Kaffir (/ˈkæfər/, Afrikaans: "kaffer") is an ethnic slur which is used in reference to black Africans in South Africa. Derived from the Arabic word Kafir meaning "nonbeliever", particularly of Islam. In the form of cafri, it evolved from its religious origins during the pre-colonial period in Eastern and Southern Africa, where the term was adopted by colonists in reference to the monotheistic, non-Islamic Bantu peoples, and it was eventually used in reference to any black person during the Apartheid era. This designation came to be considered a pejorative by the mid-20th century, and today it is considered extremely offensive.
In 2000, the South African parliament enacted the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, which has among its primary objectives the prevention of hate speech terms such as kaffir. When describing the term, the euphemism the K-word is now often used instead of kaffir.
Etymology
The term has its etymological roots in the Arabic word (Arabic: كافر kāfir) that is usually translated into English as "disbeliever" or "non-believer" to describe "one without religion" or by a Muslim to describe an atheist or someone who denies the existence of a God. The word is non-racial and applied to non-Muslims in general, and therefore in the past to non-Muslims who were encountered along the Swahili coast by Arab traders. The trade the Arabs engaged in was partly based on slavery. The Portuguese who arrived on the East African coast in 1498, encountered the usage of the term by the coastal Arabs but less so by the Muslim Swahili who used the term Washenzi (meaning "uncivilized") to describe the non-Islamic people of the African interior. The poet Camões used the plural form of the term (cafres) in the fifth canto of his 1572 poem Os Lusíadas. Variations of the word were used in English, Dutch, and, later, in Afrikaans, from the 17th century to the early 20th century as a general term for several different people groups in Southern Africa. In Portuguese, French and Spanish, the equivalent cafre was used.
From the Portuguese the term was passed onto their Asian possessions and today it exists in several Asian languages which include words such as "Khapri" in Sinhalese and "Kaapiri" in Malayalam. The terms are descriptive of the pagan natives of Cafreria, but they are not considered offensive in either Western India or Sri Lanka.
The term acquired a distinctly derogatory meaning in the context of South African history, especially during the Apartheid era. In Afrikaans, the term is more commonly spelled kaffer and became a common word used by European settlers. Through time "Kaffir" tended, in mid-20th century Southern Africa, to be used as a derogatory term for bantu black people, and in South Africa today, the term is legally regarded as hate speech.
Historical usage
Early English
The 16th century explorer Leo Africanus described the Cafri as non-Islamic "negroes", and one of five principal population groups in Africa. According to him, they were "as blacke as pitch, and of a mightie stature, and (as some thinke) descended of the Jews; but now they are idolators." Leo Africanus identified the Cafri's geographical heartland as being located in remote southern Africa, an area which he designated as Cafraria.
Following Leo Africanus, the works of Richard Hakluyt designate this population as "Cafars and Gawars, which is, infidels or misbeleeuers". Hakluyt refers to slaves ("slaues called Cafari") and certain inhabitants of Ethiopia ("and they vse to goe in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars") by two different but similar names. The word is also used in allusion to a portion of the coast of Africa ("land of Cafraria"). On early European maps of the 16th and 17th centuries, southern Africa was likewise called by cartographers Cafreria.
Colonial period
The word was used to describe monotheistic peoples (Nguni ethnic groups in particular) of South Africa, who were not of a Christian or of an Islamic religious background, without derogatory connotations, during the Dutch and British colonial periods until the early twentieth century. It appears in many historical accounts by anthropologists, missionaries and other observers, as well as in academic writings. For example, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford originally labeled many African artifacts as "Kaffir" in origin. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica made frequent use of the term, to the extent of having an article of that title.
The late nineteenth–early twentieth century novelist, H. Rider Haggard, frequently used the term "kaffir" in his novels of dark Africa, especially those of the great white hunter, Allan Quatermain, as a then inoffensive term for black people in the region.
Similar non-derogatory usage can be found in the John Buchan novel Prester John from 1910.
Apartheid-era South Africa
During the South African general election in 1948, those who supported the establishment of an apartheid regime campaigned under the openly racist slogan "Die kaffer op sy plek" ("The kaffir in his place").
In the case of Butana Almond Nofomela, while working as an undercover policeman during the early 1980s, Nofomela stabbed to death a Brits farmer, Lourens. Nofomela had only intended to rob the wealthy tiller, but Lourens confronted him with a firearm and called him kaffir. This enraged Nofomela, who then killed the farmer.
The Afrikaans term Kaffir-boetie (Kaffir brother) was also often used to describe a white person who fraternised with or sympathized with the cause of the black community.
Namibia
Much as in South Africa the term was used as a general derogatory reference to blacks. A 2003 report by the Namibian Labour Resource and Research Institute states:
Kaffir in the Namibian context was a derogatory term which mainly referred to blacks in general but more particularly to black workers as people who do not have any rights and who should also not expect any benefits except favours which bosses ('baas') could show at their own discretion.
Modern usage
Post-apartheid South Africa
In 2000, the parliament of South Africa enacted the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act. The Act's primary objectives include the prevention of hate speech terms, such as kaffir:
- To promote equality
- To prohibit and prevent unfair discrimination (either on the basis of age, race, sex, disability, language, religion, culture, etc.)
- To prevent hate speech (e.g. calling people names such as kaffir, koelies, hotnot, etc.)
- To prevent harassment
Notwithstanding the end of Apartheid and the above-mentioned Act, usage of the word in South Africa continues today.
In February 2008, there was huge media and public outcry in South Africa after Irvin Khoza, then chairperson of the 2010 FIFA World Cup organizing committee, used the term during a press briefing in reference to a journalist.
A statement made during the 5 March 2008 sitting of the South African Parliament shows how the usage of the word is seen today:
We should take care not to use derogatory words that were used to demean black persons in this country. Words such as Kaffir, coolie, Boesman, hotnot and many others have negative connotations and remain offensive as they were used to degrade, undermine and strip South Africans of their humanity and dignity.
The phrase the K-word is now often used to avoid using the word itself, similar to the N-word, used to represent nigger.
In 2012, a woman was jailed overnight and fined after pleading guilty to crimen injuria for using the word as a racial slur at a gym.
In July 2014, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a 2012 conviction for offences of crimen injuria and assault relating to an argument about parking in which a man used the word. The judgement states:
The word kaffir is racially abusive and offensive and was used in its injurious sense ... in this country, its use is not only prohibited but is actionable as well. In our racist past it was used to hurt, humiliate, denigrate and dehumanise Africans. This obnoxious word caused untold sorrow and pain to the feelings and dignity of the African people of this country.
In March 2018, Vicki Momberg became the first woman to be convicted of racist language for using the term over 40 times at two South African police officers.
Examples
Some indicative examples:
- Mahatma Gandhi: "The latest papers received from South Africa, unfortunately for the Natal Government, lend additional weight to my statement that the Indian is cruelly persecuted being in South Africa ... A picnic party of European children used Indian and Kaffir boys as targets and shot bullets into their faces, hurting several inoffensive children." – Letter to the editor of The Times of India, 17 October 1896.
- Winston Churchill, during the Boer War, wrote of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men".
- John Philip Sousa's 1914 concert suite "Tales of a Traveler", composed after his band's tour to South Africa, contains a movement titled "The Kaffir on the Karoo".
- At the start of the 1946 Sherlock Holmes film Terror by Night, the narrator speaks of a famous diamond "First touched by the fingers of the humble kaffir..." while a black man is shown picking up a stone from the ground.
- Kaffir is the title of a 1995 hit song by the black Johannesburg Kwaito artist Arthur Mafokate. The lyrics say, "don't call me a kaffir". This song is considered one of the first hits of the Kwaito genre, and is said to have set precedent for the post-apartheid generation struggle of combining dance music with the new phenomenon of freedom of expression in South Africa.
- Kaffir Boy is the title of Mark Mathabane's autobiography, who grew up in the township of Alexandra, travelled to the United States on a tennis scholarship, and became a successful author in his adoptive homeland.
- In the film Lethal Weapon 2, South African criminal Arjen Rudd (played by Joss Ackland), his colleague Pieter Vorstedt (played by Derrick O'Connor) and their followers frequently refer to Danny Glover's character Roger Murtaugh, who is African American, as a "kaffir". His partner Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is referred to as a "kaffir-lover". At the end of the movie when Riggs and Murtaugh kill off the villains (who were smuggling illicit drugs hidden in coffee), Murtaugh says they were "de-kaffirnated".
- South African cricket players complained that they were racially abused by some spectators during a December 2005 Test match against host country Australia held in Perth. Makhaya Ntini, a black player in the team, was taunted with the word "kaffir". Other white players such as Shaun Pollock, Justin Kemp, Garnett Kruger were subjected to shouts of kaffirboetie, an Afrikaans term which means "brother of a kaffir".
- Australian tennis player Brydan Klein was fined $16,000 following a qualifying match at the Eastbourne International, June 2009, for unsportsmanlike conduct after allegedly calling his South African opponent, Raven Klaasen, a "kaffir".
- In the film Blood Diamond (2006), Leonardo DiCaprio's character Danny Archer refers to Djimon Hounsou's character Solomon Vandy as a kaffir, which triggers the start of a vicious fistfight.
