Bastardised whiteness: ‘zef’-culture, Die Antwoord and the reconfiguration of contemporary Afrikaans identities

Abstract

This paper argues that post-apartheid South Africa destabilised what it means to be white and Afrikaans in South Africa. In particular, it explores the emergence into visibility of so-called ‘zef’-culture as mediated through musical acts like Die Antwoord and Jack Parow and to a lesser extent websites such as Watkykjy. The authors argue that the reconfiguration of white Afrikaans identities as mediated through ‘zef’-cultural artefacts is deliberate in that it speaks to the perceived sense of marginal and liminal experience of white Afrikaans youth in post-apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• ‘zef’-culture
• Afrikaans
• Die Antwoord
• Jack Parow
• liminal identities

Notes

1. Apartheid was a system of formal racial segregation, repression and subjugation in which white South Africans had both political and socio-economic hegemony. People of colour had no voting rights, were only allowed to reside in government allocated ‘locations’, could only study at certain institutions and were not allowed to study towards certain advanced science degrees. In 1994, following the release of Nelson Mandela from political confinement in the Robben Island prison, South Africa had its first free and democratic elections allowing all citizens equal voting rights. This opened up a period of desegregation and integration and signaled the formal end of apartheid in South Africa. The period following April 1994 is referred to as the post-apartheid period and denotes the changing political landscape in which South Africans now reside.

2. Title sourced from the film with the same title that dealt with the invisibility of whiteness.

3. The New South Africa is the popular way in which South Africans (especially in the immediate aftermath of the country's democratic turn) refer to post-apartheid South Africa.

4. A note on the concepts ‘Afrikaans’ and ‘Afrikaner’ – historically, the concept Afrikaner was used by the apartheid government to denote the unification of all white Afrikaans speakers as an exclusive group that wielded political and economic power under apartheid. A central element of Afrikaner nationalism under this government, was the annexation of the Afrikaans language for the Afrikaners, in spite of the fact that at least half of the speakers of this language are in fact people of colour. Traditionally, Afrikaans is thus seen as the language of the oppressor, and as such its position in the post-apartheid public sphere remains an issue of contest and debate. In an effort to make the language and its speakers more palatable to a post-apartheid South Africa, some Afrikaners now refer to themselves in dual terms, as Afrikaner and South African, while there was also an attempt to view everyone who speaks Afrikaans as Afrikaanses. The latter appellation was invented to avoid the political baggage inherent to the concept Afrikaner and to designate all Afrikaans speaksers, regardless of race. This paper uses the term ‘Afrikaners’ to refer to the category of ‘white’ Afrikaans speakers who believe that they possess a distinct language, history, religion, heritage, tradition, values, culture, identity and ethnic awareness (Vestergaards, 2001).

5. The song ‘De La Rey’ (by Bok van Blerk) was mired in controversy because of its subject matter and lyrics. (Koos) De La Rey was a Boer war general who lead the South Africans to victory during the Anglo-Boer war against a much more powerful British side. The song's lyrics is a plea for the general to come back and lead the ‘Boere’ (where ‘Boere’ takes on the double connotation of both ‘farmer’ and ‘white man’).

6. Song title (track 10) from Anton Goosen's album, Bushrock (Of A White Kaffir Of Africa).

7. This quote describing so-called ‘zef’-culture is attributed to Jack Parow in an interview with Gamestate.

8. boinboing.net fan reaction to someone commenting that Die Antwoord is doing gangsta rap wrong (http://boingboing.net/2010/02/01/afrikaans-rap-rave-d.html)