So someone shared that video of a Cape Coloured woman and an Indonesian man talking and seeing the similarities between the languages. The comments were hurtful and I've seen this a lot, people esp in JHB will lambast you for speaking Afrikaans and say it's an apartheid language.
I understand the language was used as a weapon against Black people. But I think it's important to decolonise Afrikaans. Please think about how what you share could affect someone else. Even if it's to educate. The comments really hurt me. Especially because it is from other
Black people. Saying it's because it's Dutch and relaying it back to white people. It erases coloured people entirely, it erases our history which is so complicated. And erases what we went through especially in the Cape with chattel slavery which other groups in SA largely
didn't have to deal with. And it erases our language entirely. White people stole Afrikaans. It was created by us to avoid them. Not having to deal with the slavery and Dutch at the time allowed for some to preserve their traditions longer than others could
It's a creole language
The reason for the similarities with that of Indonesia is because of the Dutch bringing Indonesians here as slaves who then intermarried with indigenous people, birthing us. People assume often coloured people are half white and half Black, that's incorrect
The reason for the similarities with that of Indonesia is because of the Dutch bringing Indonesians here as slaves who then intermarried with indigenous people, birthing us. People assume often coloured people are half white and half Black, that's incorrect
It's really hurtful because no one ever asks us about our language. They say we have no culture, fellow Black people say that. And it makes me feel like people have no compassion for people who were victims of a holistically genocide. Our teeth was beaten out so we couldn't click
to speak our languages, our names were taken away. Traditions beaten out of us. And it's like that is ignored and said to be a lack of culture and not the reality: it is genocide and eugenics.
It's painful. It's one thing when it's colonisers but when it's your kinfolk? 💔
It's painful. It's one thing when it's colonisers but when it's your kinfolk? 💔
Be mindful of the erasure. Be mindful when you say that people have no culture. Be mindful when you bring up clan names and last names. It is not our doing that it is lost, it is the fault of the colonisers. And they get off free while we are busy with tribalism.
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