Language, identity and radicalisation: A case study of white Afrikaans speakers (1652-2020s)

Abstract

Thirty years after the dawn of the 'New South Africa', concerns are mounting that the project is failing. Amidst state decay and the anglicisation of the public sphere (and schools and universities in particular), many white Afrikaans speakers have emigrated, and those who remain are, by all accounts, increasing their levels of ethnic identification and mobilisation, threatening, in the process, sociopolitical stability and social cohesion. Or so it seems. In his Minority-Language Rights (MLR) framework, Stephen May (2012) stresses the importance of respecting minority-language speakers' educational-language rights, and re-imagining the nation-state in more pluralist ways, specifically in order to stave off separatist and secessionist sentiment among minority-language groups. Emphasising the pejorative views of minority ethnicity that permeate academic and political discourse, and the unequal power dynamics which give rise to language shift and loss, May makes a convincing argument in favour of power-sharing of the state apparatus. Supplementing May's MLR framework with the Social Identity Approach (SIA), this study offers a comprehensive analysis of the individual and group identity formation and mobilisation of white Afrikaans speakers. Arguing that such an analysis should take into account both the historic and present context in which it occurs, this study identifies the intergroup process of reciprocal radicalisation, highlighting identity and other threats which give rise to the increased salience of Afrikaner ethnic identity. Through identity entrepreneurship and the use of symbolic reminders of identity, this is readily converted into ethnic mobilisation. Considering their lack of territorial concentration which makes the creation of a volkstaat, or ethnostate, virtually impossible, as well as their relative economic strength, this study identifies the re-birth of the "organisation Afrikaner" as the most dominant form of contemporary Afrikaner mobilisation. Consisting of growing privatisation over cultural matters, as well as the fulfilment of some duties usually done by the state, this signifies a novel way for frustrated minority-language groups to deal with their perceived marginalisation. Instead of establishing their own state, they are legally creating a cultural 'state' within a political state, the latter already in a process of decentralisation due to the failures of the ruling party. Whether this form of Afrikaner mobilisation signifies a destabilising radicalisation, or the pursuit of pluralism, largely depends on white Afrikaans speakers' avoidance of essentialism and continuing commitment to the rest of South Africa, as well as the ruling party's willingness to include white Afrikaans speakers in the South African nation-state.