​​​Profs Ina Wolfaardt-Gräbe from Pretoria and Hennie van Coller from Bloemfontein will be sharing this year's Jan H Marais prize for outstanding contributions to Afrikaans as an academic language. The winners will receive the R500 000 prize money at an event in Stellenbosch on Friday (28 May 2021).

Stellenbosch University (SU), Het Jan Marais Nationale Fonds and Naspers introduced the annual Jan H Marais prize in 2015. All three institutions owe their establishment to the visionary support of Johannes Henoch (Jannie) Marais (1860–1915), after whom the award is named. Marais hailed from Stellenbosch and, along with his brothers, made his fortune on the diamond fields of Kimberley in the 1870s. Since he was an avid supporter of Afrikaans as an academic and literary language, the prize aptly acknowledges quality scholarly work and publications in Afrikaans.

Prof Wim de Villiers, SU Rector and Vice-Chancellor, congratulated Profs Wolfaardt-Gräbe and Van Coller on their outstanding achievement. “SU is pleased to acknowledge their contributions to Afrikaans as an academic language. The University's substantial financial contribution to the prize attests to our ongoing commitment to multilingual and diverse academic excellence in South Africa," he said.

Both winners are held in high regard as literary scholars of international calibre. Prof Wolfaardt-Gräbe, who holds a doctorate from the then Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (now North-West University), was associated with the University of South Africa (UNISA) from 1984 up until her retirement in 2005 – initially in the Department of General Literary Studies, and later the Department of Afrikaans. She is known for her work as theorist and as the driving force behind the Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe, an Afrikaans journal of international standing.

“It is encouraging to be awarded a prize for a lifelong contribution because it means that others have assessed one's research to date as 'good' or 'good enough'. The fact that this assessment was initiated by fellow researchers whose work I have immense respect for is another reason why I am cherishing this accolade as something rather special at this stage of my life," said prof Wolfaardt-Gräbe. “Of course, reserving this prize for significant contributions to Afrikaans as an academic language is critically important at a time when it is common knowledge that Afrikaans as a medium of instruction and academic language is under pressure," she added.

Prof Van Coller, in turn, boasts a formidable publication record as literary scholar, and is also an acknowledged poet, translator and prosaist. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and holds doctorates from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands as well as the then Rand Afrikaans University (RAU). In 1997, the University of the Free State (UFS) honoured him with the title of distinguished professor.

“I have devoted my life to Afrikaans, which, after English, is the only other developed academic language in South Africa. In a globalised world, I believe we should be protecting everything local, including artefacts, fauna, flora, people and languages. Therefore, Afrikaans must be afforded space, particularly in the tertiary sector and public life. If not, Afrikaans publications will start dwindling. The successful – and ethically sound – business and university of the future would be the one that is able to strike a balance between local and global," said Prof Van Coller. He also thanked his wife, Elsa, their three daughters, son-in-law and grandchildren for their “support, love and kindness through the years".

The chair of the 2021 selection committee was Prof Marius de Waal from SU's Faculty of Law, who recently passed away. Other committee members were Prof Ian Dubery (professor of biochemistry at the University of Johannesburg (UJ)), Prof Albert Grundlingh (professor emeritus of history at SU), Prof Ena Jansen (former professor of South African literature at the University of Amsterdam), Prof Debra Meyer (dean of the Faculty of Science at UJ) and Dr Johan van Zyl (former rector of the University of Pretoria (UP) and former head of Sanlam). Prof Christof Heyns, former professor of law at UP, served on the committee for several years, but recently also passed away unexpectedly. Prof Andreas van Wyk, former rector of SU, was co-opted as a substitute for Prof Heyns at short notice.

Previous winners of the Jan H Marais prize include the well-known jurist Prof Jean Christoph Sonnekus (2020), historian Prof Fransjohan Pretorius (2019), linguist Prof Christo van Rensburg (2018), jurist Prof Marinus Wiechers (2018), language historian and author Prof Jaap Steyn (2017), theologist Prof Jan van der Watt (2017) and historian Prof Hermann Giliomee (2016).