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All Shall be Afforded Dignity

‘Hoe Lekker Pose Ons Nou’

(Look how nicely we’re posing)

District Six, Cape Town

Linocut on paper
Norman Kaplan, 1967

Afrikaans, a language born out of white European colonisation, was used as a means of oppression in apartheid South Africa. It is the predominant language of the mixed-heritage community, labelled ‘Coloured’ by the apartheid regime. The Cape Coloured people are a distinct ethnic group, primarily living in the Western Cape area. Under apartheid, South Africans were categorised as White, Black (most of the population), Indian or Coloured.

Over time, Afrikaans speakers from this community overlaid and enriched it with their own colourful idiom and sardonic humour. It was from this humour that this title emerged — from a voice in the crowd watching as Kaplan was drawing.