Kaaps: Time for the language of the Cape Flats to become part of formal schooling

Throughout the centuries, language has always been a prerequisite for tuition and learning. This contribution is based on the universal theme of language as bearer of cultural identity and the role it plays in South African education, specifically regarding literacy. The focus falls on especially one variant of Afrikaans, known as Kaaps, and the role that it plays regarding the individual and group identity of the group of people who were classified as Coloureds during apartheid1 and marginalized by poverty, place of residence and race. The research question is whether Kaaps can make a contribution to the successful delivery of the school curriculum in those schools which are mainly attended by the so-called ‘Coloureds’ on the Cape Flats. The methodology chiefly entails a literature review. From a socio-historical perspective the article reflects on the history of Kaaps since the early 1600s, and what role it plays in the development of Afrikaans. The literature study supplies the theoretical framework for reflection on Kaaps. The focus is on the influence of Kaaps on its speakers’ perception of their identity; the conflict of Kaaps with Standard Afrikaans; the current status of Kaaps in the Coloured population; the restandardization of Afrikaans, and to what extent, if any, Kaap comes into its own in South African schools. The study comes to the conclusion that learners who grew up with Kaaps, are disadvantaged at school and that the language should be utilized more inclusively. © Le Cordeur and CMDR. 2016 Multilingual Margins 2016, 3(2): 86-103 1 The classification of social groups according to race is problematic (Essack and Quayle 2007:73). The term “Coloured” refers to people who were identified as Coloured under apartheid legislation. The terms “white”, and “black” are used, not because the author approves terms which labels people on racial grounds, but because they, unlike the word “Coloured” do not occur in apartheid legislation and are thus acceptable to illustrate this point of diversity. 87 Part of formal schooling © Le Cordeur and CMDR. 2016 InTroduCTIon2 In South Africa, language has always been an emotional and often political issue (Le Cordeur, 2011). Since South Africa became a democracy, Afrikaans has lost its status as one of two official languages and today Afrikaans and English share this privilege with nine indigenous African languages. Now that Afrikaans no longer enjoys advancement by the government, the Afrikaans-speaking community is obviously concerned about the future of their language (Pienaar, 2014). This often leads to emotional debates. Most of these are concerned with the conservation of Afrikaans in its standard form within a specific sociocultural context. Language thus plays an important role to indicate who and what we are (Le Cordeur, 2011). Joseph (2004:39) in Dyers (2008:51-2) puts it as follows: ‘... we read the identity of people with whom we come into contact based on very subtle features of behaviour, among which those of language are particularly central.’


InTroduCTIon 2
In South Africa, language has always been an emotional and often political issue (Le Cordeur, 2011). Since South Africa became a democracy, Afrikaans has lost its status as one of two official languages and today Afrikaans and English share this privilege with nine indigenous African languages. Now that Afrikaans no longer enjoys advancement by the government, the Afrikaans-speaking community is obviously concerned about the future of their language (Pienaar, 2014). This often leads to emotional debates. Most of these are concerned with the conservation of Afrikaans in its standard form within a specific sociocultural context. Language thus plays an important role to indicate who and what we are (Le Cordeur, 2011). Joseph (2004 in Dyers (2008:51-2) puts it as follows: '… we read the identity of people with whom we come into contact based on very subtle features of behaviour, among which those of language are particularly central.'

reseArCh desIgn
This study starts with a literature review on a number of burning issues regarding Cape Afrikaans (Kaaps), namely: the history of the speakers of Kaaps (the Coloured people); the group areas act; the 1976 riots in Soweto; the stigma attached to Afrikaans as the language of oppression; the role of Coloured people in the development of Afrikaans; the origins of Kaaps; the stereotyping of Kaaps and the status that this language variant enjoys among Coloured people (especially among the youth). The data from the literature review is used as basis for the argument that Kaaps should be used as language of tuition in school to support the curriculum and as pedagogy to improve the academic achievements of the learners who use Kaaps as home language. The article closes with a look into the future regarding the position of Kaaps within Afrikaans as multifaceted language and the relationship between Kaaps and Standard Afrikaans in particular.

The proud history of Black and Coloured south Africans
South African history either ignores the heroic contribution of Black and Coloured people in the past, or represents it in a negative way (Rabe, 2011:54). Thus school history books represent the Anglo-Boer War as a battle between Boer and Brit in which the Afrikaner repeatedly emerges as hero, while the contribution of Black and Coloured South Africans is ignored (Sonn, 2014). The issues which caused the war affected Black and Coloured people, and nearly one hundred thousand Black and Coloured people were directly involved in the war, while between ten and thirty thousand White people participated in the war as armed soldiers. The war produced many Coloured heroes (including one Sgt-Major Taylor) about whom nothing appears in history books (Carstens and Raidt, 2015). The Morning Post in Mafikeng reported as follows on the Siege of Mafikeng: 'The Coloured … separate neighbourhoods, separate languages South African history shows that political decisions were taken and executed since its earliest days to force White, Coloured and Black people to live separately from one another (Carstens and Raidt, 2015). A number of examples can be found of this practice: the slave lodge in Cape Town which housed slaves until 1838; the separate areas occupied by White and Black people in the Eastern Border area, and the establishment of the location system by Shepstone in the 1850s in Natal (cf. Giliomee and Mbenga, 2007:148). In the 1950s the Group Areas Act was instituted by the apartheid government. It led to people all over South Africa being forced out of their traditional neighbourhoods: in Cape Town out of District Six to Mitchells Plain and other areas on the Cape Flats, and in Johannesburg, Black people were forced to live mostly in Soweto (cf. Carstens and Raidt, 2015). There are many other examples. In 1932, Coloured people were removed from the voters' roll. They would henceforth be represented in parliament by White people (cf. Du Pisani, 2012:353). The race label of being Coloured left deep wounds and caused much bitterness, as becomes clear in the following poem: Laat dit dan wees, o Heer, dat ek 'n duisend jaar gelee teen God en mens gesondig het … dan weet ek tog, dis u besluit, die vloekstraf van 'n donker huid. (Uit: "Bede", S.V. Petersen. 1944) [Let it be, o Lord, that I, a thousand years ago, did commit some sin against God and man… Then I would know thus that it was your decision, this curse of a darker skin.] (From: Prayer, S.V. Petersen. 1944) Since different groupings within the Afrikaans community had lived apart for so long, it caused them to grow apart linguistically. Kaaps speakers and speakers of Standard Afrikaans would eventually become intertwined in an "us and them" relationship.

Kaaps has a long history
The earliest Kaaps was recorded even before Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape in 1652. The earliest periods of the history of Afrikaans began after the visits to the Cape by Van Linschoten in 1592, and De Houtman and Lodewycks in 1595. The VOC (Dutch East India Company) was a trading company with too few workers and too much work; as a result, they decided to import slaves. The first group of slaves came from Angola and Mozambique in 1658 and in the process brought Portuguese to the Cape. Slaves were also imported from the East, which brought Malay to the Cape (Van Rensburg, 2012:26). Many Vryburger farmers had married Khoi-Khoi women or former slaves who already spoke Afrikaans by 1600. Children grew up with their mothers' version of Afrikaans. This Afrikaans is known as Kaaps today (Van Rensburg, 2012:36) and it is the home language of more than 1,5 million people on the Cape Flats (Le Roux and Pissoa, 2011 (Davids, 2011:75).
The Muslims also played a great role in preserving Dutch songs which refer back to the days of slavery (I.D. du Plessis, 1935). In a time when most Afrikaners in Cape Town were anglicizing, they founded the Malay choirs 4 (Davids, 1994:40). Despite the Dutch origin and lyrics of Cape Muslim music, this cultural contribution was never acknowledged and little of it was recorded. The best known song is probably Rosa, a love song sung at festivals and weddings:  (Desai, 2004) stigmatization; language of the oppressor and the soweto riots It was Langenhoven (Hugo, 2009:65) who labelled Afrikaans as a white man's language with his remark in the early 20 th century that Afrikaans was the greatest single achievement which had come from overseas with the white man. This remark would eventually lead to Afrikaans being branded the language of the oppressor, especially because Afrikaans was promoted on a racial basis. While Afrikaans was favoured by the apartheid government and the promotion of the standard variety of Afrikaans took precedence, the colloquial variants of Afrikaans, including Kaaps, did not receive the necessary acknowledgement (cf. Odendaal, 2011). The push for change in the Black, Coloured and Indian population grew increasingly stronger and it was only a matter of time before the people rose up against the apartheid state. The Soweto riots on 16 June 1976 spilled over to the rest of the country and is still considered by some to be a protest against a language policy which forced Afrikaans on black people. The language of the struggle was mainly English and 'the hunt was on and Afrikaans was the target' (Van Rensburg, 2012:133).
Nevertheless, Coloured voices were incorporated into the great black consciousness protest movement and the uprising in the vast Cape Flats also increased.
Many Coloured people were shot during the 1970s and 1980s, or were arrested and tortured (cf. Carstens and Raidt, 2014;Le Cordeur et al., 2012). Thus, for example, the young activist Ashley Kriel 6 was shot by the Security Police in July 1987 for his role in the anti-apartheid protests. At this time, for Coloured people, Dr Allan Boesak became a symbol of their participation in the struggle for freedom. His legendary undertaking at the World Council of Churches that he would fight apartheid was expressed in Afrikaans. And Basil Kivedo, the former MK soldier and currently member of Parliament, admitted that he had fought his 'Umkhonto battle in Afrikaans'. Titus (2012) confirmed this fact: '(W)hen we as students in the Western Cape began to give effect to 16 June 1976, we fought the battle in Afrikaans.' Even at school it was Afrikaans-speaking youths who were at the forefront of the struggle (Le Cordeur et al., 2012:70). Coloured people thus played a big role in the struggle, and they did so largely in Afrikaans.

Kaaps versus standard Afrikaans
From the preceding section it is logical that the 'Coloured voice' could not be part of the vocabulary of Afrikaans literature, mainly because Kaaps as spoken language variant of many Coloured people was considered a deviation from Standard Afrikaans. The standardization of Afrikaans was considered a strategic process (Deumert, 2004:9) which was closely related to the apartheid ideology and Afrikaner nationalism (Roberge, 1992). Odendaal (in Van Heerden, 2013) agrees: (i)t is common knowledge that, historically, Afrikaans was racially informed and ideologically controlled by the oppressor. Whilst standard Afrikaans was appropriated by the oppressor; other varieties of Afrikaans were not recognized. Odendaal (2011) declares in this regard: "Standardization is not merely a technical exerciseit is politically motivated." This standard, she says, does not represent the total language community of Afrikaans. Odendaal (2013) further indicates that a number of attempts have been made since the 1980s to acknowledge the spoken language variants of Afrikaans. Nevertheless, standardization continued to deny the creole nature of Afrikaans, while the language was purified of Khoi, Malay and slave influences. The consequence of this purification process was that Standard Afrikaans was seen as 'civilized' Afrikaans, while colloquial variants (like Kaaps) were considered to be uncivilized.
The protest poems of Coloured poets and writers who survived the struggle years was their way of rebelling against their exclusion from mainstream Afrikaans. Van Rensburg (2012:130) echoes this sentiment and mentions that Adam Small and other authors indeed used Kaaps in their literary works as a protest action against Standard Afrikaans, and bases his view on the fact the Coloured people were by far the majority in the Western Cape. 'Why is it so important to preserve the standard variety whilst "Kaaps" is the mother tongue of over two million people in the Western Cape?' he asks.
The generally acknowledged meaning of standard language is that it is the language form associated with contextual uses which enjoy a certain prestige value, such as academic language, public speaking language, and tuition material (Carstens, 2011:285, Van Rensburg, 1997. Kotzé (2009) argues that the selection of the 'standard grammar' of Afrikaans was the collective result of a mutual consultation process by many language users and academics. Thus in the most recent edition of the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (Afrikaanse Vocabulary List and Spelling Rules or AWS) about 80 new Muslim words have been included. This is an important step because, while spoken language varieties were previously considered to be inferior forms, today it is accepted that the varieties of a language are equivalent components of the language (Ponelis, 1994:107). Standard Afrikaans is thus one of the varieties of Afrikaans, beside other varieties, which is used for higher functions (Carstens, 2011:82;Van Rensburg, 1997:31). Ponelis's (1994:106) view that Standard Afrikaans had enjoyed a golden century, but that this era had reached a turning point which held important consequences for the language, is thus very relevant in terms of the current debate. Hendricks (2013) consequently argues that a re-standardization of Afrikaans is unavoidable. He adds: One would hope that Standard Afrikaans will in future be increasingly expanded and enriched by taking into account a significant number of varieties, especially Kaaps. Odendaal (2011) agrees. According to her, the re-standardization of Afrikaans should focus on normative and ideological language planning which takes into account the needs of the total speaking community. Thus, the re-standardization of Afrikaans © Le Cordeur and CMDR. 2016 will lead to the empowerment of its speakers -psychologically, ideologically, economically and academically. If this happens, the words with which Adam Small addressed his critics 50 years ago, become relevant once more: Kaaps is a language, a language in the sense that it bears the full fate and destiny of the people who speak it; their whole fate, their whole life 'with everything that is in it'; a language in the sense that the people who speak it, give their first cries in this language, all transactions in their lives are concluded in this language, and their death rattle is rattled in this language. Kaaps is not a joke or a comedy.
The last point in Small's statement above ('Kaaps is not a joke or a comedy') deserves to be further investigated, and is thus the theme of the next section.

Kaaps is not a joke
Kaaps is often denigrated as a 'Gammat' language riddled with Gatiepie jokes (Van Wyk, 1997). Gammat is a male proper noun derived from Mohammad (pronounced in Arabic as 'Moegammad' and thus by implication constitutes a negative reference to the influence of Muslim Afrikaans). The stigma that Kaaps is a 'joke' language is nothing new (cf. Trantraal in Marais, 2013). Already with Small's first works there was criticism by Coloured intellectuals that suggested that Small by his use of Kaaps had stereotyped Coloured people and represented them in disparaging ways (Gerwel 1985). This criticism according to Gerwel (1985:16) Hugo, 2013) is of the opinion that Small is the one writer who can give substance to the power with which Kaaps can express people's pain. Willemse (2012, in Van der Merwe, 2013, and also in this special edition) argues that 'Kaaps is probably the most stigmatized Afrikaans dialect'. According to Willemse (2012), Kaaps is linked to the so-called humour of the Coloured people, as in the many Gatiepie jokes -similar to the Blackface figure of the American pop cultureand is represented as socially inferior: 'In the dominant imaging, speakers of Kaaps are often considered to be naïve, shufflingly subservient, half-skilled and with an inability to understand or appreciate complexity.' Repeated pleas have been asking for the stigmatization of Kaaps to be halted because it offends its speakers (cf. Odendaal, 2011, Le Cordeur, 2013b Another concerning aspect is the idea that Kaaps is a so-called 'gangster' language. 'No', says Hendricks (2013), 'I cannot associate with equating Kaaps with gang language. Cape gang language is but one register distinguishable in Kaaps.' After Joan Hambidge (2013) referred to his 'gangster language' in a review of Nathan Trantraal's collection Chokers en Survivors, Trantraal reacted aggressively: ' … if I speak Gangster, she speaks Boer. Joan's comment about gangster language was shocking to me because she is supposed to be a highly regarded academic. ' Trantraal (2013) added that he was the one Afrikaans writer who was in a good position to say anything about Kaaps and its literary works: 'You see, I speak the language and live in it.' The last word here goes to Willemse (in Titus, 2012): 'It is about the dignity of people, not about the acknowledgement of a language form.' Alexander (1994:24) pointed out long ago that in Afrikaans a search for identity was often used as a political pawn. According to Pienaar (2014), for many white Afrikaans speakers, Afrikaans is part of their identity. It defines who and what they are. He further states: © Le Cordeur and CMDR. 2016 … (l)anguage is woven much deeper into our being and identity than most of us realize. We do not only learn language from one another, we also learn certain patterns of thought along with it. The language we speak is thus more than just an instrument of sound and communication. Our language is part of how we experience and see ourselves, how we express ourselves and understand the world (Pienaar, 2014).

Kaaps as bearer of identity
For Coloured speakers of Afrikaans, it is no different (Le Cordeur, 2007:5), but they are less outspoken about it, and according to Gerwel (1985) they have made peace with the language they speak. Coloured people are not militantly involved with the language conflict, because their existence is not threatened by the scaling down of Afrikaans. Carstens and Raidt (2015) point out that Coloured culture had for years been associated with the cheerful Minstrel Carnival in the Cape around New Year. This is not, however, all that Coloured culture consists of, and there is still much to be explored and to be learnt from one another. Le Cordeur (2014e) refers to the ATKV's annual Riel Dance competition at the Afrikaans Language Monument in Paarl: (it's) a festival where more than 4000 supporters from the total Afrikaans community celebrate the true freedom of Afrikaans; Afrikaans with all its variety, colour and spice. Here the words of NP van Wyk Louw, engraved on the rock of the language monument, acquire new meaning when he says: Afrikaans is the language linking Western Europe and Africa: it forms a bridge between the bright West and magical Africa. Perhaps this is what lies ahead for Afrikaans to discover.
Furthermore, Le Cordeur and Le Roux (2013) in the book Die Wellingtonse Klopse: 100 jaar se onvertelde stories emphasize that the Minstrel Carnival is an opportunity to recall the hard fought freedom of the erstwhile slaves. The minstrel songs are about more than just good cheer. They express the full fate and destiny of the people (Small, 1962). One of the most popular items on the Carnival Programme is the moppie 8 , for which the original Afrikaans lyrics are written by die groups themselves. The following song delivers social commentary on the riots which were matched by a workers' strike. It expresses people's pain due to the empty promises of better salaries and highlights strikers who toi-toi in the streets without knowing if there will be a solution -and yet remain loyal to South Africa.
Viva The Coloured voice looks at the blood relationship between the two men. Years later, Van Wyk Louw 10 strongly argues for his fellow citizens to consider white and Coloured as one nation: 'The Coloured people are our people,' he says, 'they belong with us.' The findings of a study (Saal and Blignaut, 2011) indicate that the use of Teen Kaaps is experienced positively by teenagers who speak the language. The teenagers surveyed in the study indicated that Kaaps was 'hip' and 'cool', which could be an indication of changing perceptions about Kaaps since 1994. Taking everything into account, it can be stated with certainty that Kaaps enjoys a certain stature in the community and in the arts. This language form succeeds in releasing a certain energy into the working class Afrikaans speakers on the Cape Flats. Le Cordeur (2007:5) argues that the group attaches value to the work of poets, playwrights and singers in which this dialect is engaged. Compare

The contribution of Coloured people to the development of Afrikaans
From the preceding it is clear that the history of Coloured people is closely intertwined with the language. Nevertheless, it appears that the role of Coloured people in the development of Afrikaans has not been acknowledged. In the apartheid era, this group was classified as 'Cape Coloureds'. Most of them have Afrikaans as mother tongue (Le Cordeur 2011a), live chiefly in the Western Cape around Cape Town and possess the skill to change language codes: 'Some can comfortably codeswitch between "Kaaps"…,"pure Afrikaans", and English' (Du Preez, 2011:3). This means that the opinion of nearly three million people for whom Kaaps is a home language, a religious language, a cultural language and an emotional language, are often ignored when Afrikaans is considered.
Seen against this background, the position of Coloured poets and writers who wrote in Afrikaans during the apartheid era was often contentious. The labelling of Afrikaans as 'white man's language' also haunted the poets Adam Small and S.V.Petersen, because in the older Afrikaans critique there was open racial categorization. In Dekker's (1966:292) literary history, S.V.Petersen is referred to in a derogatory way as 'the voice of the Coloured which is still unskilled' and is not yet 'real poetry'. By typifying Small as 'black Sestiger' (Dekker, 1966:292), his contribution to the growth of Afrikaans literature is indeed acknowledged, but on the other hand his marginalization in that literature is also implied: a matter of being inside, but also outside.
With the dawn of democracy, however, the playing field changed. Afrikaans had to relinquish its powerful position and although it is still an official language, it now shares this position with ten other languages. What will become of the 'Coloured voice' in this new dispensation will depend, according to Pakendorf (2011), on 'the extent to which the guardians of norms are prepared to abandon the old holy cows'. Because even if the open use of 'sensitive' colour labels are currently banned, the race card has never really disappeared. The fact that Adam Small's oeuvre was ignored for so many years, regarding the awarding of South Africa's top literary prize, is the clearest sign of this. This matter was eventually corrected in 2012 when the Hertzog Prize was awarded to Small. The bitterness of Floris Brown, who according to Le Cordeur (2011c) had published 24 collections himself, because he was ignored by publishers, becomes apparent in the following verse: Mense hou nie daarvan om woorde te lees wat kwel aan hul vel, dus, is ek tot vandag geen uitgewer se pêl.
(People don't like to read words which vex their skin, thus, I am to this day no publisher's pal.) (From: Kaleidoskoop 2011 11 ) The adjustments will thus have to be comprehensive and the school curriculum will have to be subject to this reflection. Where do the impressive number of Coloured writers and poets fit in -one thinks of Adam Small, Peter Snyders, Patrick Petersen, EKM Dido, Nathan Trantraal, Ronelda Kamfer, Dianne Ferrus and Clinton V. du Plessis -in a changing body of literature? And will publishers eventually publish the words of poets like Floris Brown? And according to which benchmarks, asks Pakendorf (2011), would their poetry now be acceptable?

Kaaps in the school curriculum
For political reasons, Coloured, Black and White learners attended separate schools in the apartheid period ) (see 6.2.2). After 1994 the separation of schools started to disappear and today integrated schools are a common phenomenon. However, the aftermath of apartheid education will still be with South Africa for a long time (Carstens and Raidt 2015). One of the consequences of apartheid education is that the level of literacy in the Coloured and black communities is lower than among their white peers. In conjunction with the underdevelopment of Coloured people's formal language skills for many years, a variety like Kaaps was dismissed as substandard. By the end of the twentieth century speakers of Cape Afrikaans started to object strongly to the fact that children who had grown up with Kaaps had to do all their schoolwork in Standard Afrikaans (Esterhuyse, 1986). One of their objections was that the prescribed books portrayed a world that differed from that in which the children had grown up.
Sonn (2014) responded as follows: 'To develop a sense of pride, a sense of self-esteem and a true sense of unity, it is important that the history we teach our children should be corrected.' (See 6.2.1.) Willemse (2011) pointed out that here, as in Jamaica and in a number of American cities, teachers were aware that their learners' non-standardized language varieties were stigmatized economically, culturally and even politically. He argues that teachers feel obliged to teach the standard variety of the language to their learners, to prevent them from being subject to teasing and lower performance expectation. Willemse (2012) agrees with Sonn (2014) and emphasizes the important role of the teacher to create space for empowerment by restoring pride in the language with which the learners are familiar. Due to the teachers' pragmatic attitudes, learners systematically lose their self-confidence speaking their home language, and according to Willemse (2011) Preez, 2011). As a result, many speakers of Kaaps tend to speak English in formal circumstances.
From the preceding it is clear that change is necessary regarding the attitude of the education department towards the use of colloquial varieties like Kaaps. As stated by Hendricks (2012), language tuition at school should serve to destigmatize colloquial varieties. This change must start with the community because rebuilding the community is an integral part of the process of change (Le  and it is very relevant to the current debate about the utilization of Kaaps as medium of tuition. According to the latest Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS 12 ), the curriculum must inter alia address the following principals: diversity, equality, social justice, language and quality education. It is the task of the community to ensure that these aims are achieved, so that learners, irrespective of their socio-economic background, race, gender, physical and intellectual abilities, will be equipped with the knowledge, skills and values required for fulfilment and meaningful learning (DBE, 2011).
A key aspect in the delivery of a curriculum is how knowledge is received, constructed and transmitted (Le Cordeur, 2014c). In this regard, the curriculum is deeply intertwined with the institutional culture of schools. If schools thus continue to ignore the language varieties, the institutional environment, like the language of tuition, does not promote curriculum development or academic success (Le Cordeur, 2014d). This also applies to the way Kaaps is handled on the Cape Flats where the failure rate is very high. The question must therefore be asked whether the curriculum has sufficiently transformed to make a contribution to the academic success of learners who grew up with Kaaps. It is especially important because experts (cf. Vilakazi 2002;Heugh 2010) agree that the language in which the curriculum is conveyed is at the core of the South African education crisis. Mehrotra (1998:479) puts it as follows: …, if the medium of instruction in school is a language that is not spoken at home, the problems of learning in an environment characterized by poverty are compounded, and the chances of drop-out increase correspondingly.
Before learners can thus master the subjects, they must first overcome the barrier, i.e. the language of tuition (Heugh 2010). The role of Kaaps is thus of critical importance for the successful delivery of the curriculum because it influences the academic success of more than 2.5 million learners. Against this background, that I ask (cf. Le Cordeur 2013a) that provision be made for Kaaps in the school curriculum. The reason being that children from the Cape Flats underachieve in the national assessment tests, especially reading, because they are tested in Standard Afrikaans. Odendaal endorses this view and reports that research at the University of Stellenbosch (Odendaal, 2012) indicated that the results of learners with Kaaps as home language were below average (lower than 50%) if the literacy tests were in Standard Afrikaans. When the test was rewritten in Kaaps, the learners performed better. I therefore propose that learners at school 12 CAPS is the abbreviation for Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements and the general term used to refer to the new curriculum (2011) in South Africa.
should be allowed to express themselves in the language they speak. Paddy Atwell of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) responded as follows to the proposal by Le Cordeur (2013a): …it is an interesting proposal by Dr Le Cordeur, but not practical, and the WCED shall continue with the tuition of English, Afrikaans and Xhosa as languages of tuition and learning in the province, in line with the national policy. We do, however, acknowledge the unique contribution that Kaaps makes to linguistic diversity (Die Burger, 2013). It appears that the pleas of those who argue for the inclusion of Kaaps in the school curriculum did not fall on deaf ears, because Kaaps is increasingly being used in the classroom. The poems of Marius Titus, Peter Snyders, Adam Small, and recently also the poetry of Patrick Petersen, Nathan Trantraal and Ronelda Kamfer, are being studied at school. Novels like Diekie vannie Bo-Kaap by Zulfa Otto-Allies (used in Grade 9) and the inclusion of Kaaps idioms and expressions in a new textbook series 14 , introduces youngsters to cultural issues to which they had little exposure before. And dramas like Adam Small's Krismis van Map Jacobs and Kanna hy kô hystoe give young people insight into an indigenous value system.

In closing: looking to the future
Language is without doubt one of the most important challenges to academic success, despite South Africa's Language Policy which stipulates that language should not stand in the way of learning (National Language Policy, 1996). Afrikaans consists of many varieties; as a result, it was necessary to investigate one of the most well-known varieties of