Post by cjm on Nov 28, 2016 15:14:31 GMT
Can Afrikaans culture, Afrikaners ‘as a people’ survive? Little chance, says leading historian
...
Norman’s attempt to assess the Afrikaners’ chance of survival rests largely on an interview with the leading Afrikaner historian Professor Hermann Giliomee.
Giliomee, whose own daughters have both married English-speaking husbands, sees scant chance of the survival of Afrikaans culture in the long-term or even the survival of the Afrikaners as “a people”.
“There are six percent Afrikaners in South Africa. We built our entire identity around a language and a sense of history. How will we, and what we have built up, survive in the future?” Giliomee asks.
He says that without the reproduction of education through literature, a language cannot survive. He warns that the gradual disappearance of language from university campuses could signal the death-knell of the language.
...
Norman says that South Africa will not have become a normal post-apartheid society until white domestic helpers working for black middle-class families and white petrol attendants, refuse collectors and street sweepers become commonplace.
...
...
Norman’s attempt to assess the Afrikaners’ chance of survival rests largely on an interview with the leading Afrikaner historian Professor Hermann Giliomee.
Giliomee, whose own daughters have both married English-speaking husbands, sees scant chance of the survival of Afrikaans culture in the long-term or even the survival of the Afrikaners as “a people”.
“There are six percent Afrikaners in South Africa. We built our entire identity around a language and a sense of history. How will we, and what we have built up, survive in the future?” Giliomee asks.
He says that without the reproduction of education through literature, a language cannot survive. He warns that the gradual disappearance of language from university campuses could signal the death-knell of the language.
...
Norman says that South Africa will not have become a normal post-apartheid society until white domestic helpers working for black middle-class families and white petrol attendants, refuse collectors and street sweepers become commonplace.
...