Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge
| Motto | tuiste. trots. toekoms |
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| Founded | 18–19 December 1929 Bloemfontein, Orange Free State Province, Union of South Africa. |
| Type | Non-governmental organisation |
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Key people
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| Website | fak |
The Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge ("Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations") is a non-profit, non-governmental Afrikaans cultural organisation. Founded in 1929, it celebrated its 85th year in 2014. Its offices is situated at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria.
In the twenties and thirties Afrikaners began to organise culturally in a variety of institutions. Despite severe political divisions among Afrikaners from the earliest times, a need was expressed for a form of cultural unity. Although the ideal of political unity remained out of reach for the time being, Afrikaners were able to achieve cultural cohesion to a large extent.
The need for an inspirational and significant cultural organisation was born out of the needs of the Afrikaner people. On the one hand a cultural emergency existed due to the post-war Milnerism that labelled Afrikaners as stubborn, incompetent and insignificant, whilst on the other changing clerical, cultural and social conditions had to be faced. The economic distress of the Great Depression resulted in poor Afrikaners moving to the cities. Urbanized Afrikaners were uprooted from their traditional family support systems and their language and cultural ties came under severe pressure. Afrikaners had no training to compete professionally in the cities, they were financially impoverished, were politically and culturally insecure and isolated.
On 24 August 1929 a group of Afrikaners under the umbrella of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns met to reflect upon the protection of their cultural heritage. The goal was to bring people and organisations with similar inner convictions together, and to launch actions for the enforcement of the Afrikaans language and the positive development of Afrikaner culture. Hence the FAK motto: "Handhaaf en bou" – "Maintain and build". The FAK was then founded at the Uniale Taal- en Kultuurkongres (Language and Cultural Conference of the Union) which was held at the Bloemfontein city hall on 18–19 December 1929.
At first, the main imperative of the FAK was the maintenance of the Afrikaans language. The importance of Afrikaans glossaries was realised early on. The first published works that appeared include English-Afrikaans glossaries for automotive terms, grocers terms and butchers term. Professor PJ Nienaber was the first editor of the "Handhaaf en hou"-series (Maintain and build), which published shoemaker terms, cooking terms and photographic terms. Later English-Afrikaans glossaries for rugby, soccer, cricket, shooting, bridge, athletics, boxing, swimming, water polo, tennis, billiards, hockey, basketball and golf terms were published. Afrikaans was established in the agricultural area by the pamphlet series "Die boer en sy taal" – The Farmer and his language.
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Wikipedia