Feeding a nation with words: competing gastrolinguistic nationalisms, Coloured and Afrikaner identity, and the koe(k)sister in Kaaps and Afrikaans

Gastrolinguistic nationalism is a term proposed in this article to encapsulate a form of everyday nationalist discourse, in Michael Billig’s (1995, Banal Nationalism, SAGE) sense of banal nationalism, in which questions of food and linguistics are intricately entangled in service of identitarian claims. Two competing, yet intertwined, expressions of this particular nationalist discourse in the post-apartheid South African context are explored. The first, koesister nationalism, relates to “Coloured” identity and Kaapse Afrikaans, a dialect of Afrikaans also known as Kaaps, while the second, koeksister nationalism, relates to Afrikaner identity and Standard-Afrikaans. These two competing nationalisms are connected through a common language – although both contest ownership thereof – and the koe(k)sister – which refers to two related yet distinct dishes. Through focusing on the ways in which the koe(k)sister figures in these two discourses, it is argued that these two nationalisms constitute an uneasy bondgenootskap, or alliance, which goes against progressive actions toward transforming the Afrikaans language community in a collective sense. Finally, through reading these two nationalisms together, the notion of koe(k)sister nationalism(s) is proposed as a concept that could encapsulate similarly intertwined social phenomena in other contexts.