On 29 May Professor Emeritus Fransjohan Pretorius of the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies was awarded the Jan H Marais Prize at a special function held in Stellenbosch.

The Jan H Marais Prize was established in 2015 for a life long contribution to Afrikaans as an academic language. The prize money amounts to R500 000.

In accepting the prize, Professor Pretorius remarked that there are successful Afrikaans cultural festivals like the Stellenbosch Woordfees, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, and Aardklop, but if postgraduate academic Afrikaans ceases to exist, it will leave a lacuna that will not be filled again. And without that Afrikaans would be much, much the poorer.

In his commendatio, the chair person of the committee responsible for adjucating the prize, Professor Andreas van Wyk, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch, stated that it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the incredible achievements that Afrikaans has attained. He valued Pretorius, who has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation, as “an historian of international standard”. “No one can”, he added, “express him- or herself on the Anglo-Boer War (the South African War) without taking thorough note of Fransjohan Pretorius’s work – may he remain on commando for still a long time!”

Prof Pretorius at the award ceremony