I was very sad, I never knew my forefathers. They didn't talk to me. I didn't know how to talk to my father.
He was my father and I didn't know him. The people get their land back. Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Come Khoisan, get your country back!
Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Come Khoisan, get your country back! Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Come Khoisan, get your country back!
Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand?
Come Khoisan, get your country back! Kalitz, come from Khoisan, understand? Afrikaans, the easiest out of modern languages.
Why put a time on entertainment? Listen my song man, so you can really get the word. Yung bidi bing, yung bidi bing, yung bidi bing, so so. In South Africa, Afrikaans is generally seen as a European language.
However, there's a side to this language, the Creole birth of Afrikaans, which has been suppressed and overlooked for centuries. Afrikaaps, a theatre production, was a step towards finding that history. That was our mission, and the only way to do that was to put together a killer ensemble.
Tutsfunga is more of a movement. Tuts is a thing you square your zip off, or you blackball. The TV is like that.
His act was hot in her hands. Jet Roll. Koi San act was... A lot of people discovered that he was a koi.
His teeth were full of him saying he was a koi. Kyle is there. Hard working, focused.
He's still young, he's still fresh. But his spirit is thousands of years old. The mail...
You saved your bottle. I stole his cassette and threw it away from people. Blixem Straaf.
He knows what he believes. Generals are cool, but they are also cool. He is an all-in-one.
Erin Kaganoff, dramaturg. He is a mad scientist. How can someone work to assemble a crew?
Catherine can do that for you. She has a knack for that. She is unique. I like the way she works.
The premise of the show is that we deal with the history of Afrikaans. It goes on into the 50s where people are then not only dispossessed of their language, but they're also dispossessed of their home. And in that process, their identity is fractured. And it all gets very complex, but what I keep thinking is, how do we make this history clear to follow?
The issues are all so bloody complex. The Cop's dialect of Afrikaans is spoken mostly by the coloured community in Cape Town. A people with diverse cultural heritage.
Carps is always represented in the media as laughable and somehow lower than the official Afrikaans. As a child of two Afrikaans parents, I grew up speaking English. My parents spoke Afrikaans to each other and English to us.
The history of Afrikaans wasn't passed down and we certainly didn't learn it in school. I never thought of Afrikaans as part of my heritage. But then I was approached by Catherine to document the Afrikaap's theatre production.
Little did I know the history I'd learnt in school was about to be rewritten. Theatre, I'm not so interested in making dramatic period pieces or directing a play. It's so different.
I actually planned to go to the project in Java, but then I came to Cape Town because I wanted to work with AeroAid. And then I started to get into the whole Afrikaans hip-hop thing, discovered Pearl, the same names kept coming up, Monsang. And we started to research their Creole history and tell the unknown story or the little known story of Afrikaans.
This is the kind of thing the newspapers and the TV and that never ever get involved in and doing you know And and the horrible thing is that remains the territory of academics when actually everybody should know this kind of stuff to completely understand What really happened the consequent is consequent so come cap second and compliment Can't go cook come club club a cock club one class the cup is class The kids in the class, the kids in the school, the kids in the class, the kids in the school, This is a video of me and my best friend We are more than men here. We wanted to understand how the language got to where it is today. To do that, we had to go back into the past.
Way back. If the Khoi, the San and the Slavs were not forced to learn Dutch or Dutch, to speak Dutch, then the language of Afrikaans would not have been created. Atyemawa, Kratoa and Doman, they are the three indigenous who in a sense were the first to mold this new Creole language, Afrikaans. Simply associate the development of Afrikaans as something that occurred between the white settlers and the slaves. But we need to take one step backwards.
The first indigenous person, in fact, who had to deal with this issue of language is Achamal, who the white history books would refer to as Harry the Struntlooper. And we're often told that Harry the Struntlooper was just this beach bum. He's made out to be this ignorant fella.
But in fact, he is a man. who's traveled all the way to Batavia. He's brought back by the Dutch and for about 20 years of shipping this man serves the French and he speaks to the French in French. He speaks to the Dutch in Dutch. He speaks to the Portuguese in Portuguese. He speaks to the English in English.
So this vagabond effectively is a linguist. The story that they found this man wandering on the beach and he offered to help them with one or two things is a load of nonsense. Without him, the Dutch settlement would have struggled. He was their point man. Kratoa was brought up as a child in the household of Jan van Ribbe and she also was used as a facilitator.
as a diplomat, as an interpreter linguist. The third is a man who went by the name of Doman. He saw the reliance of the Dutch on slaves and on Chinese labour.
And when he came back to the Cape, he came back with a great understanding of the vulnerabilities of the Dutch, their weaknesses. And it was under Doman that the Khoi Wars of Resistance were led. Because they wanted to spread the Bible and Christian faith among other African speakers, the so-called Brains, they started to standardize African. All the words from Malay or Khoi or whatever origin, with a few exceptions of course, those words were left out of the lexicon. If you go to African textbooks now, you will not see, you will see Danky.
And then you will understand what it means, but you will not see the term Akashi as a synonym. You see, those are the things that will happen. The words that I did find in the dictionary were very unexpected.
I and Eina are Khoisan words, while Baiki and Baya have their roots in the Malay community, and the list goes on. These words are spoken every day and found everywhere, but their origins remain very much hidden. We tell a big story. The content is deep. We feel like we have been deep-baked.
We know people are hungry for it. We feel like we are doing our best. We are fighting each other's struggles through the process.
That is very important to me. We wanted to create a show that told the mostly unknown history of the language. We didn't have a script, but rather lots of questions and ideas which we brought to the workshop, along with a whole lot of history. After a great and productive week, we were ready to present our work.
to the board of the theatre. At least, we thought we were ready. Streaming. It's just a ball.
But actually, we were worried. Something was missing. We just didn't know what it was yet.
Music Little did we know the missing piece in the puzzle would be a young Cape Flats crooner who had his roots firmly planted in the Cape Malay traditions of Guma, the Cape Menstruals and the Malay choirs. I started dancing when I was about three or four years old. I came to Canada and my uncle grabbed me by the neck and put me on a pedestal. I started running in the past, in the middle of the club.
About 5 years ago, I started here. Here I was 8 years old. I won a few first prizes, third prizes, second prizes. Tonight I'm going to be my own ice-skater, because I'm here for ice-skating. I'm deeply in love with the club and the team.
I've never seen a car like this before. It was a ghost car. And then, at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, they make a cup of tea, and we sit on the stove. They say they can go out, they are well-sourced, so they go out to have a good spa and so on.
On the phone with my friend, I say, what are you doing? And then I see, drink a coffee with me. What are you doing? No, they know it's time, it's 2 o'clock. They also drive us out, they take us out, they drive us all out.
I'm 4 or 5 years old and I'm drinking coffee. I have a glass of coffee that I can drink. I'm sitting in a coffee.
It's a nice time. I'm a fan of Lloyd, he's a great guy. I like seeing him.
When she was ready to go for the black belt and the car on board, she saw me there and she called me. And then she called Lloyd and Lloyd called me and said, Catherine is going to call me and then Catherine called me. After a meeting and whatever, she drove. She said, any move, I said, yes, drive, fast, quiet, any move.
My very first impression of Meneo was a bit strange. He didn't really look at me, I thought he was a very serious guy. But then when he came to the workshop to do the audition, by the end of that afternoon I'd seen the funnier, lighter, playful side of him. I said, yo, Liz was on the other side.
I'm just a good time old, funny old man. Liz was on the other side, man. On the other side of individuals. It was on a different level.
He was thinking about what I was doing. He can change the reality of our society and it's also the same for others. He's a good translator of our emotions.
When I was a kid, I used to drink this and that. I drank a lot of water and I didn't want to be a copy. I drank this and that.
When I was a kid, I used to cry a lot. My parents used to connect me with their stories. I used to cry a lot. The culture I come from or the position I am in on this earth... It's impossible for us to live out ourselves, on any level.
Afrikaans, he created a bit of me. My style of language, my work, is different from the other characters. And I think I'm glad that I can now speak out, especially with the other generations that we have here. He brings to us the traditional idea of where we come from, makes it more clear to us about our history. I think it's not right.
The elders for us guide, they are like a music pot that we have here on the field. And that pot has a club with a basket in it. So we all take one pot out of it. And we are here to share with the whole nation, to take one out of that pot. You have to keep this one, it depends on you.
My expression on the outside makes it completely false to me. If you buy a space like freedom, or personal expression, we do our own right. writing in all the pieces that was performed, script was self.
Once that selection of material has been made, finding a way to weave it all together to tell a story. If we go back to the early Muslim scholars in the time of the teachers, taught at the madrasas. This is where Afrikaans written with Arabic script. This was a huge surprise to me.
I had no idea that the first written Afrikaans was in Arabic text. As half my family is Muslim, I found it strange that this wasn't common knowledge. A lot of people think that Arabic Afrikaans was just used for religious purposes and that we couldn't learn any social history. from Arabic Afrikaans documents.
This here is from Adi Duplicy, which is quite interesting. He was very much like a Cape Malay enthusiast and pushed that whole Orientalist view of Cape Malays. The explanations in this book are actually in Arabic Afrikaans. I currently have someone who's working with us now from the Afrikaans department.
And before she met us, she didn't know about this either. So there you have like a mainstream Afrikaans scholar who doesn't... know about the side of Afrikaans, you know.
This book was given to me by a man who lives on the Cape Flats and he still used to write in Arabic Afrikaans but he died a month ago. I mean, he was probably the last person to use Arabic Afrikaans. The Arabic Afrikaans script is phonetic so when you read it, like Ahmed David says, it's like an audio tape. So we have a record, a written record of how people...
spoke, you know, back in those days. Emil suggested we head to Lavender Hill High to get a sense of our kids who speak Afrikaaps every day feel about the language. At this time of day, you don't speak Afrikaans but it's the easiest to speak Afrikaans so Afrikaans are the best.
How do you feel about Afrikaaps? Like, illegal languages, official languages, your language that they speak about, they might even get it in a text book. Some people have a past in the African language. They speak in African and they speak in Cape African. If someone wants to interview me, I will tell them that I am not good at it, I will tell them, hey, sorry boy.
I don't know what to say. I will definitely go to the court and see what happens. Never mind the degree or who.
I don't know anything. But I will go to the judge. I have one question that I want to ask my son, that can take my life. I have to go to the hospital, because I have to go to the hospital.
That's all I have. Bye! Kuma music is often misunderstood as joke music.
In reality, it tells the stories of slavery, rebellion and liberation. And these are the stories that Cape Town is made of. Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, Guma, G But we were the ones who had learnt a great deal. I'm scared to speak like I really do because even when I got to college and stuff, you know, and I spoke like I did, I got like looks and stuff. My over-the-court is like as nice as judges, you know.
Now, you know, I had a classroom that had English speakers. My English is so smooth. And my tone and the way I talk is on a relaxed basis. Now you see, Joffre, for me, you must try and do it like speech therapy.
No, I'm not lying. She's an Indian. What am I saying?
We inhibit ourselves from speaking because we were taught that how we speak is not good enough to be spoken and it's our parents and everyone else. So now because I don't speak proper Afrikaans enough, I also don't speak proper English enough, it's like you really mix up man. And I really mix Afrikaans and Ingles, I said Ingles, Ingles.
I also would like to say that in terms of the music, I mean it's the only thing I can really talk about. But if we can all really keep a basis of kind of African consciousness in the sound that we bring in. It's really African consciousness in many ways, so it's legalizing African sounds. So when you go to music college, you start playing kumapi and all that stuff.
What is this? What kind of piano is this? No, you must play like Herbie Hancock and those...
South African jazz or Cape jazz or African jazz is really the Afrikaans of the jazz world. Yeah, it's exactly the same thing, it's funny. Peace, I think for this show, Sam and Kyle, actually...
My wish list is that when I talk about artists, look in the pop series, your favorite MC is an MC. So I select my favorite artist as an artist. Yeah, Kennedy v. Kennedy On my new way to his church Us, our school. Ah yeah. Healing must be a catharsis.
To have the catharsis we have to... The catharsis is when you actually look at the depth of the problem, at the very worst thing of the problem, and you name it, and you look it in the eyes, and that's the only way you can solve it. Then the catharsis is like accepting the worst, and then the healing that comes from it.
It's like... And the feeling you get just after accepting the worst, that's an incredibly good feeling. But you never get a catharsis until you've actually looked the devil in the eye, as it were. So, for example, in South Africa you never had a catharsis because you had a revolutionary situation which led up to a sudden hijack and then a vote, but there was never a catharsis.
And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an attempt to have a pretend catharsis. That's why the best theatre talks directly about real experience. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
I think history is in the making. A man feels a little nervous sometimes. You have to be careful not to talk to the man before.
He's a very dangerous man. No, it's not that. We have to prove to the authorities that we have stepped up.
I hope they will see us taking that step. And we will climb to the third step. I hope we will go back a step.
Usually it's just like that. It looks like you take the first step and then the second step and the third step. But the status quo...
Let's always be aware of all the steps. I hope that you will understand that we must not take steps. So that tomorrow he can use his own steps. We must take permanent steps. We must not take mobile steps.
But you can't let young people stand back. Do you understand? No, they must be free. They are free.
I hear that the man's name is Bloksem Straal. He is my high car in the middle. Yes, I hear that. But Obas had other plans for us.
On the day of the first show at the Baxter, Jethro was taken to jail on a charge of assault. He was trying to defend his family from an in-law who had assaulted his child. He didn't lay a charge, and instead a charge was made against him, and he was found guilty.
It was like history had caught up with us. Catherine, how are you doing? Well...
We've just come from Jethro. He says he's very, very sorry. The reason he didn't get a lawyer was because he truly believed he was right and correct in what he did. And he totally underestimated the kind of vituperation that the magistrate would have for him. But, you know, he's a lively guy and he's a survivor.
The urgency is to just get Jethro out of there, I think. I got a shocking message that Jethro is going to be with us for the first opening. Why do you need to shock him? I'm like what?
I'm trying to focus. I miss his presence a lot. I know he will survive. I'll speak to you for a while because I have to remember this number to try and get Jethro out of prison. Three names!
At least something for... Does it say something about each other? Yeah, no.
You know what I mean? We're standing. It's difficult, but the show must go on.
Warid yaa, warid yaa, faalim maa khid What did I do? Create me I put a new Stickman. They're happy.
Yeah, yeah, they're happy. You see his performance, from that hand, from us all. So, nothing, nothing, strength, nothing.
Our brains are on him, man. Because that man has taught us a lot, man. For me too.
A lot of things. Not just the kumat songs, but other good things too, man. When we were going to Jetro, I said to him, All the people you know, they were at school together, they were doing shit together.
They're not in here. You know? And like, when I hear it, I'm like, bro, he's fucking sad, bro. Great success at the Baxter, but it still wasn't the same without Jethro. The Flamescherk has brought the language of the people.
Afrikaab without excuses. Basically it's a journey of liberation. People make us, we make it legal.
After having spent the entire Baxter run of the show in prison, Jethro was released on bail. Legalizing Afrikaab at the Baxter was easier than the mission we were about to do, the Kleinkeroer Arts Festival. It's a historical decision to stay in the same place. We stand here and we stand on our knees and we hold the difficulty.
The mask comes just like that. I think we should just walk. Behind and behind. Make it yellow, make it yellow, make it yellow.
I think that the big success... The success will be that if this show, AfriCarps, works at the Kaka'i and Ka'a. I don't know.
I don't know. Because I don't know who we're dealing with. So we may get there and the show's 80% sold out and everything's cooking and it's fine.
But realize that what we're doing at Kaka'i and Ka'a is seriously groundbreaking stuff. We're trying to change a whole fucking mentality. We don't stop working.
We don't stop in Ootswane. 1, 2, 3, 4 We didn't have a marketing team at the festival and our venue was kind of out of the way. With more gusto than ever before, Jethro had the idea to hand out some flyers at the festival and get the word to the streets.
You're not going to speak, are you? Yes, someone might ask. Ask us, we don't have a name yet.
No, we want to hear your name. We are the background vocals. I'm done with that. Yes, we are Makisaki.
We are one and the same. We are the other. We are the same. We are not wipers. We need to make contact.
Look at this! Kaka! Kaka!
Kakanof! Did you read the newspaper? Yes man Kakanof You're famous now Hi Bo I was so proud, I want to tell you This morning at 9 o'clock there was a debate the citizens debate with Lionel Aden Dorf the former president of the West Cape ANC and he said to the people If Africans want to be cool, then they have to go to Afrikaaps. Afrikaaps gives the African language a makeover. It makes the language cool and clear.
But they have it about us in the debate, in the official debate about the African language. They are now talking old Afrikaaps. We have to do our own marketing, our own marketing.
We have to look around. We are like 21st century food truckers. We didn't really belong here, but we came to Conker. I was curious to see how the natives would respond to us. He's a b-boy, man.
He's an expressionist of the Cape dialect and the Cape expression. We're on fire, man. See? He's coming out of the fire. Maybe he's got a flamethrower.
He's going to make us smoke. Calm down, calm down. What are you going to do with him? It's interesting to me that in this day and age in South Africa, people still judge you on face value without hearing what you have to say.
I was a little disappointed in the concept, but I must accept it. It's all because of my idea of the movement. We are the champions!
We are the champions! I just want to say I have no idea what to expect when those doors open. The first day of the festival. I don't know exactly how many tickets have been sold. But if there are only 10 people in this audience, let it be the best experience that they've ever had.
You're all exceptional. You're all beautiful. I love you all. So please have a great time and enjoy yourselves. And let's open the show.
God bless, take care and curse. I pray, I pray God. Amen.
Humans can't soothe the love. Humans can't soothe. Hey, what's up? What's up?
Kuy San, get your land back. College comes from Kuy San. Look, we're not standing, the land belongs to the land.
But the land can't be cooked, because it's so bloody rotten. Go ask the Kwasa and the Zulu. Who was the first to give the name Possa and the clique to them? A good-looking Possa, angry looking man Every clique in this Possa is originally from the sand Bushman and hotmail is used to intimidate But over there are the rotting children Strong for thousands of years Not as hard as crazy, but the sand is the party Fierce your stupid day, Afrikaans are from the capi Because every day you make a new year Not just a party or a party The people will be back to the late game Every so called race is mixed so weird But that you are looking for richness is all from the USA I'm in a trance, my previous sex was In the drama, multi-color, universal, any man, it's loose, of course, and the earth is good, the sheep and the taff, now it's all mixed up, yeah. You see what they say is an epiphany because I can't believe that I sing this with all my love but no one has ever said it to me Look, that's where we came from I always make excuses when I speak African I speak a little bit of African but now I don't make any excuses That's how I speak, I love it If you don't know where you're from you know where the language you speak comes from Then they always feel the burden because they can't afford the advantage of a movie.
The message that's what Afrika has is essentially is bigger than the show and that needs to spread. She is a woman as someone who is African. Speak Afrikaans, speak Afrikaans. I'm just amazed that you can make a work like this and it has real historical consequence. I hope our hard work will continue to work.
Your ancestors, they are in your bloodstream. So, talk in your mother tongue. Because what they do, they will also do in your life.
Even though I didn't speak Afrikaans growing up, I am now proud of the language, and I see it as a part of who I am, although my speech is a bit fadala. You're going to check out of school, check out. I don't know what to say But I'm going to go To the Father And we will come and see That Sophia We have used our own language That Sophia We talk like that and we sing like that The language that we speak, how will I learn?
No Patavia, No Patavia The language that I speak comes from this year I will never be able to understand No Patavia, No Patavia Naaabbaaadaaabbiiii Now wanna eggnit as they both of us call the money to feel