English

Besides a simple reference to the language, this word may be used adjectivally to refer to two other South African matters:

(a) “a South African English person”: ie a in refers to English speaking (white) South Africans. There is a problem here, since many people in South Africa who use English as a lingua franca, even a lingua artistica, are not white nor necessarily descended from British stock. But conventional use has always been to consider only the (white) people with English as a home language as “English”. In the early 1970’s a concerted effort to promote English language and culture in South Africa (spearheaded by Guy Butler and the 1820 Settler’s Foundation) led to conferences propounding the notion of English Speaking South Africans (ESSA’s), but the term was short-lived, since it does not really solve the problem. (More successfulIy the initiative led to the founding of the building of the Monument Theatre and the Grahamstown Arts Festival.) Loren Kruger (1999) uses the rather clumsy phrasing “Anglophone settler culture” to express the same idea and circumvent the problem.

(b) Less controversially, it may be used to refer to “activities conducted and works produced in English in South Africa” (e.g. “English theatre”, “English businesses”). Naturally the same problem applies here: not all English works were written by “White persons of British stock”. However, the general convention is to consider all the works written or performed in English as “English works”, unless they are clearly merely translations of works from other indigenous languages (and even there are exceptions: for example, the English translations of André P. Brink’s works are considered as part of the canon of English South African literature.) ***

Return to South African Theatre Terminology and Thematic Entries

Return to Main Page