The last progressive Afrikaans newspaper in South Africa, Vrye Weekblad, published its final issue on March 28. This is a tragedy for one of the world’s youngest languages — but an even greater one is the slow return to parochialism and tribalism across all sectors of Afrikaans, particularly among the white people who speak it.
Two in five mother-tongue Afrikaans speakers in South Africa are white, and it is among this mostly resentful coterie — the previously, and still, advantaged — that the shift is taking place. You might have noticed how some white Afrikaners are rejoicing at Donald Trump’s opportunistic and misguided interest in their “long-suffering” tribe.
It is ironic that the Afrikaans language officially turns 100 on May 8 this year, but that a progressive online publication in their own language shuts down because of a lack of interest (it only cost R79 a month) and a collective disdain for fresh thinking outside their gated minds.
Vrye Weekblad editor-in-chief Max du Preez reflected on this disconnect: “Much has been said and written … about why Vrye Weekblad was not a commercial success. Supposedly, we were once again not, as the accusation also was against Vrye Weekblad 1.0 [the original print edition], ‘within earshot of our readers’. We were too critical, too left-wing, too liberal, too progressive, too woke; how could we expect people to read us if we kept challenging their established life — and world views?
“This is the eternal question in my profession: to what extent must you confirm your reader’s prejudices, leave their comfort zone undisturbed, to ensure they keep reading you?” he said. “I thought it was only the woke brigade that insisted on ‘safe spaces’ on campuses and elsewhere, where no-one is allowed to be ‘triggered’.”
Afrikaans boasts a monument in Paarl. With the decline of a robust Afrikaans journalistic environment, what is there to honour? It’s like a house with many rooms, but one by one, the doors are slammed shut.
Afrikaans boasts a monument in Paarl. With the decline of a robust Afrikaans journalistic environment, what is there to honour?
This sculptural monument with its Brutalist architectural style was intended to celebrate the diversity, growth and rich origins of the language. Really?
When the (recently defunct) Sunday newspaper Rapport started publishing a column by Nathan Trantraal, who writes in a rich variant of Afrikaans called Afrikaaps, there was an outcry from white readers who attacked him for not writing “real” Afrikaans.
Trantraal’s vernacular is characterised by a mixture of influences from English, Dutch, Malay, Arabic and Khoi languages. Its origins can be traced to the language’s original speakers — the enslaved — before white men hijacked, manipulated and sanitised it, turning it into a nationalist project that excluded coloured and black Afrikaans speakers from their white bubble. So much for the monument’s symbolism of diversity.
What are Afrikaans speakers celebrating now that the language has officially turned 100? A return to the laager? Instead of rebelliousness, innovation, disruption, we have a narrowing of fresh ideas and diminishing news sites.
With the closure of Vrye Weekblad, a population of about 8-million speakers and potential consumers of online news is left with just two media outlets: Maroela Media and Netwerk24.
Many Afrikaners claim that they read publications in English, but Afrikaners are stubborn and demand to read in their own language. If they are so concerned about their (in their minds eternally dying) language, why do they sit back and watch how the Afrikaans media shrinks to a small snail with two recoiling tentacles?
The largest Afrikaans media house, Netwerk24, offers a bouquet of tabloid journalism, spiritual articles, safe opinion pieces, celebrity news, babies’ births, weddings, sport, arts, financial news and stories about animals (snakes are a particular fascination). It has a regional vibe to it, not unlike Maroela Media, which is a mouthpiece for the Solidarity Movement.
Last year Media24 closed Rapport, the biggest Afrikaans Sunday newspaper in its stable, as well as the daily Beeld. The melktert keeps shrinking. Was Charlize Theron being ironic when she claimed on TV that barely 44 people still speak Afrikaans?
Vrye Weekblad is not the only publication in the niche of freethinking Afrikaans media to fold. Over the years — despite the public appeals from left-leaning Afrikaners for intelligent reading material — fine magazines such as Die Suid-Afrikaan, Insig and De Kat have gone out of business.
Despite Afrikaners’ claims that they love their language and that it is flourishing, the air carries a scent of something rotten. That rancid smell is perhaps the icy hands from the conservative past of the Boers trying to strangle a fragile fledgling. And they might just be succeeding.
*Lategan is a detribalised Afrikaner, journalist, writer, and poet based in Cape Town
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