Gary Barkhuizen, formerly of Rhodes University, lectures in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He will be visiting the Eastern Cape from 3-11 July and would very much like to make contact with Afrikaans speakers who are moving to New Zealand within the next year. (See end for contact details)

I arrived at my new job at the University of Auckland in mid 2001 eager to learn about New Zealand and its people. It made good sense to me to start with what I was most familiar. That is, South Africa and its people.

The 2001 New Zealand census shows that on census day there were 26061 South Africans living in New Zealand. Of those, 12783 indicated that they were Afrikaans speakers. Both figures have since grown.

Most of the Afrikaans speakers live in Auckland, the largest city in the country with over 1 million people (the total NZ population has just reached 4 million). And many of these are centralized in suburbs such as Browns Bay on the North Shore of the city (sometimes referred to by South Africans as Bruins Drift!) and Howick, on the eastern side of the city. In both centres there are regular Afrikaans church services, and a local North Shore library has agreed to establish an Afrikaans bookshelf and to host Afrikaans story-telling sessions for toddlers.

In Auckland there are also a number of South African shops where you can get anything from home-made biltong, boerewors, melktert and koeksisters, to rooibos tea, Tassies, Rennies, and the obligatory Mrs Balls chutney. Most of these are now readily available in supermarkets as well.

There are, of course, Afrikaans speakers in other towns and cities as well. Even in Invercargill, right at the bottom of the South Island, and the southern most city in the world. There I met a couple who were lecturing at the local tertiary institution and a young single man who had just become emotionally involved with a Kiwi woman. Predictably, the three Afrikaans speakers knew each other.

And in New Plymouth, on the west of the North Island and overlooked by Mount Taranaki, I met a primary school teacher who had recently hosted a number of South African, mainly Afrikaans-speaking families for Christmas day celebrations. She had 75 guests!

As a researcher I was interested in the language-related experiences of these Afrikaans speakers as they adapted to a new, so-called English-speaking, country. I was particularly interested in their perceptions of themselves, that is, their changing identities. And I wanted to speak to people all over the country.

I was fortunate enough to receive a research grant from the university which enabled me to travel to a number of towns and cities across both islands to interview Afrikaans speakers - from Invercargill, Christchurch and Blenheim in the south, to Wellington, New Plymouth, Tauranga, Auckland and Whangarei (the northern most NZ city) in the north.

So far, I have interviewed 25 Afrikaans speakers, 14 males and 11 females, aged from 16 to 75. A financial adviser and his family in Auckland had only been here for 7 months and a technical writer from Christchurch had been here with her family for 9 years. Most, at the time of the interview, had been here between 3 and 5 years.

As I was interviewing people I soon discovered that they were not only answering my questions but they were telling me their stories. Their stories included how they had lived their language lives in South Africa and how they were living their language lives here in New Zealand.

From their stories I have tried to find out how and if they have changed. They told me if they felt Kiwi or South African. If they felt Afrikaans or English. Some told me how much they missed speaking Afrikaans. One participant could only express his feelings in symbols: "Ek mis die Kalahari, ek mis kameeldoorn bome, ek mis son teen duine, ek mis die platteland, ek mis selfs die Universiteit van Pretoria, soos ek hom geken het, waar mense sulke hooggeleerde Afrikaans gepraat het dat jy baie keer vir hul sê 'my liewe here, geen mens praat so nie'".

There are also those who embrace the new challenges of living in a new country. Their stories reveal their awareness of the difficulties and their willingness to face them head-on.

A man in Auckland said: "I feel being a New Zealander, it's almost a responsibility on us as an immigrant to get to know these other things, the realities, such as Maori. There are South Africans who will just steer away from even that. They don't want to have anything to do with anything Maori or whatever. That kind of reminds them of home. But I say, no, that is wrong. They are developing in a different way, they have a new, another kind of culture, they have different problems, different challenges".

After participating in the telling of so many stories and analysing them in detail, I have discovered a number of threads to the stories which begin to reveal who these people are. How they see themselves as Afrikaans speakers. How they see themselves changing and how they see their children changing. At the Christmas party in New Plymouth which I mentioned above, the host said that while all the parents were sitting inside speaking Afrikaans, the children were all playing outside speaking English. The same woman said that her mother in South Africa found it difficult to accept that her granddaughter spoke only English to her on the phone.

A man, also from New Plymouth, informed me that he and his wife had decided on a family policy of speaking only Afrikaans in the home, since he reckoned that the children would get enough opportunity to practise English outside the home. While I was there he asked his young son to speak Afrikaans to me to demonstrate the success of the policy. The son, instead, insisted on speaking English to show me how much English he had learned!

There are a number of vehicles which the people I interviewed used to express their identities. These vehicles form common threads in their stories. One such thread has to do with talk about work and career. The recently arrived financial adviser from Auckland, for example said that he is "not really confident enough at this stage yet to, you know, to try and conduct business with Kiwis and I think mainly because my language, because the accent, you know, you stick out like a sore finger I think when youyour mouth".

In a similar vein, a secondary school teacher from Invercargill complained that the teachers in her school, and more generally in Southland, "love to make groups and stuff like that. If it was still in South African at school and everywhere you will always be part of a group but here sometimes I feel if there's groups sitting down in the staff room and busy in a conversation, I will take my stuff and go and sit elsewhere and take my newspaper, and I won't do that in South Africa".

On a more optimistic note, another thread in the stories shows people feeling very much at home. A 75-year old retired scientist in Whangarei spends some Sundays with her family in Ngunguru in the north: "I was pining for my view from Betty's Bay up in the mountain with the waterfall behind me and looking at the sea. And God gave my children a house in Ngunguru where I spend Sunday with them, where I sit there and it's better than Betty's Bay. So I don't mind".

Like others, a young father from Tauranga finds it difficult to figure out what his national identity is: "You're confused like I think if South Africa and New Zealand would go to war against each other, I would jump the fences and be a South African again, but I think I expect my children to be New Zealanders and fight on the New Zealanders side, because that is who they are. Ja, it is a little bit confusing, you don't know where you are".

The primary school teacher in new Plymouth identifies herself as "a South African Afrikaans New Zealander".

Others see themselves as global beings, not really belonging to any particular country. A journalist from Auckland holds such a view: "The literature that I've read, German, French, American, Canadian, Spanish … I wasn't limited by South Africa's borders in reading those and I think that's much closer to my being than simply those artificial borders drawn on a map".

A grandmother in Wellington, formerly of the Free State, sees it slightly differently: "I am just in another country, that's all. I was born there, I was bred there, I grew up there. But I love this country and I don't worry. Just like I have been in the civil service transferred from one place to another. I was just transferred to NZ. That's it. I was transferred from Pretoria to Ladybrand and all over the place. So, I'm transferred here".

Lastly, another way in which many people were able to make sense of who they are and how they are changing was by talking about rugby. Support for the All Blacks is strong, especially when they play against Australia, but not when they play against the Springboks.

The Auckland grandmother declares her allegiance as follows: "I always go for the Springboks, but when Australia and New Zealand play, you go for New Zealand" Support for the Springboks remains strong. An Auckland man says, "I will surely support the All Black team except when they play against South Africa. But maybe, who knows, maybe in twenty years time I will start getting to a point where I can start supporting the All Blacks against South Africa".

From listening to the stories over and over again I have discovered a number of tensions which exist in the lives of Afrikaans speakers living in New Zealand. These mainly have to do with feeling at home as opposed to feeling displaced.

Some people feel that they would like to blend in more - to be more like an English-speaking Kiwi. Others don't mind sticking out, and are often proud to be identified as South African. A New Plymouth accountant was thrilled when a friend remarked that after four years of living in NZ he still sounded like a South African.

Some are very loyal to their South Africanness, and their Afrikaansness, holding onto what they remember. Some are resigned to their new life and merely accept what it delivers.

Others face new challenges with interest and enthusiasm. Interest in new cultures and new languages, and enthusiasm to learn and to make a contribution to their new society and country.

The role of language is central to the expression of these tensions, as a solicitor in Whangarei says, "Your language is much more important than you ever thought it would be. It colours your whole life. I mean when youyour mouth, you are just it. Wherever you go".

Contact Dr Barkhuizen via email - or write to DALSL, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.

source: http://www.theherald.co.za/expat/Gary_Barkhuizen.htm

Jason Zehmke
Justine Broadhurs-Bristow
Mark and Karen Dickson
Andre and Debbie Claasens
Tessa Schlesinger
Eugene Owen
Gary Barkhuizen
Sarah Dodd
Gary Griffith-Smith
Patrick Lawrence 2
Patrick Lawrence
Cindy Witts
Amanda Pyper
Ian Vorster
Chris and
Louis Auret
Ronnie and
Kris McWhinnie
Sheugnet and
The Eacher Family
Wendy Noble
Karen van Dyk
Rob and Deb Jones
Errol and
Paul Connell
Jenny Whitely
The Kitching family
Iwan Schana
Michael Viljoen
Andrea Dell
Andre Erasmas
Brendon and Karin
David Welch
Debbie Godfrey
Dr Frank Steyn
Edwin Hayman
John and Cherry Bosworth
John Jackson
John McAdam
Jonathan Nieman
Michael Sparrow
Mike and Gael Nicholls
Nadine Tilton
Rhian Holdsworth
Rob and Michelle Elfick
Robert Stewart
Tony and Emily Reid
W Scheepers
Wayne and Renee McLoughlin

source: http://www.theherald.co.za/expat/expat1.htm