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We will protect Afrikaans, says Jordan
May 19 2005 at 11:01AM
By Sheena Adams and Christelle Terreblanche
The government says it will not tolerate "hysterical nonsense" alleging it has
launched an onslaught on Afrikaans. Its stand comes amid controversial reports
that the ANC is embarking on a "divide and rule strategy" over language.
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan said
claims that the government was trying to subvert Afrikaans were "sheer, absurd
hysteria".
He said during the department's budget vote: "Afrikaans is a South African
language. I speak it every day of my life.
"We will protect it, defend it and promote it. What we will not do is put up
with this hysterical nonsense."
Jordan was responding to DA MP Desiree van der Walt who had complained of the
government's "harsh" treatment of the language.
DA leader Tony Leon also entered the fray on Wednesday, slamming a discussion
document released recently by the ANC entitled The National Question in which
he said the ANC was setting "various segments of the Afrikaans-speaking
community, and minority communities in general, against each other".
"The ANC is clearly trying to play the old colonial game of 'divide-and-rule',"
he told supporters in the predominantly Afrikaans town of Citrusdal in the
Western Cape. In the document, the ANC writes: "We must not regard the white
group as monolithic.
"It is becoming clearer and clearer that white Afrikaners have a different
emotional, psychological and material relationship to Africa and South Africa
compared to other whites."
It adds that there were many signs indicating that "Afrikaners are embracing the
new South Africa and an Africanism more readily than English-speaking whites".
Leon said it was ironic that the party which led the struggle against apartheid
should make "racial distinctions among Afrikaans-speaking people".
"Now the ANC has declared that it has the right and the power to determine
whether Afrikaners are African or not," Leon said, adding that the majority
does not have the right to determine or prescribe what the identity of minority
groups should be.
"On the contrary, it has an obligation to allow minority groups to speak and be
taught in their own languages, to practise their own cultures and to
participate in the broader society without fear of prejudice." he said,
repeating the allegation he made in the state of the nation debate that the
government waged "a sustained assault on Afrikaans".
Denying this during the budget debate, a defiant Jordan instead pointed a finger
at a "minority" of white Afrikaans speakers for inciting such claims, adding
that he found it "odd that this minority controls the institutions linked to
the language even though the majority of Afrikaans-speakers in the country are
black".
Jordan called on South Africans - singling out black Afrikaans speakers, from
Mitchells Plain to the Northern Cape, who had not once complained of an
"onslaught" on the language - to not "rightly accept the allegations flung
around so freely".
"Name me one Afrikaans book that has been banned by this government - you
cannot.
"Name me one Afrikaans writer who has been suppressed by this government - you
cannot.
"Name me one Afrikaans newspaper that's been suppressed by this government - you
cannot," he said.
FF Plus leader Pieter Mulder said the party was relieved the debate was finally
out in the open.
This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on May 19, 2005
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