{"id":24820,"date":"2023-04-26T06:38:36","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T04:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagecentre.sun.ac.za\/mother-language-heart-language-copy\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T08:02:55","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T06:02:55","slug":"many-kinds-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/many-kinds-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"So many kinds of freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

“I never even knew that that kind of personal freedom existed, because I had never experienced it before …”<\/p>\n

Liselotte Voets, a Belgian exchange student from KU Leuven\u00a0 (Catholic University of Leuven) who visited SU last year as part of her studies towards a master\u2019s degree in philosophy, attended the Language Centre\u2019s Afrikaans course for Dutch-speaking students<\/a> while she was in South Africa.<\/p>\n

In celebration of Freedom Day on 27 April, she shares her thoughts about freedom with us, originally in Afrikaans, but translated into English below.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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My exchange visit of five and a half months in Stellenbosch kicked off in February 2022. Choosing South Africa was obvious to me: the cultures, the people, the scenery, the history, the mountains and the climate appealed to me. All these aspects naturally made a huge positive impression on me. One result of my visit I had not expected, is the new way in which I now look at the concept of freedom. If I had to explain in an intuitive way how I experienced freedom in South Africa, I would first of all mention the landscape. In my opinion, the vastness of the country represents in a very symbolical way what it means to be free in South Africa. There are still so many open spaces that can be filled. The possibilities seem to be endless. If one compares it with Belgium, where I am from, you have to conclude that most of Belgium has been built up. It really is a challenge to find a piece of open land from where one can see the horizon across an open expanse; where everything is not covered with walls, houses, streets, towns and cities.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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\u00a0It feels as if one is being watched \u2013 always and everywhere \u2013 and as if you can\u2019t escape and commune with nature.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

Now that I\u2019m back in Belgium, I find it even more difficult to endure, and I miss South Africa so much more. Of course, in Belgium we have more (a feeling of) safety and security. The price we have to pay for it is our personal freedom. However, I never even knew that that kind of personal freedom existed, because I had never experienced it before. Perhaps it is also typical of Europeans to regard the kind of freedom we know as the only kind of freedom and not to leave room for other interpretations. But this is actually a contradiction in terms. I should have known that \u2018freedom\u2019 can\u2019t be encapsulated in a single viewpoint. I\u2019ve also noticed this kind of personal freedom in the South Africans I\u2019ve met: they are not being lived (their lives are not being ruled and regulated), but they live on their own accord; they welcome others with open arms and start each day courageously. This great personal freedom in South Africa seems to come at a price, though, and is something that should absolutely not be underestimated: many people are left to their own devices \u2013 to fend for themselves. They need to survive on their own. Seen from that perspective, my impression was that some South Africans see the South African landscape more as a kind of emptiness than an open future. I think, and sincerely hope, that this can still change.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

Blog by Liselotte Voets; translated by Ingrid Swanepoel<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I never even knew that such a kind of personal freedom existed, because I had never experienced it before.” In celebration of Freedom Day on 27 April, a Belgian exchange students shares her thoughts on freedom with us, originally in Afrikaans, but translated into English below. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":24877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,289,368,726,68,69],"tags":[76,2044,448,2050,1987,374,103,2047],"class_list":["post-24820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afrikaans-courses","category-language-learning-hub","category-life-is-language","category-multilingualism","category-our-languages","category-recent-news","tag-afrikaans","tag-freedom","tag-freedom-day","tag-hope","tag-life-is-language","tag-mother-tongue","tag-multilingualism","tag-nature"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24820"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24934,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820\/revisions\/24934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}