Afrikaans and Racial Privilege

Afrikaans is not under threat. We must not be misled by the media and its partners. Afrikaans and English in our universities, schools, and even our workplaces is a historical political reality that is still present today.  

During apartheid and colonialism a concerted effort was made to eradicate and marginalise the indigenous languages. [The argument that Afrikaans is an indigenous language is a fallacy. It is a creole language.] This was an effort civilize and transform the indigenous along European lines. We still see this in the present. 

 Indigenous languages during colonialism and apartheid were marginalised to give 'white people' in South Africa a sense of superiority. I have noticed that this kind of privilege manifest itself in the new democratic dispensation. The term I rather uses is 'racial privilege,' because it is not restricted to ‘white people’ only. I define ‘racial privilege’ as the continuation of apartheid racial privileges in the new democratic dispensation. The only racial group, who did not have any petty racial privilege in the past, was ‘black people’. They were situated at the bottom of a very discriminative and inhuman apartheid racial hierarchy, which was given life by the Population Registration Act. 

To give you an example of how this privilege manifests itself in South Africa, let us consider the following example. There is this expectation from a 'white person’ who is asked something from someone who speaks an indigenous language that it must be in Afrikaans or English.  However, ‘white people’ do not make the same effort when they start a conversation or ask a person who speaks an indigenous language a question. They will automatically address that person in either English or Afrikaans and expect that, that person must respond to them accordingly. This is the situation at historically ‘white universities’ across South Africa. This expectation of ‘white people’ is a ‘racial privilege.’

This privilege is largely a result of how the post-apartheid society was reconstructed in terms of legislation. The thinking behind the reconstruction and transformation was to reverse or undo the inequalities that were created by apartheid. The solution was in the form of the American notion of racial transformation - affirmative action. Affirmative action aimed to redress the inequalities that were created by apartheid. However, what the proponents of affirmative action did not think of was how these racial groups of the past, now enacted in a New South Africa, would continue 'white,' 'Indian' and 'coloured' people's sense of racial superiority towards 'black' people. The continued sense of racial superiority towards black in South Africa is the result of subjection and the post-apartheid government’s inability to break away from or emancipate itself from these racial groups. [To understand and to follow this argument please read my blog post titled 'I became conscious of I.' http://jacobcloete.blogspot.co.za/2015/12/i-became-conscious-of-i.html]  

Given this, we have to view the campaigns against Afrikaans as a language policy at historically ‘white universities’ not as an attack against Afrikaans but an attempt to stop 'racial privilege' and the marginalization of indigenous languages in South Africa. The university in Africa must rethink how it would address 'racial privilege,' especially if language reinforces the dominant epistemology which in turn marginalizes indigenous peoples in the Global South.