Gabriela Valenzuela Domínguez | INTERNACIONALISTA UANL
The next paper will cover the linguistic aspects and special traits the influence of the British Empire left on the African country South Africa during their rule and has remained there until our days. South Africa’s history under the rule of the Europeans is rich at the same time that it is sad and fatal, but it is really interesting as a subject of study since, in my own opinion, the evolution of the country had the biggest growth and progress after the Europeans colonized the country, but on the other side, in the early days the African natives were not allow to enjoy such social development.
What was mentioned above implies a racial background that can be explained by history. As it is known, South Africa is located in the southernmost part of the African continent; it was merely populated by ethnic African groups until the Europeans colonized the country in the XVII Century (Varela, 2009). With the Europeans along came racial ideas of the superiority of white men over men of color, which unleashed a massive segregation and a form of social organization under the premise of racist prejudices they called Apartheid. The apartheid regime (or “separate lives”, translated from Afrikaans) was a corollary of a model of social hierarchy which ranked whites, coloreds, Asians and blacks, in that order (Buarque de Hollanda, 2013:9). This means that the South African society in the time of apartheid was racially fragmented into citizens of different quality depending, in a very simple way, on their color.
According to author Buarque de Hollanda (2013) the practices of racial segregation in the southernmost part of the African continent were legally formalized when the English, after dominating the old Boer republics, founded the Union of South Africa in 1910. We have to remember that South Africa suffered a lot of European arrivals fighting for this rich country’s resources. Is important to have in mind that the origins of racist exploitation in this country date back to the seventeenth century, with the arrival of the first white settlers historically known as Boers and from the nineteenth century as Afrikaners (Varela, 2009: 439), which means that South Africa had a lot of European intervention since the first arrivals of the Portuguese in the XV century to at least the last five centuries.
We have already mentioned before that the rich lands of South Africa were fought by the English and the Boers, which were the Dutch settlers, but we can also add the French and German intervention in the African country. Nevertheless, it was the British who won these lands rich in gold and diamonds over the rest of the Europeans colonizers, but this cost them a high price since at the end of the nineteenth century the most bloody and expensive battle that Great Britain ever fought as a global economic power occurred, and it was the Boers Wars (Varela, 2009:440). To understand the history of South Africa and their present, it is indispensable to mention this part of the British history as it was the decisive battle for the future of South Africa.
The fights between the British and the Boers did not end there but it went right into the political sphere. In 1948, the National Party (the party of the Boers that opposed to the British occupation) won the presidential elections – in which only the whites were allowed to vote – This party began installing the system of apartheid in the late forties (D O’Meara, 1996). But as if it wasn’t enough taking control of South Africa’s political sphere, another way of taking over the control of the population was through culture.
Author Fraser (1997) explains that a certain way of understanding injustice is cultural or symbolic. Here injustice is rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication. Examples include cultural domination (being subjected to patterns of interpretation and communication that are associated with another culture and are alien and/or hostile to one’s own); nonrecognition (being rendered invisible by means of the authoritative representational, communicative, and interpretative practices of one’s culture); and disrespect (being routinely maligned or disparaged in stereotypic public cultural representations and/or in everyday life interactions) (Gómez, 2007:204). After the political domination in the mid-forties of the last century, this form of injustice, cultural domination, is what really tears apart the country, their identity.
As it was mentioned before, South Africa saw a lot of fights between European colonizers to settle in this country mainly to take control of the natural resources. These fights led to a greater control of white men over black men, and even though the fights were between the Europeans, it was the natives whom were force to fight them. At the moment Apartheid was installed as a system, the cultural domination was at its peak; the political sphere was handled by the Boers whereas the cultural sphere was much more influenced by the British.
In the early days of apartheid, the only language in school for the education of the black population was their own native language, even though the two official languages were the English and the Afrikaans, this last one spoken by the Dutch Boers. The purpose of this was to keep black people off from the access to higher education and power (Lapuerta, 1998:488). There is no doubt that the segregation Apartheid brought to the country was made by and for the white supremacy. However, not much longer English language was established as the language to teach in high school (Lapuerta, 1998:489). Nowadays, the most important languages of South Africa, according to the South African Constitution and recognized by the law, are divided into three main groups: the group of the Bantu languages, the Sotho languages, and the Germanic languages, which include the English and the Afrikaans.
Author Lapuerta (1997) not only explains how language shaped the educational and political system of South Africa, but another aspect that language has had influence in all over the country is in how language shapes the system of social status. For example, the English language is the most prestigious even though it is natively spoken by only 9% of the country’s population. Besides, it can be added that English is the language of political debates, is the language in which the higher levels of education are held, and it is also the language of the mayor business (Lapuerta. 1997:488). In spite of all of this and how terrible this cultural domination over language may sound, I personally think that today’s South Africa is actually very alike to today’s Mexican cultural domination and how present the English language is also in our country.
If we take into account what was mentioned before, we could say that today the long fight between the British and the Boers has loaded weight on the English side of the balance. But it is not an isolated phenomenon that the English is the most important and most spoken language in South Africa, but is a global phenomenon. I think the reason English stayed strong in this African country, so much as to make it an official language over many African dialects spoken there, is the way the British divided to conquer. We have to remember that South Africa is a country composed of several ethnic groups, of which, I believe, a lot of them were already fighting between them for the lands. This means that possibly there was not a union between the natives, so it was easier to put them against each other, which would not be so different to what happened during the conquest in Mexico.
I personally think that South Africa is a country that is best known by their racial issues, the great Nelson Mandela and his fight against apartheid, than by any positive aspect such as science or technology. Nevertheless, is really impressive to see how it has been evolving as a country, but especially the way society has change, where barely twenty years ago it would be illegal for a black person to walk in the same side of the sidewalk as a white person. Nevertheless, I think that South Africa, like most countries that were colonized by the English, especially the ones in Africa, have a lot of work to do regarding to education and human rights. For me an issue all of these countries have in common is to regain the African identity they lost during all the years they were subordinates to the British Empire.
Bibliography
Buarque de Hollanda, C; (2013). Human rights and political transition in South Africa: the case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Brazilian Political Science Review, 7() 8-30
Gómez Salazar, M; (-1). Apropiación de conocimientos: dominación cultural. Redes, -1() 199-213
O'meara, D. (1996). Forty lost years: The apartheid state and the politics of the National Party, 1948-1994. Ravan.
Varela, H; (2009). Sudáfrica a inicios del siglo XX: La posguerra sudafricana. Estudios de Asia y África, XLIV() 439-466