Language of the oppressor is also that of resistance and union

Laden with being the tongue of apartheid, Afrikaans became associated with tyranny, even though it is spoken by struggle fighters and can be the way to articulate a complex reconciliation.

- By Michael Le Cordeur

In the latest broadcast of Die Stories van Afrikaans on KykNET (Sundays at 8pm), I mentioned that Afrikaans was made "een vir Azazel" (one for Azazel). I received a number of enquiries about this.

The metaphor is borrowed from Etienne Leroux's book Een vir Azazel (1964), a complex and symbolic novel. The title refers to the Jewish scapegoat, which appears in the Bible in Leviticus 16.

Moses asks his brother Aaron to bring him two rams. The one is “for the Lord” and “one for Azazel”. The ram for the Lord was a sin offering. On the one for Azazel, Aaron had to perform the atonement ritual with the laying on of hands.

Thus, the sins of the Israelites were transferred to the scapegoat, which would be set free into the wilderness to Azazel. In Le Roux's book, the character Adam Kadmon Silberstein then questions the truth, and in his search for enlightenment and answers, he experiences an emotional breakdown.

This was one of many works I studied at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) under Professor Jakes Gerwel in the late 1970s. Other books such as Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (Elsa Joubert), the novels of André P Brink and Karel Schoeman, the dramas of Chris Barnard and Adam Small as well as the poetry of Small, DJ Opperman, Lina Spies, NP van Wyk Louw and Breyten Breytenbach were the reason that many students changed their courses in order to listen to Gerwel.

At that stage, the UWC's Department of Afrikaans and Dutch was the biggest in South Africa, though some students and politicians demanded that Afrikaans be banned. Many students, including myself, were in matric when Soweto exploded in 1976. Across the country, black students revolted because Afrikaans had been forced upon them.

Students at the UWC were torn in two: they struggled with their love of Afrikaans, but the wounds of 1976 were still fresh in their memories.