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I am young, I am female, I am white and I am Afrikaans. Until a while ago, I did not fully understand what that meant or did not mean. I was brought up in a society permeated with staunch nationalist political and pseudo-religious views and, by contrast, saw my "volk" through the eyes of my English-speaking private school peers. Both offered a dour and dim picture of the people I know so well, of the language which has the sly ability to have you bare your soul with unknown vehemence and passion, and of a controversial culture, but the only one I know and truly understand.
Ready to denounce my people, language and culture, I awoke one morning in 1994 to find my people embracing the "rooi gevaar" and the inconceivable "swart gevaar". I ventured onto the streets, only to hear my language being spoken, enjoyed and nurtured in areas where I had least expected it.
I looked and saw my culture holding hands with its English, Xhosa and Zulu comrades, free of the shackles of a political past. Free, totally and utterly free, as I am now.
Or so I thought.
In April 2004 I was asked to take part in a debate on youth culture at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. It was a problematic topic because the words youth and culture have become such political buzzwords that to me, youth culture has become a mere construction. Unwittingly, I kept thinking of images on SABC TV news: 40-year-old "youth leaders" toyi-toying in the streets. And try thinking of an "Afrikaans youth culture" and you are haunted by images of Peroxide Patricia and Vryheidsfront-knapies in khaki.
I started talking to my friends and my colleagues, I surfed the Net, tried chat rooms, read notice-boards on the Web, scanned the media and studied the letters in the newspapers. Who are the Afrikaans-speaking multiracial South Africans? What is our perception of a youth culture? What is the perception of our generation?
I realised that there were a multitude of opinions and perceptions, and gigabytes and reams of paper dedicated to the topic. The only problem was that the opinions came not really from our generation, but from a much older generation. One marred by fear of an uncertain future, alarmists when it comes to language issues and elitists in assessing who are worthy to debate the future of our country and the state of Afrikaans and, ironically, who and what the youth have become.
In a letter to Rapport on 5 October 2003, C Brink from Valhalla wrote:
Hulle klink almal soos analfabete wat graad 8 met dubbel F's in Afrikaans tweede taal "geslaag" het … Wat weet hulle van die Palestyne, Irak, Israel, Mugabe, die nuwe Wet op Grondonteiening, die honger Afrikane, vigs … Die jeug sal meer kan sê as hulle minder voor rekenaars sit en swerf en meer verantwoordelikheid wil neem vir wat om hulle aangaan. Die lewe bestaan nie net uit plesier, vinnige voertuie, drink en jol met geen groter behoefte as om te beplan vir die aand se partytjie nie. Is dit die mense wat nou iets met waagmoed en 'n wrok wil skree?
It has become very apparent that young South Africans, especially Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, are being stereotyped as apathetic, unconcerned about the plight of our land and our continent, oblivious to the threat of AIDS, unable to string two sentences together without resorting to English, and incapable of creating anything with creative value, choosing rather to stomp around to the beat of "deep" rock or hip-hop bands.
In my speech I tried to point out that who our generation really is and what the perception of it is, are two totally different things. Yes, we are distancing ourselves from traditional organisations that are claiming to be the image of Afrikaans or young South Africans. Take the Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuurvereniging (ATKV). They do a lot to promote Afrikaans and empower young people. But there is a snag. You have to give them the assurance that you are a Christian when applying for membership. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe the rest of us are past that already? So, my friends who are Muslim and speak Afrikaans are now being excluded from an organisation that claims to represent a whole language group. And it is not a question of race. For that matter, I am not welcome either, even though I am a lieflike, wit boerenooi. But they feel highly offended if one tries to point out that with an elitist ethos such as theirs, we cannot give them our support.
I did not vent all my anger towards one organisation. There are quite a few, actually, that could do with a youthful, colourful revamp. What I did try to get them to understand was that there are organisations that still carry on as though 1994 was just another year and that are excluding young voices - voices that carry hope, energy, talent and an eagerness to see through the grey and embrace a colourful future. A future that will not just happen, but that will require hard work, change and a willingness to unite.
Needless to say, my speech at the KKNK was not well received. Or let me clarify that. It was well received by my generation, but certainly not by our grey friends. (I am not being ageist. Grey is a state of mind.) Hell hath no fury like an Establishment scorned.
In retrospect, I should feel satisfied, because their reaction - a mixture of profound anger and hurt mutterings about loyalty - is actually what I wanted. It is time that we spoke out against the negative perceptions of our generation, our relationship with Afrikaans, the way we express ourselves and the view we have of our country. And we should not be intimidated by threats or misplaced loyalty or patronising rebuttals.
The well-known political analyst Prof Lawrence Schlemmer said in an article that young people experience cultural identity just as strongly as older people do. There are no signs that the youth are vacating the cultural community, but they will be more attracted to organisations that address the problems they face on a day to day basis. I can add to that: we will get involved in structures that can understand our point of view and not try to strong-arm us into conforming to systems, ideas and ideologies of the distant past.
A couple of weeks ago a Taalberaad was held in Stellenbosch. I used to listen with amusement to the paranoid prophets of doom in the Afrikaans camp, forming organisations and setting up talk shops to "save" their language and culture. Just how do you do that? Certainly not by having koeksisters and tea in a sunny Boland dorp or by inviting the who's who of the ageing academic circles and a few misplaced, racist laertrekkers such as Dan Roodt. And certainly not by excluding your rescue workers, the marginalised majority previously denied the opportunity of using, enjoying and developing their language with the same ease as their white counterparts. And might I ask the organisers where the young voices were? White, coloured or black? Probably out there doing something constructive.
Sallas de Jager, from the band Klopjag, said in an interview in the Volksblad JIP in 2003:
Ek dink dit is baie arrogant van mense om te dink dat as hulle nie meer daar is nie, die taal gaan uitsterf. Hierdie mense klou vas aan 'n vorige era van Afrikaans. Hulle moet ophou kla en eerder net Afrikaans begin ondersteun deur Afrikaanse boeke en CD's te koop, betaal om Afrikaanse vertonings te gaan kyk … Deur net te doen wat ons doen in Afrikaans, bevorder ons die taal en inspireer ons dalk ander om ook iets daadwerkliks te doen.
In the song "Verandering" Karen Zoid sings:
Wanneer al die mense huise het
Wanneer al die huise dakke het
Wanneer al die dakke teëls op het
En elkeen slaap in sy eie bed
Wanneer Trevor genoeg van my geld gevat het
En daar iemand nice is in die Kabinet
En jy ophou om my te label
En ek ophou worry oor wat jy dink
Sal almal dan kan happy wees?
En ophou om te kla?
Sal almal dan okay kan wees?
Sonder retoriese vrae?
The Sunday Times wrote in October 2002:
The energy of the youth may make a difference this time around. There is a new generation of South Africans who believe local is lekker. They have disposed of their hang-ups about identity and language, in particular being Afrikaans. They speak it, they write it and they rock 'n roll in it.
Despite the hope we have, let's not be naïve. Not all young people are happy. The challenges facing us are enormous, and even though we might complain about things such as affirmative action, we whiteys still have the better end of the stick.
I want to believe, though, that we will not make the same mistakes as our parents and grandparents. We all grew up in an environment obsessed with colour. With the obsession came stereotypes, misconceptions, isolation from one another and oppression. Or, as the wise Yoda said in Star Wars: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."
Our only chance of seeing our dreams and hopes materialise is by taking back the power that belongs to us. Our generation needs to get involved, to let our voices be heard above the murmurs of stifling paternalism and cynicism. A good way to start is through the arts.
Through the arts we can create understanding by writing stories and creating art and portraying our differences on stage. A coloured journalist once said that white people still fail to understand their fellow South Africans. White people don't understand many things. Create something we can understand.
Through the arts there are no boundaries. Who can forget the impact
of Johannes Kerkorrel en die Gereformeerde Blues Band in the late
1980s? Who would have imagined that today we can listen to "mainstream"
artists such as Zola, Mafikizolo and Mandoza? Who would have thought
that Steve Hofmeyr could be the biggest-selling artist? Who can
make Afrikaans sound cooler than Brasse vannie Kaap?
André Brink once said: "Only by dreaming and writing the impossible can life be made possible once again."
I dreamt last night that I was young, living at the foot of a mountain on the African continent. I dreamt I was surrounded by my people, some of a different race, some belonging to a different religion, some speaking different tongues. I dreamt that it was a new era, one which compelled me to understand and reach out to my people no matter how different they might seem. I dreamt I spoke a language rich with passion and possibilities - an African-European language - unique, a tad fickle, with the power to divide, but also to unify, a language with multiple personalities, a language with colour. A language called Afrikaans.
I woke up this morning to find that I hadn't been dreaming.
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Carina Diedericks-Hugo (27) was born in Johannesburg
and grew up in Pretoria and Cape Town. She matriculated from
Herschel and studied BA (International Studies) and Honours
in Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Stellenbosch.
She is currently busy with a Masters in Media Management at
Stellenbosch. She is a writer of books for young people and
works as a children's book publisher at Human & Rousseau.
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