Language and Race Problems in South Africa
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LANGUAGE AND
RACE PROBLEMS IN
SOUTH AFRICA BY
ADRIAAN J. BARNOUW PROFESSOR AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, CARNEGIE CORPORATION VISITOR TO SOUTH AFRICA,
THE HAGUE MARTIN US NI]HOFF 1934
1932
ISBN 978-94-011-8517-2 ISBN 978-94-011-9255-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-9255-2
FOREWORD On recommendation of its Visitors Grants Committee in South Africa, the Carnegie Corporation of New York in I93I requested Professor Adriaan ]. Barnouw, who is serving as Queen Wilhelmina Professor of the History, Language and Literature of the Netherlands, at Columbia University, to visit South Africa for the purpose of making a comparative study of Afrikaans and of the Dutch language in South Africa. The account of his visit, and his resulting observations are found in the present volume.
My purpose in visiting South Africa was to hear Afrikaans spoken on the spot, and to meet the scholars who are devoting themselves to the study of Afrikaans and its literature. This name for the language which in the nineteenth century was more commonly called Cape Dutch is in itself a challenge and a programme. It proclaims to the world that South Africa is a white man's country, and that the white man's language which is essentially South African is the Dutch speech of the Boers. It is a challenge, therefore, not only to the native population, whose anterior rights to the land are held to be superseded by the rights of the pioneers who reclaimed it for civilization, it is a challenge also to the English, who would claim for their language first place in South Africa. One must know the story of the movement for the recognition of Afrikaans to understand the faith and the loyalty that the language cult evokes. It began at Paarl, in the western Cape Province, in the early seventies of the past century. Eight men, all except one under thirty years of age, met at the house of the latter and decided upon a campaign for the rescue of their mother tongue from decay and extinction. Afrikaans in those days was an outcast, despised not only by the English but by the responsible leaders of the people who spoke it. More than two generations had passed since the British had taken possession of the Cape Colony, and during those sixty odd years the Government's educational policy had succeeded in reducing the Boers' love of their Taal to a shamefaced and apologetic attachment. They spoke it in their kitchens and parlors, but in the presence of Britons, Hollanders, and educated Afrikaners it was good form to speak English or Holland Dutch. Afrikaans was the poor relation who was expected to efface herself in the presence of Barnouw, Language
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LANGUAGE AND RACE PROBLEMS IN SOUTH AFRICA
her betters. Sixty years of suppression, derision, and browbeating had made the Dutch Afrikaner lose faith in his language and in himself. In 1822 the people of the Cape Colony were told by proclamation that it had been "deemed expedient, with a view to the prosperity of this settlement, that the Language of the Parent Country (meaning England, not Holland) should b
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