McKenzie says Afrikaans not property of one race or cultural group

By Lebone Rodah Mosima

Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie has said that the Afrikaans language should be understood as a shared South African inheritance, not the property of any single racial or cultural group.

He was speaking at the War Museum of the Boer Republics in Bloemfontein on Saturday at an event celebrating the 101st anniversary of Afrikaans’s official recognition in South Africa’s language framework, after the 2025 centenary of the language’s recognition as an official language.

McKenzie said Afrikaans had been forged through encounter, conflict, mixture and reconciliation, carrying the voices of enslaved people, missionaries, imams, ministers, poets, farmers, Khoi communities, Malay artisans, street vendors and statesmen.

“Afrikaans is the language of my people, of my childhood, and of the inner conversation I have with myself when I am alone, and it is because of that relationship — rather than any official position — that I speak