We should forgive but never forget: Afrikaans was the language of the oppressor — and the language of resistance

Daily Maverick

20-06-2025

In the latest broadcast of Die Stories van Afrikaans on KykNet (Sundays at 20:00), I mentioned that Afrikaans was made ' een vir Azazel' (One for Azazel). I received a number of enquiries about this. The metaphor is borrowed from Etienne Leroux 's book Een vir Azazel (1964), a complex and symbolic novel. The title refers to the Jewish scapegoat, which appears in the Bible, Leviticus 16.
Moses asks his brother Aaron to bring him two goat rams. The one is 'for the Lord', and 'one for Azazel'. The ram for the Lord was a sin offering. On the one for Azazel, Aaron had to perform the atonement ritual with the laying on of hands.
Thus, the sins of the Israelites were transferred to the scapegoat, which would be set free into the wilderness to Azazel. In Le Roux's book, the character Adam Kadmon Silberstein then questions the truth, and in his search for enlightenment and answers, he experiences an emotional breakdown.
This was one of many works that I studied at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) under Prof Jakes Gerwel in the late 1970s. Other books such as Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (Elsa Joubert), the novels of André P Brink and Karel Schoeman, the dramas of Chris Barnard and Adam Small as well as the poetry of Small, DJ Opperman, Lina Spies, NP van Wyk Louw and Breyten Breytenbach were the reason that many students changed their courses in order to listen to Gerwel.
At that stage, UWC's Department of Afrikaans and Dutch was the biggest in South Africa, though some students and politicians demanded that Afrikaans be banned. Many students, including myself, were in matric when Soweto exploded in 1976. Across the country, black students revolted because Afrikaans had been forced upon them.
UWC students were torn in two: they struggled with their love of Afrikaans, while the wounds of 1976 were still fresh in their memories.
How do you reconcile Poppie Nongena's love for the language she learnt at her mother's knee with the pain she experienced when she begged unsympathetic (Afrikaans) officials for an extension of her pass? How could she make sense of her passion for Afrikaans while her son was rebelling against the 'language of the oppressor'?
Language of resistance
It was Jakes Gerwel who brought perspective. He encouraged us to continue to speak Afrikaans, to write it, to make poetry, to sing and to resist in it against policies which wanted to make of you a lesser person. The language of the oppressor became the language of resistance.
The time to talk had passed. The students proceeded to take action. It was in this time that the slogan ' Hek toe! Hek toe!' was coined ('to the gate').
At the campus gate the students shouted out their rejection of apartheid laws on placards at passersby: the laws which drove people from their homes; the Mixed Marriages Act; the laws of Bantu and Coloured Education which prescribed where you could work and study; the law preventing you from wearing the Springbok blazer; the law which expelled us from the beaches.
Afrikaans was the language in which Poppie rebelled against the pass laws. It was the language in which Adam Small expressed the pain of the Cape Flats, where people struggled to survive in the midst of gang violence. Thus, Cape Afrikaans became a language of literature.
One for Azazel
That the slogan 'hek toe!' was in Afrikaans proved that the students did not have a problem with Afrikaans per se. They actually had a problem with the apartheid laws – in the words of Small, it was ' de lô, de lô , de lô'. Afrikaans could never be the reason for riots; perhaps only as the last straw that broke the camel's back.
Yes, to force Afrikaans on black learners was foolish. It was the spark in the powder keg which made Afrikaans the scapegoat, the One for Azazel, on which the blame for apartheid's sins was laid.
In the book Ons kom van vêr (Le Cordeur & Carstens), the former UWC lecturer and MK soldier Basil Kivedo spoke of his involvement in the Struggle:
'When the Soweto youth revolted against Afrikaans on 16 June 1976, I protested with them in solidarity in the same Afrikaans that they called the 'language of the oppressor'. Did it make me an oppressor? NO! I carried out my student politics in Afrikaans. I was arrested by the Security Police in Afrikaans. My defence was in Afrikaans. I was tortured in Afrikaans, but I fought back in Afrikaans.'
In the same book, the late Danny Titus writes:
'Although Afrikaans was the language of the 'oppressor' who was linked to Afrikaner nationalism, we had to find a way to reflect the other side of Afrikaans; a more comprehensive history of the rich diversity of Afrikaans, but also the neglected history of the black and brown speakers of Afrikaans who still did not obtain their rightful place in the general discourse and media.'
And as we began opening up the space for a variety of Afrikaans identities (as Small had taught us), more and more coloured and black people came forward as it dawned on them that you can achieve your dreams in Afrikaans.
June 16
By the time I reached UWC, the riots of 1976 had abated, but every year June 16 was commemorated. Hein Willemse, the late Cecil Esau, myself and others involved in the literary association Litsoc published a journal titled Grondstof.
The Grondstof poets wrote mostly about the themes of social and political realism, which were recited in the cafeteria (the kêf) on June 16. My first poem, Pik en Graaf, was published in it. It is a poem about poverty-stricken parents trying to earn a future for their children with pick and shovel.
Other students launched the drama association Dramasoc under the leadership of Adam Small. On June 16, the group performed the works of Small (eg Kanna) in the kêf, which by then had become the heart of the UWC struggle. The commemoration of June 16 with Afrikaans literature continued. The government had no choice but to declare this day a public holiday.
Language of reconciliation
It is now four decades later (three of them as a democracy). In spite of Article 9 institutions such as Pansat that could develop Youth Day into a unifying nation-building project, Youth Day today is just another day to braai; just another reason for a long weekend.
The youth today know little of the history of the youth who, 49 years ago on this day, propelled South Africa on a new route to democracy, of which we all pick the fruit today. These days, Youth Day is seldom celebrated properly.
What can we do to get relief and answers? We can all help to create peace in our violent country. We can begin by forgiving one another, as I did long ago. But do not, however, expect me to forget.
Actually, we should never forget.
But we may hope. How I hoped that Youth Day was not watered down to a political gathering. How I hoped that the youth would take the lead, like we did 49 years ago. And how I hoped that the President in his speech would have condemned the singing of the song, Kill the boer, Kill the farmer, as a crime against South Africa and its people.
And how I hoped that the President would recite Ingrid Jonker's poem, Die Kind (The Child), to the nation, as Nelson Mandela did on 24 May 1994, because on that day Madiba changed the stigma of Afrikaans as language of the oppressor irrevocably to the language of reconciliation.
We cannot wish the past away, but we can leave a better South Africa to our children by singing together, working together, building together and celebrating June 16 together. It is time to stop laying our guilt on a scapegoat.