Turn to the youth: they know everything.
- Barthélemy-Catherine Joubert
That is all the young can do for the old, to shock them and
bring them up to date.
- George Bernard Shaw
In an article in Die Burger this year (28 June 2004), Francois
Smith asked a few questions relating to the fact that the kykNET
Prize for young Afrikaans writers was not awarded this year. The
prize was established in 2003 to honour an Afrikaans writer under
the age of 35 each year. The only explanation Smith was able to
obtain from the sponsors was that the prize had been discontinued
because it discriminated against older writers and other languages.
An odd explanation in my view: the sponsor is, after all, an Afrikaans
broadcaster and there are a number of other prizes for writers of
all ages.
What is more disturbing, though, is the suspicion that the prize
was withdrawn owing to a lack of texts to consider for the award.
Jackie Nagtegaal's Daar's vis in die punch (There's fish
in the punch) was awarded the first (and only) kykNET Prize. To
the best of my knowledge a shortlist with the names of other finalists
was never published - possibly because such a thing never existed.
A publisher who enquired about the prize at the time was informed
that the award excluded literature for the youth, poetry and religious
books. I may be wrong, but this comes down to only one writer (or
a handful of writers) being considered for the prize. Under such
circumstances a sponsor can hardly be blamed for withdrawing a prize.
But forget about the prize.
The question is: Where is the new generation of young Afrikaans
writers? Where is Toast Coetzer's volume of poetry and Angola Badprop's
and Jacques du Preez's anthologies of essays? Why are the JIP
and SL generations so quiet? Does the Afrikaans book have
the vaguest idea of what Oppikoppi looks and feels like? Has any
publisher yet negotiated with Francois van Coke in relation to the
Fokofpolisiekar Songbook? Doesn't anyone want to beg Justin Nurse
to publish his The Laugh It Off Annual in Afrikaans as well?
What is "young"? In terms of the deceased kykNET Prize and even
this LitNet conference, young means 35 or younger. One could
undoubtedly raise all sorts of objections to such a categorisation,
but the truth is that there are very few writers in Afrikaans who
can be classified as "young".
Why is it necessary for young Afrikaans writers' voices to be heard?
The answer appears obvious, but is very seldom formulated.
For the sake of convenience, forget about theories on the nature
and function of literature. The fact is that Afrikaans literature
at present looks solidly middle-aged, even old. I am not trying
to disparage our older writers, but a gap is developing in our literature,
a black hole in which a whole generation is not joining in the conversation
that literature is supposed to be.
Try for a moment to picture what Afrikaans young people's world
looks like these days …
- The average 2004 first-year student was nine years
old when apartheid was finally removed from the statute books.
- Many young people know London better than Johannesburg.
- If you work overseas, it is more important to know the exchange
rate than who the South African minister of finance is. (I suspect
that Afrikaans twenty-somethings know the names of more hip hop
artists than South African politicians.)
- Information = Google.
- It is easier to read newspapers on the Internet than to go and
buy them at the café.
- There is a good chance that you will be able to clone your pet
one day. In fact, there is a good chance that you will be able to
clone your children one day.
One could then ask oneself how many of the books that have appeared
in Afrikaans over the past five years in any way reflect this world.
Perhaps that is why Jackie Nagtegaal's debut made so many people
sit bolt upright and ask: "Heavens, is that how these children talk?"
Perhaps that is why Manie de Waal's Trips caught so many
reviewers off guard.
It is difficult to sum up a generation that doesn't allow itself
to be summed up; to speak on behalf of a generation that doesn't
allow anyone to speak on its behalf. But make a few generalisations,
formulate a few views and test them on a few twenty-somethings.
Politics smells like ideology - forget about politics. Afrikaans
is okay, but if Afrikaans starts to smell like ideology and patriotism
- forget it. Language associations and institutions are bodies that
used to sponsor debating competitions and olympiads when you were
at school - the moment they start making all sorts of pronouncements
and start marching to monuments they are involved in politics. The
debate about who or what "the Afrikaner" is, is more or less as
relevant as the post office's telegram service - the word is best
used to refer to a breed of cattle.
Is that really how many young Afrikaans speakers feel? Difficult
to say. Impossible to say if you try to get an answer from
Afrikaans books.
With a few exceptions, extremely little is written about the modern
young generation, and even less of it by the modern young
generation - in traditional Afrikaans literature at any rate. Society
is getting younger in many respects; our literature is getting older
in many respects.
The voices of young Afrikaans speakers are more common than many
people think. It's not that there's a lack of creativity - but you
have to know where to look. The question, perhaps, is not where
you should look, but what you should look at. As in:
www.watkykjy.co.za.
One gets the impression that the internet is still regarded as an
inferior publishing platform, even though a website like LitNet
has established itself over the past few years as the place
where literary and cultural debates are conducted. Yet it would
appear as though the literary establishment starts taking a debate
seriously only when it makes the papers. Similarly, people have
difficulty regarding someone as a "poet" or a "writer" if he or
she has published poetry or prose electronically.
In a discussion at the Volksblad arts festival Antjie Krog
said (Volksblad, 19th July 2004) that perhaps young Afrikaans
poets are "escaping" to Afrikaans rock. Young Afrikaans looks alive
and well on arts festival stages, where there is enough Fokofpolisiekar,
Gian Groen, ddisselblom and Klopjag in among the middle-of-the-road
stuff to convince you to take the matter seriously.
I still stand by the point I made in a debating speech as a naïve
little standard five pupil: young people still write in Afrikaans,
they sing in Afrikaans, swear in Afrikaans, make jokes in Afrikaans,
fall in love in Afrikaans. So Afrikaans is okay. The Afrikaans book,
on the other hand, is not. And I suspect that, as far as many young
Afrikaans speakers are concerned, that is okay too. If Karel Schoeman
or someone else of his generation were to write The very last
Afrikaans book in the near future, there would hopefully still
be enough people around to read it.
My experience is that young people are not as book-shy as they
are often made out to be - but books are expensive, reading is time-consuming
and books are a form of entertainment that requires effort in a
media environment in which instant entertainment is the order of
the day. The days when people bought Afrikaans books from a sense
of patriotism, habit or ignorance are fortunately past. If there
is nothing in Afrikaans books that speaks to me, I'll read something
else. If Afrikaans books no longer offer a place where I can say
something, I will go and do it somewhere else.
It's not necessarily a matter of the literature becoming "shallow"
either, although the days when people raised their eyebrows because
publishers produced a great number of love stories and self-help
books are fortunately past. Why is there so little in the broad
spectrum of Afrikaans literature - from self-help books to the highbrow
stuff - that is focused on my generation? Yes, a good book is far
more powerful than boundaries of age. But the Afrikaans book is
busy moving further and further towards the periphery of the cultural
and entertainment world. I've often heard it said that the Afrikaans
book club is keeping the Afrikaans book alive. That's a good thing.
But what happens next? Is there a next generation of book-clubbers
waiting somewhere in the wings to act as the saviours of the Afrikaans
book? Is there a next generation of writers hiding somewhere that
will provide for the reading needs of these book-clubbers?
Publishers of Afrikaans books must pay urgent attention to encouraging
young Afrikaans voices, all the way across the cultural spectrum
of Afrikaans-speakers, to make themselves heard. Yes, it will cost
money. Effort and planning will be required to grab the attention
of young voices and eventually to get publishable manuscripts out
of them. Marketing will be required to get these books to the right
markets. It will mean that the Afrikaans book will have to be more
aware of its environment, of world literature and of other media
avenues like the internet, rock music and magazines. And no, it's
probably not as easy as it sounds.
The few young swallows that have recently arrived in Afrikaans
are chirping lustily, but if they are the only ones it's going to
be a really poor summer.
Source
Claassen, George et al. 1998. Die groot aanhalingsboek. Cape
Town: Human & Rousseau. |
Jaco Jacobs (24) was born in the Karoo town of Carnarvon
and is the author of 13 youth novels published by Lapa and
Human & Rousseau since 2001. He has also published short stories
and poetry in various journals and anthologies, and has translated
a number of children's books. He completed a BA in Communication
Science at the University of the Free State in 2001, and an
honours degree in Afrikaans & Nederlands in 2002. He is currently
editor of JIP, Joernaal and the book supplement at Volksblad
in Bloemfontein.
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