Written in prison, this poem (Taalstryd) fits squarely into the Afrikaner tradition of dissident writing associated with the Sestigers. At the same time, however, it marks a certain departure for the poet, as it directly challenges Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor in apartheid-era South Africa.

Hoping to redeem his mother tongue (taal is Afrikaans for “language”), Breytenbach makes subversive use of it here to expose the white government’s policy of linguistic imperialism. The Struggle for the Taal comprises 55 unrhymed lines of varying length divided into 10 stanzas.

Written in the first-person plural, the poem addresses the rebellious black youth of South Africa on behalf of all Afrikaners. The first stanza begins on an elegiac note, as the speaker acknowledges, “We ourselves are aged” (l. 1) and appeals to his listeners “to commemorate our death” (l. 10).

But the tone turns vengeful in the second stanza, which accuses “you bastards” (l. 14) of being ungrateful for the “schools, clinics, post-offices, police-stations” (l. 15) put in place by the government. Like an angry schoolmaster, the speaker browbeats his listeners for the next three stanzas, insisting more than once that they learn to speak Afrikaans with humility.

He goes on to argue for the justness of the Afrikaner cause in the sixth stanza by describing his own people as “missionaries of Civilization” (l. 38). The next two stanzas underscore the ironies implicit in the speaker’s position, as they endorse the violent imposition of language on others as part of the civilizing project.

This is most obvious in the climactic eighth stanza of the poem, which surreally imagines bullet wounds as “red mouths” (l. 46).

In the last two stanzas the speaker once again adopts the plaintive tone of the first stanza. Despite the obvious threat of violence underlying the poem, he insists by way of conclusion that “we are down already” (l. 52).

In this way, Breytenbach speaks to the fears of many Afrikaners, who believed that their culture was somehow under siege. His poem proved remarkably prophetic when the white government’s efforts to impose Afrikaans as the official language of instruction resulted in the Soweto student uprising of 1976.

Denis Hirson’s translation of Taalstryd into English was originally published as part of In Africa Even the Flies Are Happy (1978). A slightly different version of The Struggle for the Taal can also be found in The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1985), Breytenbach’s account of his own ordeal as a political prisoner in South Africa.

Bibliography

Breytenbach, Breyten. In Africa Even the Flies Are Happy: Selected Poems 1964–1977. Translated by Denis Hirson. London: John Calder, 1978.

———. The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985.

Categories: Literature, World Literature

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