South African Literature - Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a language akin to the Germanic languages and in particular Dutch. It has its origins in the 17th century, but was only officially recognised in 1875 when the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners was established. Afrikaans is spoken throughout South Africa, and is the mother tongue of both whites and coloureds (in the South African sense, meaning a specific independent culture rather than the disparaging European or American use of the term). The literary history is thus short, but surprisingly vibrant. The major literary histories are H. P. Van Coller's Perspektief en Profiel, J. C. Kannemeyer's Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse literatuur, and Dekker's Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis. Lewis Nkosi (cf. Cullhed, 2006: 18) claims that “in South Africa there exists an unhealed—I will not say incurable—split between black and white writing.” This split occurs because, Nkosi claims, black writers are “largely impervious for the most part to cultural movements which have exercised great influence in the development of white writing.” The Afrikaans literary system, in contrast to the African languages, engages with European artistic movements such as Symbolism, expressionism, modernism, post-modernism, Dadaism and the like, offering literature familiar to a European or American audience.