South African history is continuously being rewritten, expanded, and reinterpreted. This process is complicated by the diverse historical contributions of the country’s people, particularly in defining who the victors are in the broader anti-colonial struggle. Fortunately, this contestation has largely avoided becoming a major political mobilisation point, even though it occasionally surfaces in side debates often led by those lacking depth or historical grounding.

While the Nelson Mandela-led reconciliation path, as seen in the CODESA negotiations and the 1994 Government of National Unity, is often highlighted, a less acknowledged factor in South Africa’s political maturation is an implicit anti-colonial understanding between sections of the white Afrikaner establishment and the post-1994 political elite. It is not incidental that South Africa’s political history frequently centres on the National Party and the African National Congress, both formed within a year of each other with ambitions framed around the decolonisation of South Africa.

At its inception, the ANC’s central rallying point was an anti-colonial agenda that required cooperation across South Africa’s diverse communities. The National Party, in its own framing, pursued a version of decolonisation aimed at establishing a sovereign republic. These trajectories created two parallel anti-colonial struggles, each asserting legitimacy within different historical contexts. For Afrikaner nationalism, the 1961 declaration of South Africa as a republic marked a defining moment in the project of nation-building.

While the 1961 republic was celebrated in some quarters as a milestone, liberation movements intensified their struggle, including armed resistance, while simultaneously reframing apartheid as a form of colonialism of a special type. This conceptual shift allowed the anti-apartheid struggle to retain moral and political legitimacy, particularly in a context where coloniser and colonised occupied the same geographic space. As this struggle evolved, the post-1961 state consolidated itself within an “independent” framework.

The drive to entrench sovereignty was closely tied to the promotion of Afrikaner identity across political, cultural, and institutional domains. By the early 1970s, Afrikaans had developed into a language of science and commerce. This created space for mother-tongue education at multiple levels and shaped both cultural identity and intellectual development. South Africa’s global competitiveness, in certain respects, became linked to Afrikaans as a medium of knowledge production, although this development excluded many non-Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, particularly black Africans.

As noted by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the use of a second language in education can produce a sense of cultural dislocation, where individuals become detached from their own cultural frameworks. Language carries not only information but also embedded hierarchies of meaning, often reinforcing subtle notions of superiority and inferiority. The erosion of indigenous language systems is therefore closely tied to broader processes of cultural domination. In contrast, Afrikaans succeeded in establishing itself as a language rooted in local context, with literature that reflects the South African landscape and experience.

This context raises an important question. Should Afrikaans be understood as an anti-colonial victory language or as a language of oppression?

A meaningful inquiry must examine the extent to which political decisions, such as the imposition of Afrikaans in 1976 under B.J. Vorster, shaped public perception and resistance. It must also consider how efforts by figures such as Anton Rupert to position coloured communities within Afrikaner identity influenced access to education, science, and economic participation through language.

Current tensions around dual-medium schools and universities should be understood within this broader historical and ideological framework. If left unaddressed, the inability of many South Africans to engage with Afrikaans as a language of knowledge production may continue to reinforce dependence on external sources of solutions. Knowledge produced in Afrikaans risks being overlooked, not on the basis of merit, but because of the language through which it is expressed.