Kaffir (racial term)

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 a non-Muslim.[8] 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 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 of 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 Konkani in India, "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 black people, and in South Africa today, the term is regarded as highly racially offensive, in the same way as nigger in the United States and other English-speaking countries. Use of the word has been actionable in South African courts since at least 1976 under the offense of crimen injuria: "the unlawful, intentional and serious violation of the dignity of another".[4]

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 Times of India, Oct 17th, 1896.
• Winston Churchill, during the Boer War, wrote of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men".[28]
• 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".[29]
• 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 very 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.[30]
• 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 bad guys (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".[31]
• 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".[32]
• 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.[33]

"Kaffir lime" is one of the names of a citrus fruit native to tropical countries in South and South East Asia. Its etymology is uncertain, but most likely was originally used by Muslims as a reference to the location the plant grew, which was in countries populated by non-Muslims (Hindus and Buddhists). Under this interpretation, the plant name shares an origin with the South African term, both ultimately derived from kafir, the Arabic word for "non-believer". The fruit name as such never had any offensive connotations, but due to the present negative connotations of "Kaffir" The Oxford Companion to Food[34] recommends that the alternative term "makrut lime" be favored when speaking of this fruit.

• Blackfella
• Coloured
• Coolie
• History of South Africa
• Kaffir lime
• Kafir
• Moors
• Nigger
• List of ethnic slurs

• Kaffirs in Sri Lanka: Descendants of enslaved Africans
• The transcripts of the Human Rights Violations Hearings & Submissions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission contains a large number of references to the use of the word kaffir during the South African Apartheid era.
• The Provenance of the term ‘Kafir’ in South Africa and the notion of Beginning by Gabeba Baderoon
• A Dictionary of South African English on historical principles. Oxford University Press, in Association with the Dictionary Unit for South African English. 1996. ISBN 0-19-863153-7. OCLC 35662626.
• "Kaffirs" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 627–629.
• Mark Mathabane (1998). Kaffir Boy. Sagebrush Education Resources. ISBN 0-8335-0211-5.
• Historical definition of the term from the Nutall Encyclopedia, 1907