Between Texts & Tongues:
Unearthing Arabic-Afrikaans as we Re-imagine a People

Uzair Ben-Ebrahim

It’s Saturday morning. I place my Qur’an with my belongings. I don my thobe (Islamic robe), greet my mother goodbye, and walk to madrasa (Islamic school). In the seven to ten minutes it takes me to get to school, I always take a moment to take in the crisp air while listening to the chatter and recitations of other kids walking in my direction too. I arrive at the front gates of the madrasa and, like every Saturday, the caretaker greets me; an elderly man who always wears his knitted jersey, horn-rimmed sunglasses, and his white fez (skull cap).

“Salaam alaykum (Peace be upon you)”, he shouts and then exclaims, “Jy’s laat, ou pel!” (You’re late, old friend!)

“Wa alaykum salaam (And peace be upon you)”, I reply, as I and the other kids rush towards the gates.

“Hoe fa?” (How are you?) he asks and reflexively I reply “Alhamdulilah” (Praise be to God).

The bell rings. As I pass him I shake his hand. He taps me on the shoulder to hurry along. I chuckle and run to my classroom as he calls on all the other kids to rush towards the school. Within the confines of these walls, the sounds are different. The mixture of words are thrown around and the complex sounds they elicit – it all feels like a familiar past – like I am hearing home.

I am always intrigued by language: its use, its impact on history, and its influence on society. Learning about language and the language you might use, can tell your personal story and how you came to be. Growing up in a multilingual household allowed me to explore the vast expanse of what story my languages constructed for me. Navigating a linguistic landscape as a Coloured Capetonian highlighted these complexities of being. Whether it was code-switching between English, Afrikaans, and Afrikaaps, reading religious texts in classical Arabic, or conversing in modern Hebrew (note that Hebrew isn’t a language you’d typically hear from someone in the Cape Coloured community—it’s a bit of an outlier), I could recognise how different languages intertwined in expression. Language is intimately connected to ethnic, religious, and cultural expression as within the constructs of time and space, it defines how we identify ourselves and move in the world. In some cases, we actively choose who we are, and in others, these identities are constructed for us.

Cape Town is a captivating site to explore the hybridity of who we are as a collective. The architecture, the people, and the sounds all speak of the intermingling of past and present, near and far. Cape Town could assert itself as a hybrid city and offer Capetonians a way to intentionally reflect on a divisive past and collectively carve a path forward to potentially re-imagine who we want to be. While we have yet to reach this point of re-imagining 30 years into a post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa, there are attempts at seeking an alternative future (Asmal, n.d.).

In exploring the unique context in which Capetonian Coloureds find themselves, can we use the languages at our disposal to redefine our identities in a hybrid society? And if so, how can we achieve this re-imagining of the self through language? To address this, I sought to understand how Coloured identities are navigated and how languages have been used as tools to empower or dispossess communities. For this piece, I will reflect and write from the Capetonian Coloured experience. While I acknowledge that this experience is not homogenous, I also acknowledge that the Cape Malay identity, and the historic and current complexities surrounding this identity, have also influenced this reflection.

Colouredness has been, and is, a contested identity in post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa, and has provoked deep intergenerational discussions about the validity and use of the term. The term has adapted and been redefined as communities either rejected it, renegotiated its meaning in a post-apartheid context, or fully leaned into its use as a descriptor of their experiences. I am aware that, depending on the locale, the Coloured experience will differ, however, the underlying shared experience is that Colouredness can be recognised across time and space as a way of being against the backdrop of coloniality. This cultural identity is based on carefully curated experiences as it responds to a shared colonial history, brings together varying cultural practices, and develops a hybrid language. The Coloured identity is etched into the hybridised nature of its origin city (Erasmus, 2001:21–22).

Situating the Coloured experience and Afrikaans in Cape Town unearths a unique and rarely discussed history. Afrikaans is considered a part of this experience, and it seemed as if we borrowed this language from the “White man”, that is, we could not claim it to be ours. However, our use of Afrikaans, or Afrikaaps, reveals the “brown roots” of the Afrikaans language shared within a community and underpins the Coloured experience (Asmal, n.d.). What I admire most about Afrikaaps is how the language is handed down, from generation to generation, as if an heirloom (Miller, 2008:167).

Tracing the roots of the Afrikaans language uncovers a genesis that aligns with the context in which it was born. During my research, I learnt that Afrikaans had been written with Arabic script. In the context of hybridity, a lingua franca, including the Malay language, was a tool for exiled and enslaved peoples in the Cape to communicate with each other and provided a means for them to “record their thoughts, prayers, and knowledge systems” (Jappie, 2015:44). People at the time were still well-versed in using the Arabic script and this led to the early Muslims writing Afrikaans, instead of Malay, in the Arabic script. This unique formation of Arabic-Afrikaans, a term coined by Dutch semanticist and linguist Adrianus van Selms, highlighted the socio-political context but also the cultural borrowing and creation of a hybrid language within a colonial context. Arabic-Afrikaans created a hybrid community based on a shared hybrid tongue (Erasmus, 2001:21; Jappie, 2011:384).

Acknowledging the history and hybrid roots of Afrikaans changed how I connected with the language. I could not ignore that within the Afrikaaps linguistic soundscape in Cape Town, was the use of Malay and Arabic words among others. These remnants of the past fascinated me and highlighted the complex linguistic soundscape of the Coloured community. In investigating the Cape Muslim’s pronunciations that differed from standard Afrikaans, Achmat Davids, scholar, linguist, and “father of Cape Muslim history”, asserted that the Cape Muslim vernacular retained distinctive words, which differed from the standard Afrikaans vocabulary. Moreover, he noted that these words “existed in the vocabulary of Cape Afrikaans or Cape Dutch long before its standardisation” (Davids, 1992:41; Jappie, 2011:385).

For example, kassam means “oath” (See Image 1). While Coloured people still use it today, Davids (1992:42) noted that it was already in use in the 1820s, showing how the ancestral language of the enslaved influenced the Cape Muslim Afrikaans vocabulary.

Using words such as kassam deepens the Coloured community’s cultural and linguistic experiences and exposes a deeper layer of our identities. While its origins stem from Malay and Arabic linguistic soundscapes, it is a shared experience among those who are a part of the Coloured community. We experience these in every interaction we have. I was always fascinated that my mother and I would code-switch between English and Afrikaaps, occasionally interspersing Malay and Arabic words. I did not think much of it until I understood its existence and use within a historical context: that it spoke to a Coloured experience that not only connected ancestors with their descendants but also communities across territories. The Afrikaans and Afrikaaps heritage changes the way Coloured people position themselves in relation to the languages. Afrikaans and Afrikaaps are a part of who we are as a historic and linguistic community.

Zahira Asmal (n.d.), urbanist, entrepreneur, and director of The City, asserted in her reflective piece “Visibility & voice in the creole city”, that “we need to explore the generative potential in the mixed, creole aspects of contemporary life in Cape Town”. This sentiment resonated with me as someone of diverse ancestry and who resides in Cape Town. Exploring my connection with language, I ask, can we unpack Arabic-Afrikaans as another way for the Coloured community to express themselves today, and in doing so, reclaim a hidden heritage? The See Studio (2022) provided the space for me to re-imagine a language hidden from its speakers. It challenged me to delve into the Coloured community’s current soundscape and document selected words that form part of the community’s vernacular. The following words not only share the nuanced linguistic soundscape of Coloured vernacular but also recognise a historic Arabic-Afrikaans influence on a community that has always existed. The aim was to make visible that which we hear and feel.

Trama kasie is a phrase that means “thank you” (See Image 2). The response to this phrase will be Kasie vi’Allah (Thanks is for God). The former phrase is derived from the original spelling terima kasih in Malay. This is a phrase that is still used today. Even though it has Malay origins, people in the broader Coloured community use this as well. During my See Studio (2022) presentation, one of my colleagues and fellow presenter, who identifies as indigenous to Cape Town, noted they still use this term.

Slamat is used in some contexts to mean “congratulations” (See Image 3). It is derived from the original spelling selemat in Malay. Coloured people use this term for any well-wishing act.

Barakatjie is of Arabic origin and uses an Afrikaans diminutive. In Arabic, barakat means “blessing”. The diminutive ending form (-tjie) from Afrikaans is added to the stem word and renders a new meaning of a “small blessing” (See Image 4). This word, barakatjie, is used in contexts where small gifts – mainly food parcels – are given to guests when they leave their host’s home. When discussing this word in my presentation, it was interesting that a fellow colleague and presenter of Dutch and Moroccan origin could make full sense of the word, which we were able to explore together in a lengthy conversation.

The See Studio (2022) cohort included South Africans from various parts of the country, along with participants from Somalia, Mauritius, and the Netherlands, all individuals of varying positionalities. In exploring the nature of Afrikaans and Afrikaaps, the South Africans, who identified as Coloured, Indigenous, mixed race, Black African, and Cape Malay, debated about what it means to be Coloured today, what shared practices identified us as Coloured, and whether Colouredness as an identity and experience is inherited. How we approached the conversation shed light on our differences and recognised the many shared cultural aspects that created this Coloured community. A large part of that connectivity was the access to and use of Afrikaans, or more importantly Afrikaaps, and how this language expresses our experiences through its sounds and accents, expressions, and humour.

After exploring the words used in daily speech, I challenged myself to delve into what it would look and sound like to express myself in what we know as Arabic-Afrikaans today. I wrote a prose piece, titled ‎ۏَاسْ اوسْ سٖى هَيْس؟ (Waas os se huis? / Where is our home?) to capture personal and collective experiences navigating the linguistic landscape of Arabic, Afrikaans, Afrikaaps, and Malay (See Image 5).