Litnet

"This three-letter plague is also responsible for a few strange symptoms. It causes blindness in its followers."

"On 18 May, I had the opportunity of participating in an insightful FB discussion on a topic we are all obsessed with – COVID-19. Our discussion focused on the much celebrated 'Swedish way' of dealing with the virus. At the time, South Africa was under a strict level four lockdown, while Swedes seemed to be going about business as usual. Towards the end of May, most countries in the world were easing their lockdown regulations – it seemed that we were now all becoming Swedes."

"How your writer then gets to the conclusion, as voiced in the title – that the [Afrikaans] language may be under threat of extinction – is wholly unclear. If the language is under threat, then so are all other South African languages."

"Paper and ink are not going away just yet." As mass extinction threatens South Africa’s traditional magazines (fifteen titles closed down earlier this month), Catherine Knox recalls a time when the industry was on a roll.

"We need another 30 days of a hard lockdown, at the very minimum. But then, the state must supply food for the masses of hungry citizens, and do it now."

"In a post-apartheid South Africa bedevilled by a paucity and deficit of value-based and selfless leadership, with leadership that uses its struggle credentials for self-enrichment, one wonders how Biko would have reacted."

"COVID-19 is touching every conceivable facet of life, reflected in the data being generated as a result. Be it virus test results, traffic flows, shopper behaviour or what is spoken about on public social networks, the data flow can appear to be a torrent. Beneath all those public flows lies an iceberg of hidden data, a seemingly endless list of 'known unknowns', and we can only wait for the 'unknown unknowns' to come to light."

"If you are white and Afrikaans, feelings of shame and defeat will never help build a new, dynamic and nonracial future for the Afrikaans language."

"If you do not put your skills into constant practice, you will lose your flair and soon become obsolete."

"The greatest irony will remain in how Afrikaans-speaking officials were the ones who summarily disposed of that language in the public academic realm, at a university that once hosted defiance to apartheid ideology by celebrating Afrikaans as a carrier of all of its speakers’ dignity."

“It’s now been more than two years since I started, and, by now, I’ve written well over 100 000 words. Some of those words are good; most are bad. It doesn’t matter. It absolutely does not matter. What matters is the joy ...”

"An emphasis on the transfer of generic skills is rapidly becoming a core foundation of education policy, curriculum and pedagogy. The emerging 4IR knower is touted as a future-proof knower."

"Each generation is burdened with, and caught up in, global currents that have a direct bearing on notions of freedom and liberation in their lifetime. Across the world, authoritarian and populist regimes are on the rise – the business of 'organised lying' has become part of the global news cycle."

"I chose this title, because it seems that many of us, rightly or wrongly, are feeling that way right now, in this authoritarian, power-hungry and exclusionary moment in which we find ourselves – not just in South Africa, but worldwide: that our particular brand or style or voice or presence or set of values is, for one reason or another, 'not wanted on the voyage'."

"[T]he involvement and inclusion of many African languages through code-switching, or translanguaging, helps the pupils to learn from each other, and be aware of different cultures and languages, and understand why certain pupils think and learn in certain ways."

"Afrikaans was forged in the mouths of all those who lived at the Cape and beyond. It is in this Creole that we hear the remnants of the slaves’ foreign tongues, and the traces of their experiences."

"To compare this scenario, where songs were routinely banned, musicians harassed and/or locked up, and parties and gigs teargassed, with the rock scene of today is like comparing porcupines with export grapes. It’s not only impossible; it’s simply not useful."

"Indeed, it is hard to think of South African political poetry without the name of James Matthews. He was firmly identified with local expressions of Black Consciousness in the early 1970s, and his poetry shaped our generation’s understanding of the injustices, brutality and inhumanity that apartheid visited upon our communities across the country."

"Or, is it a bitter sop to the reality of the all-powerful English language and the foundations of Grahamstown’s university and elite schools, its historic churches and much more, rooted in the culture of the British Settlers and their descendants – not to mention the roadside name boards identifying ownership of the numerous prosperous farms in the region once known as the Albany – the Zuurveld?"

It has been 25 years since the first democratic elections in South Africa. With the 2019 elections around the corner, Karabo Kgoleng shares her memories from 27 April 1994.