(Johannesburg) Afrikaans, language of the descendants of the colonists of South Africa, today useless? South African actress Charlize Theron’s blunt comment sparked strong reactions in the country on Thursday.
podcast guest SmartLess Hosted by Hollywood actors, the 47-year-old Afrikaner actress, born in Benoni near Johannesburg and now based in the United States, felt that her native language was “not very useful”.
“There are about 44 people who still speak it, it’s definitely a dying language. It’s not a very useful language,” she laughed in the episode that aired Monday. She also says that she did not really know how to speak English before arriving in the United States at the age of 19.
South Africa has eleven official languages for a population of almost 60 million. Afrikaans is the third most spoken language (12.2%) after Zulu (25.6%) and Xhosa (14.8%).
“Charlize Theron may be an exceptional actress, but she is misinformed when it comes to her native language,” the small Afrikaner Freedom Front Plus party castigated in a statement Thursday, detailing the statistics.
“The use of Afrikaans has generally increased”, defended a user, among the many comments on Twitter. “You are disrespectful to Afrikaans speaking people and your family,” posted another.
Thirty years after the end of apartheid, the question of language is still sensitive in South Africa and regularly gives rise to controversy, particularly in education.
In 2020, the controversial decision of one of the country’s largest universities, University of South Africa (UNISA), to abolish the language of the descendants of Dutch settlers, ended up being overturned by the courts.
During the deadly riots in Soweto in 1976 against the apartheid regime, schoolchildren had originally risen up against Afrikaans being imposed as the language of instruction in black schools.
“Be proud of your language, don’t force others to speak it,” one user tweeted. “Thank you Charlize Theron, this racist language is dying,” commented a South African on the social network.
A member of parliament from the radical and predominantly black Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, posted a message of support for the actress along with a film image of her, dark glasses and a gun. fire in hand.