Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the Afrikaaps
documentary film, directed by Dylan Valley, and to listen to EmileYX?'s inspiring
reflections on the work as well as on his own life's work as part of our
Pathways to Free Education event.
I loved Afrikaaps since i first watched the theatre production at the
Baxter. Afrikaaps is a rich
presentation of language as life-giving and culture as ever evolving. It
captures the pain of the rewriting of history by the oppressors, the loss
of language, the dismissal of a mother tongue as well as the erosion
of self-worth.
A big Thank You to the cast who are also wrote the script of the
Afrikaaps theatre production - BlaqPearl, Bliksemstraal, Jethro
Louw, Moenier Adams, Emile YX?, Shane Cooper, Quintin Jitsvinger and Kyle
Shepherd. This is such an important work, Afrikaaps takes the task of telling our own stories to higher levels!
They expose the ridicule and racism that we all face when we speak and
our accent, our diction and vocabulary does not measure up to a contrived
standard. An accent that marks our roots as black and working class and deems
us unacceptable in certain circles - as a learner in the film says we can say a few words and people will judge you as a gangster based on the way you speak.
The story exposes the myth of Afrikaans / Afrikaaps as a language of the
Afrikaner / die Baas / the oppressor as it excavates the hidden story of the
development of Afrikaaps from multiple languages, stemming from the earliest
spoken word by the first peoples San and Khoe, to Arabic, Dutch and other
languages brought to the Cape by the many who came or were brought here. It
illustrates the ethnic cleansing of a language, by the Dutch Afrikaner who
literally deleted words from the dictionary, many of these words are still used
today and considered swearing or simply not proper words. The story explores
what it means when our children learn an Afrikaans language at school that we
do not speak at home.
Afrikaaps tells the story using music, drama and film. It affirms the language, it's speakers and
thus elevates our self-worth as oppressed peoples who were literally silenced
by the devastation of our language.
Do yourself a favour and get a
copy of this dvd from EmileYX? or Jitsvinger or BlaqPearl ‘none but ourselves
can free our minds’
