DA invites Charlize Theron to brainstorm strategy to protect Afrikaans against ANC

South African born actress Charlize Theron is still trending after she expressed her views on her home language Afrikaans on the SmartLess podcast on Spotify earlier this week, with hosts Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett.

The actress talked about her childhood and how she only started learning English at the age of 19 when she moved to the United States.

During the interview Theron, who grew up in Benoni on the East Rand of Gauteng said that Afrikaans is a “dying language, that’s it’s not helpful and that only about 44 people still speak it”.

While it’s still unclear exactly what Theron aimed to achieve with this comment, and whether she meant it as a joke, South Africans did not take well to the Oscar-winning actress dissing their mother tongue.

ALSO SEE: Twitter reacts to Charlize Theron saying Afrikaans is a ‘dying language’

Afrikaans in the spotlight

Twitter went into a frenzy with many South Africans clapping back at her comments, while the The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) said they were left disheartened at the disparaging comments about Afrikaans.

In a statement, PanSALB said the comments are disturbing as they are inaccurate and misleading.

It also cited that Afrikaans is the third most spoken language in South Africa and that the comments made by Theron “perpetuate the persistent misconception that Afrikaans is only spoken by white ‘boere’ South Africans, which could not be farther from the truth as 60% of the people that speak the language are black.”

The DA wants to protect Charlize Theron’s mother tongue from the ANC

The Democratic Alliance on Friday also added their two cents to the Charlize Theron Afrikaans debacle, extending an invite to the actress to join them for a parliamentary sitting when she is in South Africa again.

“Given her apparent concern about the risk of Afrikaans “dying out”, we invite Ms. Theron to engage in discussion with the DA on her next visit, so that we can work together to protect her mother tongue from the ANC,” DA Deputy Shadow Minister for Sport, Art and Culture, Veronica vavn Dyk said on Friday.

Van Dyk said the DA is proud to be the leading political campaigner for the language rights of all South Africans, including the 7 million speakers of Afrikaans.

“While it is very unfortunate that so much energy is being spent by the ANC to defame Afrikaans while our country’s economy and infrastructure crumble, the DA will continue to stand up for language rights, as we did when the ANC tried to change the name of the Afrikaans Language Monument and when they tried to classify Afrikaans as “foreign”,” the statement read.

Theron has yet to respond publicly to the furore she has caused with her comments.

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