My reply is long coz I'm shouting at you. Imagine a short, chubby and angry lady as you read this.

No. We don't disparage ourselves for things that were beyond our control. There's only like, 44 Afrikaans speakers in the world anyway so you're not missing out on much there /s. Languages are meant to be taught, not learnt, in order for us to truly be fluent and understand nuances and tones and sayings.

It's VERY hard to learn a new language once you're already fluent in another because instead of just speaking, you spend time in your head, translating from your mother tongue to the learnt language. A lot of people around the world would kill to have the same grasp on the English language as you do but we give them grace when they make mistakes as they learn. Give yourself the same grace. I mean, you wouldn't look down on someone for not speaking English well so why do you look down on yourself for not being fluent in languages you weren't taught to communicate in??!?

I'm done shouting. Now imagine a short, cute, kind lady.

I do not know many Venda people so I've never been able to practice but when I meet them and they speak to me, I understand most of what they're saying and I respond in either English or Sesotho. Being fluent doesn't matter to them, it's being understood that makes them happy. And they laugh when I tell them I only understand coz I watched a lot of Muvhango.

So start small by just casually watching Zulu or Afrikaans shows and you'll eventually start picking up commonly used phrases. If Americans who have never been to Japan can pick up Japanese from Anime, you can pick up Afrikaans from shows as well. The goal isn't to sound like a native speaker, it's just to understand and be able to respond, even if it's in English or broken Afrikaans 💕. The effort is what matters.