"…as it happens I am Afrikaans. …I actually do not think about it too much, just as I do not think about it too much that I have a liver. The current flutterings about Afrikaans, however, I find disturbing. It is not doing the image of Afrikaners, and hence also of Afrikaans, any good. …to beat one's chest in such a self-justificatory manner [a mere ten years after the end of apartheid] is bad taste morally. […] We are … being called up by certain parties to mobilise for Afrikaans, to fight for the survival of Afrikaans, and for minority rights. The problem is, however, that I do not see myself currently as part of a minority. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, as an Afrikaner, I resisted apartheid – and not in the 1990s when it became fashionable – then I felt myself part of a minority."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Paul Cilliers in a letter to Die Burger (10 October 2005), as cited in No Lesser Place: The Taaldebat at Stellenbosch, p. 133, Chris Brink (2006)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Afrikaans
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Afrikaans
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