Afrikaans is one of the eleven official languages spoken in South Africa. It is a derivative of the Dutch, language spoken by settlers who arrived in the Cape in the 17th century. Modern Afrikaans contains mainly Dutch with influences from Cape Malay, Portuguese, English and indigenous languages. On 11 September 1928, it was used for the first time in an international document with the signing of the Convention of Mozambique in Pretoria.
The language’s close link with the apartheid government has meant that it has inherited the legacy of being the oppressor’s language. The apartheid government constantly asserted the language as the dominant official language. Black people rejected the language as a medium of education in 1976, which led to the Soweto’s student uprising.
