Oscar van Heerden | Finding my love of Afrikaans at the KKNK

Oscar van Heerden finds a renewed love and pride for his mother-tongue and writes that he owes this to the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees.

For years now, my wife and I have made our way to the Franschhoek Literary Festival in the beautiful Cape Winelands to enjoy great literary works and fantastic wines. And though it can, at times, be an echo chamber for white middle-aged people, they are always open to having some chocolate mixed into the white foam. In other words, as Cornel West would put it, the vanilla side of town does mix with the chocolate side.

And so, for a few days, we coexist and participate in intellectual pursuits and literary masturbation. We always walk away from Omelas satisfied that we can achieve a good society one day.

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This year for the very first time, I got invited to participate on a panel at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), where the big difference between these two festivals is obviously the language.

Situated not far from Calitzdorp, which some of you will know is our port capital in SA, so a glass is never far out of reach. Yes, in Oudtshoorn, for six days most of the activities happen in Afrikaans.

Now, I must state from the very beginning that my mother tongue is indeed the beautiful language of Afrikaans. My few days here have certainly been amazing.

Various variants of Afrikaans

First, I attended a talk on the acceptance of the various variants of the Afrikaans language and that not one of these can be considered as the right-spoken one. I was fascinated by this debate which I was made to understand is widespread within the Afrikaans community.

Whether it is the Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuur Vereeniging (ATKV) or the Afrikaanse Taalraad or, finally, the Stigting vir die Bemagtiging van Afrikaans (SBA), they are all very engaged with this critical issue. And of paramount importance, of course, is the various speakers of these variants. It got me thinking as to why this is so important, and it struck me that there has been one particular grouping in South Africa that wanted to exclusively claim my language, and that was the Afrikaners.

I was pleasantly surprised to see so many Afrikaans luminaries, intellectuals and indeed ordinary folk being open these days to accommodating these variants and its very variant peoples. I can sort of now understand why there’s an insistence on white, black and brown people. It's an attempt to accommodate these variants within the Afrikaans language. I personally still insist there’s only white and black people in South Africa, but hey, we are attempting to build a nation here, and perhaps now is not the time to seek out differences or disagreements. We'll leave that for a later stage, perhaps, and for future generations.

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But boy, this festival has so much to offer, and the demonstration of the absolute beauty of the Afrikaans language at every turn was mind boggling for me. It gave me a renewed sense of pride in my mother tongue, and I owe this to the KKNK. 

The debut performance of "woordmusiek" was awesome. Three incredibly talented female actors, Antionette Kellerman, Vinette Ebrahim and Jana Cilliers (my favourite actress in the Afrikaans soapie Die Boekklub) was spectacular.

Connie de Villiers was the writer and choreographer as well as the pianist and his talent was superb. Mauritz Lotz was on guitar and was equally brilliant. Woordmusiek is about reading very personal prose, poems and short stories while accompanied by sublime music. Listening to these women and the music was like ice-cream and chocolate sauce on a decadent malva pudding.

Next was Veronique Jephtas' monologue performance, My Kroon se Krank. This was all about the politics of hair and what represents beauty. She takes you on a journey through the ages of how black girls are judged according to the texture of their hair. But at the same time and in a particular time period how they were raped by the white farm owners on our farms. How when you date a white man, everyone is looking forward to what the offspring's hair will look and feel like.

Youth timebomb

Finally, she embarks on the controversial issue of treating your hair to make it more straight like a horse's tail or whether to leave it "au naturale". After all, "kroes is cool".

My panel dealt with the concern around the youth timebomb in the country. How do we deal with our triple challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty and at the same time appease the youth so we don't have to face a revolution any time soon?

It's not an easy matter but I left my audience with the simple reality that non-racialism is a by-product of an economically just society. And in the permanent absence of that, we are going to face serious repercussions further down the road. In other words, "ons sal kak".

As one of the shows concluded, a man in the audience shared this poem with us all, from Marius Titus, Skryfwerk:

I’ve had a ball of a time KKNK, and I will certainly be back next year, for I love my language, Afrikaans.

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