ABSTRACT
In Adam Small, the ‘coloured’ poet and dramatist, this ambiguity towards Afrikaans culture surfaces very strongly. Afrikaans literature has never been extremely rich in ‘coloured’ authors and after the police brutality in the ‘coloured’ townships of Bonteheuwel and Manenberg in 1976, probably never will be. The Afrikaner, through his policy of Christian National Education enunciated in 1948, tried to foist onto the ‘coloured’, what he conceived of as ‘mother-tongue’ instruction. In South Africa, where the white man is rather loth to listen to the black man’s protest, the oppressed are only too happy to find a willing ear in liberals from overseas. If contempt for Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom constituted one facet, then the basic question of English versus Afrikaans is the other important factor. ‘Coloureds’ all realize that a mastery of the English language will bring in its wake an accessibility to a greater culture, and to greater cultural values.
