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Reviewed by:
  • Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution
  • Henriette Roos (bio)
Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution, ed. Robert Kriger and Ethel Kriger, Matatu 15–16. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 336pp. ISBN 90-420-0051-1 paper.

At the end of September 1992, the 7th Conference on South African Literature, under the title “Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution,” was held in Bad Boll, Germany. The proceedings of that gathering, presented as eleven published papers, form the core of this 1996 issue of Matatu, Journal for African Culture and Society (nos. 15 and 16). In the remaining pages of the issue the focus also falls on Afrikaans and South African Literature—there are a selection of poems and a short story by black authors like Lesego Rampolokeng and Andries Oliphant, interviews with Rampolokeng and the internationally famous Miriam Thlali, and a number of reviews of critical and fictional works on and by Chris Van der Merwe, Dan Jacobsen, Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda, and Lionel Forman. Also included are a few contributions on francophone Africa, research on racism in literary texts, Ngugi, and a list of East African Women Writers, which all read interestingly, but seem to be little more than appendages to the main business of the publication. And that, namely a broad perspective on the state of Afrikaans and South African letters anno 1992, is engrossing reading matter for everyone involved with that specific topic.

Hindsight always brings wisdom and certainty, and to evaluate in retrospect the aims of the conference and the utterances of its participants after six years have passed—in South African terms, six years of tremendous political change, social transformation, and cultural upheaval—could lead to easy, but then also superficial criticism. While reading the collection, I remained very much aware of this pitfall, and my ensuing review is written in the spirit of appreciation for what was done and said at a time of great uncertainty, yet realizing how very relative, even dated, some of those statements have become. On the other hand, several matters have remained absolutely topical: the desire for a more inclusive view of South African culture and literature (see the papers by Van Wyk and also Oliphant) is just as strong but still largely unfulfilled; the overpowering status of English has become even more threatening to the ideal of multilingualism (see Davids; Lombard; and February ). To generalize, therefore, this is a book offering some contentious but always interesting view points, revealing facts and information that catch the attention of every one interested in the language and literature of South Africa today.

In his introduction Robert Kriger, who was one of the organizers, defines the main aim of the conference as “to deconstruct the language barriers as devised by colonialism.” That this gave rise to quite some criticism and dissension from a conservative South African academic corps who [End Page 196] did not attend the conference appears singularly petty (another instance of relative ideas: some of those whom Kriger names would now be only to pleased to participate). Yet that earlier dissent remains present in the conflicts still flaming very high in language politics in South Africa today. My reading of the papers of Davids (“Laying the Lie of the ‘Boer’ Language: An Alternative View of the Genesis of Afrikaans”), February (“The Many Voices of the Land”) and Willemse (“The Invisible Margins of Afrikaans Literature”) is that they regard solely the White Afrikaans speakers as “the colonists that devised language barriers.” Their work suggests that these were the only people unnecessarily agonizing about the future of Afrikaans and that the creation of a multicultural and multilingual literary tradition was prevented only because of their ideological insanity. Today however, the situation is changed by a marked shift in perceptions about who is colonizing whom, as was carefully forecast in Lombard’s paper (“The Reorientation and Redevelopment of Afrikaans in Namibia”), the “enemy” of postcolonial language emancipation is now more and more seen to be the internationally powerful English language, with black and white Afrikaans speakers and the speakers of African languages feeling threatened alike.

Apart from the essays mentioned above, the contributions by Patrick Petersen and Andries Oliphant also look at broader issues than the strictly...

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