Cultural murder!
Image: The Afrikaans language monument in Paarl and graphic by
https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geselshoekie/Argief31Des2015
To all the traitors who signed away Afrikaans in our universities:
History remembers for a very long time.
The recent termination of Afrikaans at our universities is a move that was accomplished not by an outside enemy. There was pressure, yes, but our culture's enemies were not in complete control. It was only possible because it was supported by many of our own people. People who have Afrikaans names and who speak Afrikaans as their mother tongue.
It was treason against our culture by deans and professors and faculty members, and it did not begin today. It actually began years ago already. It started more than two decades ago when the faculties were quietly being purged of principled professors, while liberal survivalists with a morbid mentality of compromise was promoted into the vacuum. It was very noticeable from the onset. If you didn't notice it then you were either blind, or fast asleep or never went to university at all.
When I graduated from university in 1995 we were told that ours would be the last year of which the qualifications would be accepted anywhere around the world with no questions asked. Unfortunately time has proved that their prediction had been completely accurate. It wasn't because the students had changed. It was because of the bad new character that was being pumped into the system. Our universities' once solid foundations were eroded since that time by the men who managed them. Not so much by outside people, but by our own people.
No matter how you try to defend the action, tearing down the construction work of the culture that your fathers had built through much toil and sacrifice is helping no cause. This was not doing good. This was doing evil.
Surrendering something that hurts nobody in order to buy an illusion of peace is always the desperate act of fools. Throwing Afrikaans to the wolves won't pacify our culture's enemies. They'll just want something else after that until you have nothing more to feed them with - and then they will leap at your throat also.
Traitors always think that their enemies will honour them. It is one of the most ironic mistakes of history. Enemies will use traitors and feed and flatter them. But they will always quietly despise them, and when they have served their use they will abandon them. The exceptions to this rule in history are very few.
Racist bigots often like to point to Afrikaans as "the language of the oppressor." Perhaps some facts might remedy this deliberate deception:
Afrikaans is the third-most spoken home language in South Africa, with more than 7 million users. It is also the most spoken home language in the Western Cape province and the Northern Cape province. It is a language that belongs to no European culture. It is, however, the youngest European style language, except for Esperanto, which is more or less an extinct novelty language.
Afrikaans was very much like open source software. It was modeled upon a Dutch backbone, but built upon using many completely indigenous African words, and even some Oriental words and expressions. Afrikaans was therefore made in South Africa by South African for South Africans.
Its grammar is uncomplicated, thus making it the easiest language to learn of all European languages and probably the easiest among African languages also. It is an old and colourful language that is rich in idioms and onomatopoeic character. It therefore lends itself more perfectly to song and poetry than any other language I know of.
The fact is that Afrikaans is a national treasure, yet it has become an object of constant attack for racist political reasons.
So this was not a step in the right direction. In the long run it is not an act that will save the lazy leaders at the feeding troughs. This shameful act was jumping off a cliff with a noose around their necks. They think this is not going to hurt them, but they are wrong. I predict that this move will not prolong their careers as much as they think.
The only difference between this cliff and a gallows is that when you jump off a cliff the rope is much longer. In the exhilaration of free fall and with the applause of the audience you think you're free and flying. That's the delusion you believe right up to the moment when the rope abruptly snaps taught and everything goes dark.
In stead of making something better, the act of treason is making everything worse. By destroying a harmless language you are joining the ranks of history's vandals, looters and pillagers - not only by your deliberate actions to aid in the extinction of our culture, but also through your lack of action in defending what makes us as a people unique, interesting and colourful.
History will not fail to recognize this event as an act of cultural terrorism. It was treason from within.
I believe that the hands who signed away the treasures of our nation did not do it for the higher good. They did it for themselves. And history shows how this is always a bad mistake.
Doing the wrong thing for the sake of advancing one's position or protecting a salary and ensuring promotion is what Judas Iscariot did.
Taking the money of the enemy to do something wrong does not make you someone creative who salvaged the situation. It makes you a traitor. It is a compromise that does not make you someone a progressive. It just makes you into a self-hating cultural terrorist. Someone whose name will be written in the books of history with toxic ink of shame.
This may just be my opinion. But we will look back one day and see whether what I said turned out to be true.
History remembers for a very long time.
By Herman Labuschagne
Different viewpoints are quite scary.
