‘White’ language. [16] The Apartheid ideology ? according to André P. Brink (in Van den Heever) ? ‘colonise[d]’ the language. [17] Concurrently, Afrikaans is connected to racism, repression and violence. [18] It was, after all, the medium through which the Apartheid government (including police officers, ministers and civil servants) enforced ‘laws prohibiting contact between races in matters of housing, sexual relations, schooling and land ownership’. [19] The 1976 Soweto protests against Afrikaans as a forced medium of instruction in Black schools were recognised globally. [20] The well-known photograph of murdered 13-year-old Hector Pieterson is one of many that reached global audiences and brought attention to the vitriol that Black people carried towards Afrikaans. [21] Photographs circulated of slogans on banners which read, for example, ‘We do not want Afrikaans’. [22] The ‘coercive power’ of the Apartheid government in forcing Afrikaans upon its populace led to ‘the uprising and especially in the wake of the state’s violent response, a hardened suspicion of its speakers’. [23] In addition, the ‘Black history’ of Afrikaans was denied by the hegemony of Afrikaner nationalism (including indoctrination ‘by Afrikaner Christian national education, propaganda and the media’). [24] Given this denial of the Black/Coloured history of the language, it is ironic that most Afrikaans speakers in South Africa are, as noted, not White. White Afrikaans speakers only make up 40% of all South African Afrikaans speakers. [25] Coloured people, Black Africans and South African Indians constitute the other 60% of Afrikaans speakers. [26] Extensive scholarly research substantiates the claim that people oppressed by colonialism, Afrikaner nationalism, and Apartheid significantly contributed to the formation of the language. [27] Neville Alexander, for example, asserts: ‘[i]f the Khoi[khoi], the San, and especially the slaves, were not forced to learn Dutch, or to speak it, then the language Afrikaans would not really have developed’. [28] It is also argued that varieties of Afrikaans such as Cape Afrikaans are spoken by Coloured people and contributed greatly to the formation of the language. [29] Coloured people are the descendants of Europeans, the indigenous Khoikhoi, and imported slaves from countries such as Indonesia, Madagascar and Bengal. [30] It is claimed that three main groups contributed to the development of Afrikaans: the European settlers, the indigenous Khoikhoi and slaves from African and Asian countries [31]. Other groups who advanced language contact included Eastern political exiles (between 1652 and 1767, political prisoners were exiled to the Cape from countries such as Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka). [32] [33] Afrikaans is therefore influenced by ‘Dutch; the seafarer variants of Malay, Portuguese and Indonesian; and the indigenous Kh[oikhoi] and San languages’. [34] Valley and Valley state: ‘while [A]frikaans’ [D]utch heritage cannot be denied, it must be acknowledged that it was shaped and molded away from [D]utch by the [K]hoi and [M]alay slaves.’ [35] Vocabulary that demonstrates these influences, include, for example, the word baie/‘many’ (derived from the Malay word banyak) [36]; piesang/‘banana’ (Malay-derived); baadjie/‘jacket’ (Malay-derived); sambreel/‘umbrella’ (Portuguese-derived); mielie/‘mealie’ (Portuguese-derived); and gogga/‘bug’ (Khoikhoi-derived). [37] The expression baie dankie/‘many thanks’ is half- derived from Dutch (hartelijk dank) and Malay (banyak) respectively. [38] In order to place these influences into context, a brief overview of the development of the language is provided in the following paragraphs. Afrikaans developed in (local) colonial circumstances as a contact language: [39] The Cape was a ‘melting pot of languages’. [40] In 1595, Dutch traders and the indigenous Khoikhoi first came into contact at the Cape. [41] The local language Afrikaans thereby started to develop. [42] In 1652, the VOC established a refreshment station at the Cape. [43] Afrikaans originated within the creole community of the Cape Colony during the era of the [44]. The indigenes encounter Jan van Riebeeck Image source In colonial marketplace settings, the indigenous population is usually forced to attempt to converse in the invading settler’s language. [45] At the Cape, the local population had no choice but ‘to quickly adapt to the newcomers’ [Dutch East India Company officials] shrewd tactics when it came to negotiating and bartering’. [46] Interpreters, for example Krotoa, Autshomao and Doman, thereby became significant negotiators. [47] From 1658, the incoming slaves imported Malay and Portuguese (‘the lingua francas of trade in the Indian Ocean world in which the Dutch East India Company operated’) to the Cape. [48] ‘Cape of Good Hope’ Image source At the early Cape during the Dutch East India Company era, documents of court cases recorded slaves’ spoken language: their recorded testimonies documented ‘some of the earliest examples of the restructuring of Dutch, which eventually resulted in the formation of Afrikaans’. [49] According to Jansen, ‘[t]his significant early shift from standard Dutch was first heard through the “voice of the slave”’. [50] According to Shell, the first Afrikaans book was authored ‘by an imam, a slave descendant’. [51] Davids claims that ‘the first published Afrikaans work’ was the religious book Gablomatiem (1856), ‘written in Cape Dutch but in Arabic rather than Roman script’. [52] However, copies of this religious text did not survive. [53] Before the publication date of this text was discovered, it was thought that the first Afrikaans book was Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar (L.H. Meurant, 1862) [54] (Giliomee cites this book as the first secular Afrikaans book). [55] A representation of a madrassa, an Islamic religious school (‘The Afrikaans language is thought to have developed as a lingua franca for the slaves, as well as their masters, to be able to communicate effectively. Educated Muslims were in fact the first to write texts in Afrikaans’) Image source The Cape Dutch translation of Bayan al-Din (‘Exposition of the religion’), namely Uiteensetting