Today 19 of the 20 Cabinet members are native Afrikaans speakers.

There is even an abstract monument to Afrikaans in Paarl - perhaps the only monument to a language anywhere in the world.Īfrikaners, who today constitute roughly 60% of the white population, have since 1948 almost completely dominated politics. The Afrikaners' language is the primary symbol of their sense of cultural distinctness. They did not win the right to be taught in Afrikaans until 1925, since which time English and Afrikaans have been officially on equal footing. When not taught in English, Afrikaners were schooled in Dutch, a language equally foreign to them by the early 19th century. These events are engraved on the Afrikaner character and ideology. This, along with the freeing of slaves and the British efforts to establish racial equity in the courts, led to the Boers' treks northward starting in 1836, and as British imperialism grew, to the Boer War at the turn of the century.

The original European settlers in 1652 spoke Dutch, which eventually evolved into Afrikaans, but in 1822 the British gained control and proclaimed English as the language of the schools, churches and government. The conflict and rivalry between English - and Afrikaans-speakers goes to the heart of the history of white South Africa. To understand this event and the language issue as it stands today, some background of the English vs. This issue was the spark that ignited the tragic Soweto riots in 1976. On another level, there are linguistic tensions between the ethnic Europeans and the black majority, mostly in regard to language instruction in schools.

On one level, there are tensions between its two official language groups, Afrikaans and English. South Africa is a multi-lingual society that has some unique linguistic problems because of its policy of apartheid.

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