One of the ten series included in the flipbook No, It Is by William Kentrdige.

Fourthwall Books is pleased to announce the publication of Roelof Petrus van Wyk’s Jong Afrikaner: A Self-Portrait

Jong Afrikaner: A Self-Portrait is a book of exquisite portraits of urbanised, creative, engaged Afrikaners who present a challenge to preconceived ideas about Afrikaner identity and values. These ‘new’ Afrikaners have come of age in a South Africa very different to that of their forebears, and are connected to each other through friendship, marriage, shared values, preferences and tastes, rather than through any supposed national identity. They wholeheartedly seek and embrace creativity and plurality in their work and personal lives.
 
Van Wyk chose some of his subjects—from amongst his own friends, family and colleagues—for their stories that evince a multi-layered and richly varied Afrikaner identity: a married gay couple adopts a black child; a pint-sized young woman is the voice of an Afrikaans rap-rave band making waves globally; an Afrikaner man becomes a sangoma. In some cases, he was intrigued by stories of interesting lineage or tales of anti-apartheid activism (a lawyer to Winnie Mandela in one family, a playwright censored by the state in another). Sometimes he was drawn to compelling physical features that seemed to convey the old European history of a person born on the African continent. The portraits resonate with these rich narratives of history, culture and family, complicating our idea of what it means to be a ‘white African’.

Jong Afrikaner includes Stephanus Muller’s rich text, ‘Betoog oor die epiese soektog na die beminde van die siel in die vernielde wingerd’, specially commissioned for this book and translated into English and Dutch by Michiel Heyns and Riet de Jong-Goossens.