A century ago, Huisgenoot celebrated Afrikaner nationalism. Now the magazine has the highest circulation in South Africa
It is a far cry from the early days of the magazine. After the Anglo-Boer war there was what Herman Giliomee, a historian, calls “the building of an Afrikaner ethnic consciousness” among the disparate group of South Africans of mostly Dutch descent. Important to that effort was, launched in 1916. It presented Afrikaner history as a heroic epic, extolled Afrikaner literature and helped standardise Afrikaans as its articles were used in school comprehension tests.
By the 1970s Afrikaner nationalism had long since metastasised into apartheid, and circulation of the dry cultural weekly was dwindling. As well as being racist, apartheid South Africa was stuffy, pious and insular. Television, which one politician called the “devil's own box”, was introduced nationwide only in 1976, meeting a pent-up demand for escapism and glitz. A revampedtapped into that desire, introducing celebrity features, puzzles, recipes and so on, while glossing over apartheid.
Editors remain the custodians of Afrikaans. They keep an eye on English neologisms or translations of English idioms. But, in contrast to a century ago,embraces the language’s diversity by, for instance, quoting coloured South Africans in their vernacular. “We want to show a language that is still alive,” says Ms Beyers. “This is not the Afrikaans of 1916.”
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Ja to change"
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