This Week 100 Years Ago: Headlines from 05 12, 2025

Looking Back a Century

Each week in 2025, we crack open the time-capsule of world history and ask a simple question: What were people talking about exactly 100 years ago?
On the week of 12 May 1925, one story in particular dominated discussion in the southern tip of Africa—and, in many ways, reshaped cultural identity there for the next hundred years.

Afrikaans Becomes an Official Language of the Union of South Africa (11 May 1925)

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What Happened
On 11 May 1925, the South African Parliament in Cape Town passed the Official Languages Act (Act No. 8 of 1925). With one stroke of Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog’s pen, Afrikaans—once dismissed by some as "kitchen Dutch"—was elevated to equal status with English, formally replacing Dutch in government, courts, and education.

Why It Mattered
• The act cemented the linguistic cornerstone of Afrikaner nationalism, giving political weight to a language born on the Cape frontier among settlers, enslaved peoples, and indigenous communities.
• It signaled a cultural realignment after the trauma of the South African War (1899-1902); many Afrikaners viewed the recognition of Afrikaans as poetic justice after decades of British rule.
• Language policy soon shaped everything from school curricula to military commands, laying groundwork for the later—far darker—apartheid architecture (formally imposed in 1948).

A Glance from 2025
Today, South Africa officially recognizes eleven languages. Afrikaans is still widely spoken, but it shares the public square with isiZulu, Sesotho, and digital English slang pumped through smartphones. Machine translation apps make code-switching effortless, yet the 1925 debate feels strikingly familiar: How do nations honor linguistic diversity while forging common civic identity?

Quick Contextual Nuggets
• Average radio ownership in South Africa in 1925: roughly 1 set per 1,000 white households; in 2025, 94 % of South Africans stream audio via mobile devices.
• Parliament then: all-male, all-white chamber in heavy wool suits; Parliament now: majority Black and nearly 45 % women—often with laptops open and live-tweeting debates.

Come back next week as we unearth more headlines from 1925—and remember, every push notification you swipe away today could be tomorrow’s crucial artifact of the human story.