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<h2>Small gave voice to oppressed in his community</h2>
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<h5>by Graeme Addison<span> <span>
July 06 2016, 05:50</span></span></h5> </div>
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Adam Small. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES</div>
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<div class=""><p>STELLENBOSCH University’s new language
policy, in effect, allows English to predominate as a medium of
instruction, while giving students the choice of Afrikaans, and to some
extent, promoting Xhosa. This is explained as "unequivocal support for
multilingualism, without excluding students who are not proficient in
either Afrikaans or English".</p><p>Critics say this fudges the issue that English has, in fact, taken over.</p><p>Language
is power, prestige, and ultimately, profit. English, French, Spanish,
and Portuguese were carried into the far reaches of the globe by
conquest, trade and religion, embedding themselves in the administration
and economies of subject societies. Today, the overwhelming presence of
China in world commerce suggests that Mandarin may soon become the
supranational language of choice. Yet English is likely to be retained
by scientists, doctors, technologists and business people because it is
entrenched in knowledge systems including the internet.</p><p>The
campaign by black students and staff at Afrikaans universities to adopt
English is an ironic outcome of the country’s — indeed the world’s —
colonial past.</p><p>In the same week that the university announced its
policy, the poet, dramatist and philosopher Adam Small, an icon of
resistance to linguistic imperialism, died. In popular verse and theatre
dialogue, Small used Kaaps, the dialect of Afrikaans spoken by Cape
coloured people, as a vehicle to mock apartheid and racial prejudice.</p><p>In
doing so, he also took a swipe at "correct" Afrikaans as spoken by the
white Herrenvolk. His critical stance against Afrikaner nationalism,
undertaken on behalf of the disenfranchised "brown Afrikaners", has left
us with an ambivalent legacy of freedom entwined with ethnicity.</p><p>By
adopting the creole lingo of the Cape Flats, he signified that all
languages can express the full scope of our ideas and emotions.</p><p>Small
was a trained philosopher with a postgraduate degree from the
University of Cape Town on the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann and
Friedrich Nietzsche. These German thinkers mounted a critique of
Christian and European spiritual decadence, contending that a meaningful
life could only be attained by returning to a sense of responsibility
for one’s beliefs and actions. This was a common theme among German
romantic sages who saw the natural order of life being corrupted by
technology, multiculturalism, and false doctrines of human equality. One
of the main exponents of these views was Martin Heidegger.</p><p>Small
took up only the ideas that related to his experience of oppression in
SA. He transformed leading currents in western thought into a highly
localised, ethnically based form of expression in blank verse, making
copious use of the Coloured patois in all its wry and scornful idioms.</p><p>He
had studied at Oxford and was much influenced by the movement that
focused on the relationship between philosophy and language.</p><p>Years
ago, he told me that philosophy topped poetry as the way to understand
life and oppose injustice, but he used poetry to give voice to the
oppressed in his own community. As the translator into English of
perhaps the greatest Afrikaans poet, NP Van Wyk Louw, Small shared the
belief in lojale verset (loyal resistance) to injustice through writing
and persuasion.</p><p>The Afrikaners are the people historically rooted
in the Cape comprising colonial forbears, former Malay slaves, a dash of
Khoi blood, and African progenitors.</p><p>After his creative assault
on Afrikaner nationalism, Small produced a volume of English poems and
then strangely went silent for decades. He continued his career as a
professor of social work at the University of the Western Cape, which he
had helped to found, retiring in 1997.</p><p>In 2013, he resurfaced to
receive an award for drama. Small has left us a controversial legacy in
which an ethnic identity becomes the means to advance a universal claim
to human rights and freedom. For the framers of the Stellenbosch
language policy, the conundrum has posed harsh choices.</p><p>To provide
access to the modern world of communication and international
collaboration, English is necessary. To preserve the heritage of
Afrikaans, there must be room to use and develop it — even in its less
prestigious dialects.</p><p>Meanwhile, the Constitutional requirement
for equality of all SA languages has prompted Stellenbosch to give a nod
to Xhosa. Only time will tell whether this leads to an academic
flourishing of the language, or to constant marginalisation.</p><p>• <em>Addison teaches media skills at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism.</em></p><p><em><a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2016/07/06/small-gave-voice-to-oppressed-in-his-community">http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2016/07/06/small-gave-voice-to-oppressed-in-his-community</a><br></em></p></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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