From the Cape to the Congo and back: Afrikaners and Flemings in the struggle for Dutch in Africa (1874–1960)

ABSTRACT

The Belgian population living in the Congo during colonisation experienced a higher degree of linguistic inequality than in Belgium: although Dutch and French were declared co-official languages for the Congo in 1908, French was always privileged in practice. In their protests, some Flemish politicians regularly referred to the Afrikaners in South Africa and to the potential their presence had for Dutch in Africa. South African thinkers too, frequently referred to the Flemings, imagining an eventual contiguous anchoring of Dutch from the Cape to the equator. Thus, two groups, located in two distinct historical, political, and cultural settings, fought a parallel struggle for Dutch in Africa and in the process discursively construed one and the same ethnolinguistic ‘brotherhood’ between them. At first, the producers of the discourses on each side only addressed their own audiences, but as of the 1920s some of them entered into direct dialogue with one another.

Keywords:

• Afrikaans
• Belgium
• Congo
• Dorslandtrek
• Dutch in Africa
• Flemish
• South Africa
• language legislation
• language policy