Afrikaans, Inc.: the Afrikaans culture industry after apartheid.

Following apartheid’s demise, the Afrikaans language was forced to part with the privileged position it once held under the National Party’s guardianship and has, subsequently, contracted in a number of its functions. Despite growing concerns about the language’s “endangered” status, Afrikaans has proven its vitality in multiple market-driven domains. In this paper, I trace the expansion of the Afrikaans culture industry after apartheid. I argue that this process was fomented, at least in part, by paranoia about Afrikaans’s “fading position.” Because Afrikaners still command a vast material and cultural capital, they have been the prime producers, sellers and buyers of Afrikaans language media and cultural commodities. Thus, together with the growth of the Afrikaans culture industry, an array of physical, digital and psychological spaces has opened up where white Afrikaans speakers can be a majority. I argue that the expansion of these spaces has laid the foundation for the formation of new Afrikaner subjectivities and enclaved identities, and contributed to the production and strengthening of separatist tendencies amongst certain Afrikaners. Instead of being an emancipatory force, facilitating Afrikaans speakers’ forceful integration into a new South Africa and “rainbow nation,” it has succeeded in reaffirming and naturalising the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]