I am Afrikaans.
It’s not something I hide, but after so many years of reading/working in English I find myself battling to do business communication in Afrikaans. For my generation which grew up during the last days of Apartheid I live with a lot of “Afrikaans Guilt”. I (wrongly) assume that people would judge me because I am Afrikaans when, in fact, only a single person has in all the time I have been working. (And he didn’t want to speak Afrikaans in an Afrikaans Call Centre despite being told that is was a requirement as he felt it was “the language of the oppressor”. But that’s a whole other story)
Last week I interviewed a really awesome guy with dreads. Because I’m so inquisitive we ended up talking about how to maintain dreads (carefully and with special soap) and meandered through his family history of being Tswana and ending up in Cape Town as he had quite a distinct accent.
We then ended up talking about how people judge you on the way you look and speak and I ended up “confessing” that I am Afrikaans. He looked absolutely horrified and said that I should never apologise for being Afrikaans, there’s nothing wrong with it at all and that I should be proud of my heritage.
It came up in conversation with friends this weekend as well and our friends suggested that African people possibly embrace Afrikaans-ness more because tradition and heritage is (rightly!) so important to them.
I wasn’t really going to bother writing a blog post about this, but then happened to read this article this morning by Phillip de Wet in the Daily Maverick. He is a self-proclaimed “once-Afrikaans mhlungu”. I saw those words and they were quite jarring. So much so that I scrutinised the comments to see if it was just me that noticed it. I’m so happy I’m not alone.
I am Afrikaans. So is Etienne and so are our families and children. And proudly so.
You don’t suddenly become “Un” something you grew up with that is your heritage.
Edit to add:
Right after I published this post I had a guy in my office that marked African, Coloured and Other under Race on his application form and very helpfully added that he was Swazi. So I asked why he ticked Coloured. No, he says, I don’t speak Coloured. What language is Coloured I ask.
Afrikaans he says.
Like it’s a whole other race.
I just laughed.
Ja nee wat, ek ook hoor! Gaan lees hier (en my kommentaar) ter interessantheid: http://joburgexpat.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-footsteps-of-paul-kruger-and.html
Ek is ook Afrikaans en baie trots daarop. Maar om besigheid te doen in afrikaans klink net baie snaaks (was self snaaks vir my om dit nou vri jou in Afrikaans te tik)
Lekker!
Be proud of who you are, skat!
My son (now 7) refers to black people that he doesn’t know as Xhosa people despite the fact that two of his best friends are black children who do not speak Xhosa. (One’s home language is Shona and the other one’s home language is German.) We were recently in Khayalitsha and he asked me why only Xhosa people live there. Try explaining the absurdities of apartheid group areas to a 7-year-old who lives in a “mixed” neighbourhood!