"Afrikaans is a language that grew and developed from the soil of South Africa, aided by a variety of languages and cultures in our land, rooted in the search for an own identity and freedom. Its power and hope for the future has never been based on special privilege; but rather as one of the languages of South Africa which will have to meet the future shoulder to shoulder, with mutual respect and equal rights."

"At present local English does not seem to have any particular social value, and thus there is no apparent reason for its speakers to wish to preserve its distinctive features. This is not true of non-standard Afrikaans, which is valued as warm, intimate, and a sign of membership of the community."

"Seen socio-linguistically, a language can never fully clothe the intellectual and affective life of its speakers unless granted entree to all functions. Of particular importance is that a language must enjoy access to the academic-scientific fields of language such as in politics, law, the media, and the university. Throughout the twentieth century, for just the reason of realising this ideal, immense expertise and energy went into developing Afrikaans. One thinks ... of the numerous scholars who could have made their mark internationally but chose instead to devote themselves to Afrikaans."

"...architect Jan van Wijk’s remarkable 1975 tribute to one of the world’s ugliest languages makes, if nothing else, a great picnic spot on the way to the wine lands of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch."

"…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."

"At school, Afrikaans was a compulsory subject that I disliked intensely; it was a harsh language, like the people who spoke it. [...] In my father’s shop, ... I found ... to my surprise, that I was beginning to enjoy the language. [The] warm straightforwardness and ... earthiness in many of these people ... was richly and idiomatically expressed in their speech. And, although I have never advanced beyond being able to speak a sort of kombuistaal, I delighted in our conversations."

"Slaves and Khoikhoi servants had the greatest hand in the development of the restructured Dutch. In the course of the eighteenth century both burghers and their servants, in interaction with each other, took the restructuring further. Dutch was simplified and a considerable amount of Malayo-Portuguese, as spoken the slaves, was injected. By the end of the century Cape Dutch had largely become what is now Afrikaans. In the western Cape, especially in its rural towns and farms, the main variety of Afrikaans took root as the shared cultural creation..."

"The first attempt to formulate a distinctive Afrikaner historiography was made by [Afrikaner] residents of the small town of Paarl [who] founded the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of True Afrikaners). They were effectively reacting against cultural domination by the British colonial regime. ... They based their own history on publications by European authors who were critical of British imperialism and on private correspondence and interviews with fellow Afrikaners. Though this was simple, naive history, it was a path-breaking achievement. It was the first book published in Afrikaans – the spoken language of the people – as distinct from Dutch, from which it had grown apart in the South African milieu by simplifying the syntax, changing the vowel sounds, losing vocabulary items that were not relevant, and incorporating loan words from the other languages that were spoken at the Cape in the eighteenth century – Malay, Portuguese creole, and Khoikhoi."

"The seeds planted by the Paarl thought leadership did not bear much fruit so long as Afrikaners were divided between colonial and republican regimes. ... In spite of many setbacks, Afrikaner leadership gradually attained their nationalist goals... They also re-segregated the white group into Afrikaans-speaking versus the rest. Afrikaans became the premier official language while English was given second-class treatment. The leadership vowed that there was to be no mixing of language, no mixing of cultures, no mixing of religions and no mixing of races."

"At the heart of Afrikaner nationalist struggle was the attempt to imagine a new national community with its language enjoying parity of esteem with English in the public sphere. ... This meant that Afrikaans had to be heard in parliament, the civil service, schools, colleges and universities, and in the world of business and finance; it had to be the medium of newspapers, novels, and poems, giving expression to what was truly South African. Instead of English-speakers portraying Afrikaners in reports, novels or histories as everything they were not: unrefined, semi-literate, racist, dogmatic, and unprogressive, Afrikaners had to define and represent themselves as the true South Africans."

"A good local example of [the process of promoting a language] is Afrikaans: a 150 years ago, Afrikaans was generally regarded as “a mere vernacular” (in the negative sense of the word), used only in the lowest social functions, was without a writing system and had no literature. Gradually, however, it became used as an instrument in the struggle against the imperialism of the British colonial government and against the Dutch-oriented elite’s preference for Dutch (and English) in high-function contexts[.] A number of teachers and church ministers then initiated a movement directed at the development (corpus planning) and promotion (status and prestige planning) of Afrikaans. Gradually, a feeling of pride in and loyalty to Afrikaans developed, and within about 60 years Afrikaans was recognised as a language of the public domain[,] a fully-fledged standard language."

"Few languages have engendered as much controversy, with regard to both historical development and place in modern society."

"Afrikaans will survive and develop further in a range of dialects. That is important to me, that type of freedom. The Afrikaners don’t mean much to me."

"This is why Afrikaans-exclusive or even Afrikaans-dominant white schools and universities represent a serious threat to race relations in South Africa. You simply cannot prepare young people for dealing with the scars of our violent past without creating optimal opportunities in the educational environment for living and learning together."

"Afrikaans is a cancer that must be destroyed."

"By the 1990s Afrikaans was no longer the instrument of a chauvinistic Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaner historians had begun to stress the multifaceted nature of our history, Afrikaans as a medium of instruction was no longer imposed on black schools and the language had been scaled back drastically on state radio and television. But [it could be celebrated that] Afrikaans, along with only three others (Hebrew, Indonesian and Hindi) were the only languages that in the course of the twentieth century made the transition from a low status, spoken language to a language used in all walks of public life, including literature, science and technology."

"The past 15 years have been characterised by an increasing migration of Afrikaans speakers into the digital space – a space that offers exciting new opportunities for Afrikaans."

"... socio-political history often casts Afrikaans as the language of racists, oppressors and unreconstructed nationalists. But [Afrikaans] also bears the imprint of a fierce tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, of an all-embracing humanism and anti-apartheid activism."