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Assignment: Speaking for themselves

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Children in Lavender Hill, South Africa

13/07/2023 GMT

Speaking for themselves

BBC World Service - Assignment, Speaking for themselves

In South Africa, cultural activists are determined to reclaim a language – Afrikaaps

In South Africa, cultural activists are determined to reclaim a language – Afrikaaps – to restore the dignity and pride of a once disenfranchised Cape Flats community.

Kaaps is a language widely spoken in the bleak townships of Cape Town, South Africa.  It’s often denigrated as a lesser form of Afrikaans – the language that was used as a tool of white supremacy during the apartheid era.  Spoken predominately by working class people on the Cape Flats, Kaaps is associated with negative stereotypes – its speakers denigrated as uneducated, "ghetto" layabouts involved in gang culture.

But a new, burgeoning movement led by hip-hop artists, academics, writers and film makers is actively changing that perception. They want to reclaim Afrikaaps to restore the linguistic, cultural and racial dignity of a formerly disenfranchised people. The writer Lindsay Johns travels to Cape Town to meet the activists determined to assert the worth and pride of the people who speak Afrikaaps.

Presenter: Lindsay Johns
Producers: Audrey Brown and Tim Mansel 
Mixed by Neil Churchill
Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross
Series Editor: Penny Murphy

(Image: Children in Lavender Hill, a township on the Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images)

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