Soppangheid for Kaaps: Power, creolisation and Kaaps Afrikaans

In this contribution, the dignity of speakers of Cape Afrikaans (Kaaps) is discussed with reference to the need for bi-dialectic tuition at school and Afrikaans poetry written in the Cape eye dialect. It is argued here that, besides Standard Afrikaans, a greater awareness of language varieties must be cultivated in education and the media so that learners develop the ability to control a variety of language registers. Further the manifestation of Kaaps, as eye dialect, is discussed at the hand of poetry examples. Here it is found that poets often stereotypically affirm topics in their poetry written in dialect format. The hope is expressed that the dignity of Kaaps Afrikaans in poetry can be attained with multiple rhetorical strategies. The soppangheid, dignity, of Kaaps is not only a linguistic issue, but can also serve as a confirmation of the dignity of all Afrikaans speakers. © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 Multilingual Margins 2016, 3(2): 73-85 1 Compare among others my unpublished contributions “Verandering en toekoms: om ’n kreoolse Afrikaans te bedink” (2009) and “Om kreools te wees: Achmat Davids en die geskiedenis van Afrikaans” (2012), as well as the published article “Om ’n veelkantiger Afrikaans te bedink” (2012).


IntroductIon
The 2012 symposium on Kaaps closely matches a few other events where similar matters were discussed. I am thinking of the Roots Symposium of 2009, as well as the symposium of Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Prah's Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) which took place in January 2011 and of which the proceedings were published in Afrikaans as well as English. I shall thus not repeat the aspects which were extensively discussed at those events. The same applies to my previously published contributions on the topic, for example issues such as the development of a creolised society and linguistic hybridity, the establishment of Standard Afrikaans as a conscious ethnic construct and my call for a "more multi-faceted Afrikaans". 1 Yet, these matters are applicable as background to the matters to be discussed here. Initially, I discuss the need for dignity for Kaaps Afrikaans and the necessity for bi-dialectic methods © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 of tuition at school. In the second part of my presentation I will broadly discuss the manifestation of Kaaps in the Afrikaans literature. In closing I argue that the promotion of the dignity of spoken Kaaps Afrikaans does not necessarily require the informal orthographies which we see in dialect poetry.

Introductory remArKS: StAndArd AfrIKAAnS
I would like to first make a few introductory remarks about Standard Afrikaans before I expand on my perspectives on Kaaps Afrikaans. It is not unusual at intervals to hear sharp public comment on the continued status of Standard Afrikaans. From formal and informal comments one often gains the impression that on the one hand Standard language is elevated to an untouchable gem that, by way of speaking, should be defended until death. On the other hand, one hears a demand that the standard language must be expanded so that socially and politically marginalised varieties can be sensibly standardised. By the way, in the midst of all these views, I do not hear a single opinion promoting the total rejection of Standard Afrikaans. This 2012 symposium, I presume, therefore wants to promote firstly an awareness of a specific regional variety (and language varieties in general) and secondly, determine the processes of re-standardisation.
I would like to repeat my view that I have stated elsewhere, namely that Standard Afrikaans is an exceptional achievement (cf. Willemse 2012:66). The codification of Afrikaans grammar, the compilation of several general and technical dictionaries, as well as the expression of Standard Afrikaans in the media, education, the justice system and formal spheres of usage attained over the past century, are indeed impressive. While I make this statement without irony, I must add a qualification. These standardisation processes were not always guided by linguistic considerations. Think of the active dutchification and germanisation of Afrikaans and the language family metaphor which reveal an underlying eurocentrism, an ideology which considered non-white speakers to be inferior. Later an ethnically chauvinistic state advantaged and supported the language (and some of its speakers) in all manner of ways. The choice of the varieties in which (theoretically putative supra-dialect) Standard Afrikaans was established, the selection processes for in-and exclusion were not value free. It was sometimes aimed in such a way that significant sections of the Afrikaansspeaking community, mostly non-white speakers were continuously excluded. Both our discussion, today, as well as this ongoing debate, are enough proof that important questions are being raised about the future and general acceptance of Standard Afrikaans.

KAAPS AfrIKAAnS
Kaaps Afrikaans is the result of the earliest language adaptations which took place in South Africa since the 17th century. It is also this form of Cape Dutch, then called Hottentot Dutch, which took shape in South African literature since the first decades of the 19th century. Even though this language form in the early years was subject to ridicule, there were observers like Hubertus Elffers who considered it in his little textbook The Englishman's guide to the speedy and easy acquirement of Cape Dutch (1908) as "a speech unalloyed with foreign elements, which provides easy vent for all sentiments and every feeling, though confined to the narrow limits of a patois" (quoted in Davids 2011:87). The point Elffers makes, that this language form encompasses people's whole lives, is relevant to me. Adam Small would formulate a similar insight nearly seventy years later in his foreword to a revised edition of his collection Kitaar my kruis (1973). Even though his verdict is poetic hyperbole (can the first human cry be in any language?), it makes sense to quote it here in full: Kaaps is 'n taal in die sin dat dit die volle lot en noodlot van die mense wat dit praat, dra: die volle lot, hulle volle lewe 'met alles wat daarin is'; 'n taal in die sin dat die mense wat dit praat, hul eerste skreeu in die lewe skreeu in hierdie taal, al die transaksies van hul lewens beklink in hierdie taal, en hul doodsroggel roggel in hierdie taal. Kaaps is nie 'n grappigheid of snaaksigheid nie, maar 'n taal (Small 1973: 9).
Kaaps is a language in the sense that it carries the whole fate and destiny of the people who speak it: the whole fate, their whole life 'with everything therein'; a language in the sense that the people who speak it, give their first cry in this life in this language, all the transactions of their lives are concluded in this language, their death rattle is rattled in this language. Kaaps is not a joke or a comedy, but a language (Small 1973: 9).
Our discussion today can, in the light of Elffers and Small, not be about language form as language form only, because the recognition of people in our social dispensation is in the final instance a matter of underlying importance.
Kaaps, and its antecedent Cape-Dutch, is probably the most stigmatised Afrikaans variety. It is associated with, for example, the so-called 'typical humour of the coloured person'. Think of the many Gatiepie jokes where the protagonist is often given the inherent ability to utter witticisms, sometimes indicating insight and commentary. Our Gatiepie is often, like the Blackface figure of American pop culture, portrayed as the socially inferior Other. In the dominant imaging, the Kaaps speaker is considered naïve, shufflingly submissive, and half-skilled with an inability to understand or appreciate complexity.
The version of colloquial language in informal orthographies in the South African literature extends back to the beginning of the 19th century when Charles Boniface performed his De nieuwe ridderorde of De temperantisten (1832) and Andrew Geddes Bain his Kaatje Kekkelbek, or Life among the Hottentots (1838). Already in De nieuwe ridderorde the Khoi characters, Manus Kalfachter and Grietje Drilbouten, were portrayed as comical and saucy. These stereotypical linkages would not really change over the years.
This attitude originates in the political and social imbalances of our society. Kaaps and its predecessors were spoken by people who were not in the dominant stratum of society. What the norm is, and whose language form is considered polished and acceptable, is determined by social power and economic interest. This stigmatisation thus initially takes place from outside. When Boniface and Bain wrote their texts, they founded a discourse where non-Cape-Dutch speakers were linked to a low social order, comicality, stupidity and the despised language variety.
Fortunately, there is another side to this. The speakers do not themselves © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 make this link. In fact, we have a good example of how speakers of this language variety consider their language form. We see this when the form of Kaaps which today is known as Arabic Afrikaans, is used. Achmat Davids in his important study, The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims (2011), convincingly indicates how this creolised form of European, Southeast Asian and indigenous languages was used with soppangheid, dignity, in everyday interaction in the madrassah and the mosque. Here we thus have one language form viewed from two diverging perspectives depending on the social position from which it is judged.
But this is the history. 2 What should we do today, or put differently: how does Kaaps achieve dignity?

tHe deStIgmAtISAtIon of KAAPS In tHe clASSroom
The different processes of standardisation or the expansion of the standard language takes place simultaneously on different levels: the print media and other media shape established specific language behaviour while rule-writing institutions write rules and the education system offer training. 3 But for the purposes of this contribution I would like to focus on one aspect. Although the media must play a role to make people conscious of the destigmatising of Kaaps and other language varieties, education in my view is the most important sphere for the deployment of a more broadly constituted Standard Afrikaans. Often the first cases of language disempowerment take place in the classroom. This language disempowerment in the face of the reigning standard language is not a matter limited only to South Africa or Afrikaans. Just think of the continual debates about the acceptance of language varieties reigning in the USA or the Caribbean islands (cf. Alexander (1980); Hairston (1992); Hollie (2001); Kynard (2007); Molloy (2007); Smitherman (1991); Toohey (1986); and Wilson (2012)).
Here, just as in countries like Jamaica or many American cities, teachers know that their students' non-standardised language varieties are stigmatised economically, culturally and even politically. They also know that, if they do not promote the standard language, the students who speak the variety, in the current case, Kaaps will be exposed to mockery and low performance expectations. Their pragmatic choice is thus the small, accumulative actions which disempower students from early on ("Speak correctly!" etc.). These are actions which give rise to students (and also adults) often losing the confidence to speak their mother tongue. How often do Kaaps speakers not prefer to use English in formal situations rather than Afrikaans? Often the cause is a deficient self-esteem: that they do not feel themselves competent to speak Standard Afrikaans. The real reason, we must realize, is the total disempowerment of first language speakers and along with it, the disempowerment of people to reach their full potential. We must thus ask ourselves if our curricula, our teaching practices accept and legitimise students' language identity. This view does not imply that we must stop teaching Standard Afrikaans at school. Not at all. But it does mean that a greater awareness of the legitimacy of language varieties must be cultivated in education and the media. How do we create a positive attitude?
Teachers must be equipped with skills to value and promote an awareness of the place and dignity of non-standard Afrikaans. Once again it is about the empowerment of people and therefore the social and cultural experiences that these varieties reflect which must also be meaningfully integrated in the classroom. Further, the tuition of a comprehensive history of Afrikaans and all its speakers is indispensable. (Even today, after nearly two decades of democracy, the history of Afrikaans is not really taught multidimensionally. 4 ) This means that over a school career, all learners should be equipped bi-dialectically (or even multidialectically). While the existence and validity of different language varieties are acknowledged, the importance of suitable language registers for different speech activities and circumstances should be also taught.
The result of a bi-dialectic approach in which the dignity of language varieties is emphasised, is that the dignity of their speakers is increased, while an extended standard language stabilises this recognition at formal levels. We must remember that the vibrant future of Afrikaans does not lie in boardrooms, but that it is already taking shape on our multilingual urban streets like those of Cape Town and its townships.

eye dIAlect In AfrIKAAnS Poetry
The rest of my presentation will deal with Cape dialect in Afrikaans literature. The use of dialect in literature has always been a controversial issue. A general characterisation of this rhetorical strategy is that the spoken language is presented through an informal orthography. This so-called 'eye dialect strategy' is not an exact phonetic transcription, but an idiosyncratic creation of the writer to place the emphasis on the deviating language pronunciation of his character speaker. 5 Eye dialect thus really needs the standard language, because it is always created in contrast to the standard language, and often along with that carries meanings of inferiority and social exclusion (cf. At this stage, I would like to point to a few outstanding aspects of the use of Kaaps as eye dialect, as found in a few poems. Firstly, I take Adam Small's poem "Oppie Parara" (On the Parade) from the "Dice" section of Kitaar my kruis (Guitar my Cross) The poem is well-known and I shall only quote relevant verses. The narrator is unnamed and reports in the standard variety a sale between two figures, the green hawker and his potential client: 6 6 An unknown colloquial variety may also be suggested here, cf. the use of "kannie" in the line "Die witvrou kannie lag", an orthographic representation that is not used elsewhere in the poem Die witvrou kannie lag en sy beveel: ek wil niks hê nie, die koelie streng-formeel The white woman doesn't laugh and she orders: I want nothing (to) the cooliestrictly formal These figures share one space, namely the historic Cape military parade ground, the 'Parade' which has since become a public market, among other things. They come from two different South African backgrounds: the one is a "coolie", the other a white woman. The term "coolie" recalls a person of Southeast Asiatic background with the attendant meanings that indicate his social place as a (non-white) lower class manual labourer and implies a history of bondage, contrasting it to the (white) "madam" with all the implied South African meanings of social advantage. At first glance it is an interaction about the sale of the fruit, but it becomes a clear play on words challenging the apartheid prohibition on black-white sexual liaisons. The tension in the poem is borne out by the differences between the Kaaps variety and Standard Afrikaans. Important here is that Kaaps is not just seen as the variety of 'Coloureds', but also more broadly as that of a worker of Southeast Asiatic background ("a coolie", thus a so-called Indian or Asian). 7 For my perspective it is, however, pertinent that the poem at this point breaks the stereotype: not the language of 'Coloureds' but of people from a working class background. 8 Furthermore, in this case Kaaps is the sign of the challenger, a self-conscious challenge to the white social order, where all the stereotypes of subservience, lack of intelligence and hedonism are turned on their heads. 7 An alternative interpretation is also possible, namely that the white woman figure does not know the difference between 'coolies' and other members of the non-white workers ocmmunity and uses 'coolies' as a generalization which would in itself will be poignant commentary on social relationships. 8 Thus: confirmation of stereotyping or stereotype destruction with reference to the discourse established around the connection between die Kaaps colloquial language, low social order and Khoi descendants or non-white Cape Dutch speakers since Boniface. Other Small poems like "Die Here het gaskommel" (The Lord has rolled the dice) also from the "Dice" section of Kitaar my kruis do not escape stereotypical imaging. Here Kaaps is linked to a lower social order narrator, alcohol abuse ("'n kannetjie Oem Tas"), hedonism ("'n sigaretjie en 'n kannetjie Oem Tas / en 'n lekker meid en lekker anner ding") and the old stereotype of acceptance of a preordained lot (a "can't worry" feeling which serves the speaker, probably 'an ordinary man in the street' die "skollie-pêllie"), as protection against the onslaughts of life.
Lat die wêreld ma' praat pêllie los en vas 'n sigaretjie en 'n kannetjie Oem Tas en dis allright pêllie, dis allright ons kannie worry nie 'n sigaretjie en 'n kannetjie Oem Tas en 'n lekker meid en lekker anner dinge oe! lat die wêreld ma' praat pêllie los en vas wat daarvan Let 'he worl' chat, pal loose 'nd fast a smoke an' a jug Oem Tas an' its allright pal, its allright we can't worry a smoke an' a jug Oem Tas 'nd a good filly 'nd nice other t'ings oh! let 'he worl' chat, pal, loose and fast so what The additional strategies are those of repetition, especially repetition of the line "lat die wêreld ma' praat pêllie los en vas" and the phrases "dis allright" and the question "wat daarvan" while the doomed resignation ("en die dice het verkeerd gaval vi' ons") are linked to a mythical destiny ("daar›s mos kinners van Gam en daar's kinners van Kain") over which the speaker has no control: Here a political activist narrator speaks out against the hedonism and resignation in "Die Here het gaskommel". The two poems are representative of two diverging world views. In "fokkie dice pêllie" the stereotypical associationsunbridled hedonism, cheerlessness and resignation -associated with Kaaps are rejected in favour of a rebelliousness where "freedom isn't // free" and the divine destiny is reversed with militant action: "die here het gaskommel: /hier's djou splinterbom". In this regard it is also relevant that the capital letter of "Here" (Lord) in the Small poem is replaced by a lowercase "here" where thus, besides the reference to the Divinity, it also references human social order ("the gods" in the sense of 'the men', the rulers) is implied.
Yet, in spite of a few examples like these, I am of the opinion that in general an in-depth critical tradition about the use of Kaaps in literary works has not arisen. In a published analysis of Kaaps as poetic expression among black © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 Afrikaans poets which I wrote twentyfive years ago, I found that many of the acolytes of Small in the 1980s revealed a formulaic style: The poems were often inhabited by different working class or proletariat characters (chiefly men) who were witnesses of a recent incident and related it in a comical way. For effect the poem depended on colloquial language and the oral strategies of repetition for emphasis. Comedy and wittiness formed an indispensable facet of the poetry … the "cognitive ideological intention" … depended on the portrayal of township life and introduction to working class people … and the acceptance of ingrained stereotypes. (Willemse 2007:170-71;cf. 166-75) In many cases of poets who turned to the use of Kaaps in contemporary Afrikaans poetry little has changed regarding their use of this language variety. Compare for example the work of Loit Sôls in My straat en anne praat-poems (My street and othe ' oral poems, 1998) where many of the poems contain all the familiar stereotypes: the poetry becomes the bearer of a predictable destiny and the (non-white) speaker is reduced to joker and clown. Thus the reader of the opening poem "Voowoot" (Foreword, Sôls 1998:7) is instructed "how to understand" this poetry and thereafter: "now laugh yourself to death". Sôls's poem as performance serves one purpose only: that of farce. The Kaaps colloquial language becomes a further confirmation of the discourse of disadvantage and exclusion linked to the underestimated, poor, happy-go-lucky, indifferent 'coloured' stereotype. There is no real difference to the language usage and the discourse established by Boniface and Bain in the early 19th century, except that these characters now, at their own expense, exhibit and proclaim their sauciness and backwardness from the (white?) middle class norms to their (presumably white?) Afrikaans readers.
One finds a more positive rendering of Kaaps in Ronelda S. Kamfer's poem 'owners' response' where she reimagines the context of Kaaps creatively, undertaking an interesting play with place and time over centuries. The narrator in this case is Autshumao, 'Harry' the (Khoi) beachcomber. The poem breaks totally with the formulaic style I have previously described and forces the reader to consider anew the value of Kaaps as colloquial and written language.
when I was small my dêrra retol' me a story of a big stron' sea creature tha' lived unde' 'he wate' th' animal owned everythin' that was nasty, cruel an' murd'rous until on' day all th' sea creatures th' fish th' snakes and crabs everythin' which lived unde' wate' decided to catch th' cruel sea monster in a trap 'hey took seagrass an' bamboo an' plaited it an' the stron' sea monste' was tied up he fough' to escape but to no ways' when he was caught an' helpless the rest of th' sea creatures wer' happy tha' their greatest fear had been trapped My conclusion is that most poets who use this variety of Afrikaans in their work limit it mostly to a formulaic application and thereby confirm the stereotypes built up around Kaaps. This is one of the greatest dangers of dialect poetry or dialect writing in general. The poetry becomes an empty gesture without impact which usually has a limited number of functions, chiefly to place emphasis on differences in accent and pronunciation or other perceived social deviations.
I would like to suggest that the promotion of the dignity of Kaaps Afrikaans does not need the informal orthographies, eye dialect, we see in contemporary poetry. There are a wide variety of literary and rhetorical strategies which writers can use, for example typical speech rhythms, idiomatic language, specific regional lexical items of semantic variance, suitable imaging, different language registers or stylistic awareness, the tension between colloquial and formal usage, puns, aspects such as syntactic and morphological exceptions and yes, also phonetic variation. 9 Even punctuation can play a role to convey the regional details of a fictitious character or speaker. And as every writer knows: less is more. To fall back on the informal orthography of Kaaps as eye dialect in search of black authenticity is, in my view limiting rather than expansive. And for our discussion today the question is simple: does it promote the dignity of Kaaps as spoken variety? concluSIon In closing: I have accepted in this presentation that Kaaps as a spoken variety must be valorised and dignified, but I could just as well begin with two basic questions: why Kaaps and why at this historic point in time? How we answer these questions refers to our laying off of old social categories, the establishment of a broader Afrikaans language community, and our place in a developing South Africa. The dignity of Kaaps in the last instance is not a linguistic issue, but is really about the dignity of all Afrikaans speakers.