Idea merchants

Who is the most influential Afrikaans public intellectual of the twentieth century? And of the twenty-first?

On the 6th of June 1906, Pieter de Vos presented a petition to the Cape parliament. The petition was for an ‘inquiry into the position occupied by the Dutch language in schools, at public examinations, in the Civil Service, Courts of Justice and elsewhere’. It was a carefully worded appeal, but its intent was clear: to push back against the slow erosion of the language spoken by the majority of the colony’s white population. At a time when English was rapidly becoming the sole language of power, De Vos was among the first to articulate a vision for linguistic equity – long before Afrikaans would earn its place as an official language.

De Vos’s authority did not stem from political office, but from a life rooted in scholarship. Born in 1842 on the farm Olifantsberg near Worcester, he received his early education at the South African College before joining the newly established Theological Seminary (Kweekskool) in Stellenbosch. Further studies took him overseas to Edinburgh’s New College, followed by a brief scholarly interlude in Utrecht. Returning to South Africa, he accepted the call of the congregation at Piketberg, where his dedication to education soon became evident: faced with inadequate schooling conditions and the absence of Dutch instruction, he founded a church school. It was a simple a quiet declaration of independence from colonial neglect.

But it was at Stellenbosch, from 1882 onwards, that De Vos cemented his legacy as one of the most influential figures in the advancement of Afrikaans. Appointed professor of Dogmatics at the Theological Seminary, he leveraged his academic prestige to champion the rights and recognition of Afrikaans as a language of higher learning and public life. In 1890, he co-founded the Suid-Afrikaanse Taalbond – the first organisation specifically devoted to the advancement of Afrikaans – and served as its chairman for two decades. Under his leadership, the Taalbond provided the early intellectual groundwork that would eventually see Afrikaans acknowledged as a language equal in stature to English.

2025 marks the centenary of Afrikaans becoming an official language of South Africa. It is a milestone moment, commemorating the long struggle for linguistic recognition, and yet the roots of that recognition stretch back much further than a century.

Indeed, one could trace it back a decade earlier, to 23 April 1914, when Afrikaans became an official language of education in the Cape – a result of a motion brought forward by CJ Langenhoven after his election to the Cape Provincial Council. Langenhoven, who believed fervently that Afrikaans deserved equal status with English, used political channels to secure the recognition that intellectuals like De Vos had begun fighting for many years before.

Or one could travel further back, another half-century, to 14 August 1875, when eight individuals gathered in Paarl to establish the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of True Afrikaners), pledging to publish and promote writing in Afrikaans. Arnoldus Pannevis, SJ du Toit, and their small circle understood that a language without literature and intellectual production had little chance of survival against the dominance of English. Their early publications, notably Die Afrikaanse Patriot, gave voice to a growing community's identity.

Or even further still. Hein Willemse reminds us that Afrikaans did not emerge solely from European roots but evolved from the multilingual interactions among indigenous Khoisan peoples, enslaved people from South-East Asia and East Africa, and European settlers at the Cape. Afrikaans was, from its inception, a creole language born out of necessity – serving as a common medium of communication among diverse groups. Willemse emphasises that Afrikaans has always been broader, richer and more complex than a mere colonial offshoot. It was shaped not in the drawing rooms of the elite but in the streets, farms and kitchens of ordinary people trying simply to be understood. Nor is Afrikaans unchanging: witness the growing profile of Kaaps today, a variety of Afrikaans whose long history of marginalisation is being reclaimed.

But let us return briefly to De Vos. With Arnoldus Pannevis, Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (Onze Jan), and Koot Sauer (father of Paul Sauer), De Vos was among the first intellectuals to publicly articulate a vision for the institutionalisation and recognition of Afrikaans. He understood that language needed formal status and intellectual respectability to survive and flourish. His petition to the Cape parliament in 1906 marked a critical step in this direction.

To call these men ‘public intellectuals’ is to place them within a tradition of thinkers who do more than produce knowledge: they intervene, provoke and shape public discourse. But what does that role entail, exactly? At its simplest, a public intellectual is someone who actively engages broader society with ideas. Unlike traditional academics, their influence extends beyond university halls, shaping societal values, debates and policies.

Thinking on public intellectuals oscillates between celebration and caution. On one side are those, like Edward Said, who emphasise the moral courage and social necessity of the intellectual’s public role. In his Representations of the Intellectual, Said defines the ideal intellectual as an outsider – someone who resists easy incorporation into power structures and insists on speaking truth to power. He saw the public intellectual as a dissenter, not a courtier: an individual prepared to unsettle the status quo in defense of freedom. Said’s own life, marked by advocacy for Palestinian rights and critique of Western imperialism, exemplifies this adversarial role. Yet he also warned that intellectuals must guard against the temptations of celebrity and access to power, lest they become, in his words, ‘insiders rather than truth-tellers’.

Michel Foucault offered a more skeptical perspective. He drew a sharp distinction between the ‘universal intellectual’ – the figure who presumes to speak on behalf of all humanity – and the ‘specific intellectual’, rooted in particular domains of technical knowledge. For Foucault, the modern intellectual was no longer the grand, prophetic figure of the Enlightenment, but a localised expert whose public role arose only in relation to specific issues – nuclear energy, prison reform, healthcare. Intellectuals, he argued, should be more modest in their claims and more attuned to the micro-mechanics of power. And yet, even within this more constrained vision, Foucault left space for political engagement: the ‘specific intellectual’ could still disrupt systems of domination, albeit from a humbler perch. Taken together, Said and Foucault frame the modern public intellectual as both necessary and compromised.

Jürgen Habermas, operating in a different register, provides a structural rather than individualistic view. Rather than focusing on the intellectual as a moral actor or expert, Habermas situates public intellectual work within the broader architecture of the public sphere – the space of rational-critical debate that mediates between state and citizen. From coffeehouses in 18th-century Europe to contemporary media forums, Habermas traces how intellectuals helped create arenas where public reason could flourish. His concern is less with the individual intellectual’s heroism or humility, and more with the conditions that allow or inhibit open, informed, democratic discourse. In this sense, his theory offers a useful bridge to the economic lens, particularly the question of what kinds of institutions and incentives make public reasoning viable in the first place.

This is where economists like Richard Posner and Friedrich Hayek enter the picture. For Posner, the public sphere is less a forum for reasoned deliberation than a marketplace – one where ideas are bought and sold and public intellectuals operate like vendors competing for attention. In his Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Posner argued that the proliferation of media channels has eroded quality control, turning public commentary into a kind of intellectual fast food. Hayek, writing decades earlier, offered a different but complementary take: intellectuals, he argued, were ‘secondhand dealers in ideas’ – not originators of knowledge but its distributors and framers. These distributors wield enormous power not because they create ideas, but because they determine which ideas circulate, how they are framed and which reach the public.

Who, then, were the great Afrikaans public intellectuals of the twentieth century? Figures such as Abdullah Abdurahman, Neville Alexander, Russel Botman, Breyten Breytenbach, Jaap Durand, Ferdinand Deist, Willie Esterhuyse, Hermann Giliomee, Jakes Gerwel, Johan Heyns, Elsa Joubert, Christina Landman, NP Van Wyk Louw, DF Malan, Eugène Marais, DF Opperman, Sol Plaatje, Anton Rupert, Maria Elizabeth Rothmann, Paul Sauer, Franklin Sonn, Adam Small, Jan Smuts, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, Sampie Terreblanche, Erika Theron, Richard van der Ross, Lourens van der Post and Hendrik Verwoerd all played this role in different ways. Their influence did not lie merely in their intellect, but in their ability to move ideas – good and bad – from the margins to the mainstream. Some were reformers, others revolutionaries; some worked through the university or the press, others through parliament, pulpits or publishing houses. What united them was not the content of their convictions, but their skill in translating complex ideas into messages that resonated – persuasively, powerfully and enduringly – with an Afrikaans public.

Who do you think was the most influential Afrikaans public intellectual of the twentieth century? Vote below – or make the case for someone I’ve missed in the comments.

But, as Richard Posner has argued, the conditions for public intellectual life have shifted dramatically. Where once a relatively small number of curated platforms (newspapers, public broadcasters, academic journals) shaped who was heard, today’s fragmented media landscape has levelled the playing field. Anyone with an internet connection can now offer commentary, analysis or critique. In theory, this democratises public debate. But it could also dilute the structures that once helped us distinguish between noise and substance. The marketplace of ideas, as Posner warns, now rewards speed and spectacle – qualities not always aligned with wisdom.

All of this leaves us with an uncomfortable final question: who are the leading Afrikaans public intellectuals today? Whose voices, in our current intellectual climate, are prepared to risk participation in the marketplace of ideas?

This is an edited and translated version of my monthly column, Agterstories, on Litnet. To support more writing like this, consider subscribing for a paid membership. The image was created using Midjourney.