Afrikaans is alive and well and living on the wereldwye web (the world wide web). Dieknoop.co.za, a website aggregator (a collection of web links) of Afrikaans webwerwe (websites) and boernale (according to poespas.co.za this is short for web journal) lists thousands of them, from the extinct Afrikaans diergeluide (the link now opens the website for Georgetown University so I'm assuming it died due to a shortage of Afrikaans animals) to the nationalistic rantings of the newly hatched poes.co.za (also known as vloek.co.za).

Lexically challenged

Although its angry author, Masterbeer, is clearly web-literate (ex-pat Walton Pantland calls him a "web-savvy, over-privileged middle-class Afrikaans wanker with a sense of grievance") his command of Afrikaans gives the impression that he was either (a) writing while drunk and bedonnerd or (b) so lexically challenged that perfectly ordinary words necessitated substitution with expletives and pejoratives.

In his blog "Steve se spoeg blok", which is, according to South African blog aggregator amatomu.com the second most-read blog in the South African "blogosfeer" (blogosphere),

Steve Hofmeyr apologises for sometimes exceeding his quota of swearwords. His most recent outburst came as a reaction to stories on Highveld and 702 that claimed that Steve had been refused an American visa and consequently had to cancel his US tour because he had not paid maintenance.

True to form, Hofmeyr's paranoid retort was that Highveld was disappointed by poor ticket sales for their concert (held on Saturday, June 23) and was attempting to get a reaction so that they could drum up publicity.

Anonymity advantage

Although I am not particularly fond of Steve, I actually quite enjoyed his blog (conspiracy theories and all). He tends to be a little explosive at times and admits to being over-emotional and impulsive. But he is, nevertheless, moderately readable and sometimes surprisingly eloquent. The difference between Steve and "poes" is that "poes" has taken advantage of the anonymity that the web affords those who feel the need to wax scatological without their identities being revealed, to be just plain ugly. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog.

Walton Pantland, a South African citizen residing in Scotland whom "poes" calls an emo, pedo fag, reckons poes is lucky to be alive. He supports his point of view with a picture of a blue Mercedes-Benz containing the bodies of three khaki-clad men slain during an attempted coup in Bop and aims poes's swearwords right back at him.

"Poes" boasts that justice.gov.za and saps.org.za have both visited his website. Has he overstepped the mark? Deconstructing this inflammatory blog reveals that it does not really fulfill the criteria for being a true hate site. Although it capitalises on paranoia and even references siener.co.za, where you can get an earful of dystopian prophesies about Die Volk, its status as "blog" identifies it as being far too personal to be taken to heart by anyone with serious political intent. Its grammar is also rather shoddy. Siener.co.za is scary. Poes is silly.

Bloggers often get agitated and write stuff they probably shouldn't. Their value is in their ability to see outside the box and stir up debate.

Here's a winner: Firefox is available in Afrikaans.

Translate.org.za, a non-profit organisation focused on the localisation, or translation, of open source software into South Africa's 11 official languages, recently released their Afrikaans version of the browser. My advice to poes: the web is about being inclusive, not exclusive. And remember, Mandela loves Afrikaans.