Geoffrey Hughes. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. M.E. Sharpe, 2006.
The most offensive word that can be used of a black person in South Africa, where its use is actionable and constitutes crimen injuria. The semantic history of the term, like that of infidel and heathen, reveals the cultural ironies and arrogance attaching to claims of exclusive belief in the “one true God.” Like the compared terms, kaffir has at its root the notion of the infidel, being derived from Arabic kafir meaning an unbeliever, from the Muslim point of view. A letter written in 1799 noted that Tipoo Sultan “wished to drive the English Caffers out of India” (Sir T. Munro, Life 1799, I, 221). In view of the subsequent history of the term, this is a most ironic application. The original religious sense still surfaces occasionally in English. In V.S. Naipaul’s novel The Suffrage of Elvira, set in Trinidad, the old sense is apparent in this sharp exchange between two men of Indian descent: “He lifted his arm and pinched the loose skin… ‘This is pure blood. Every Hindu blood is pure Aryan blood.’ Baksh [a Muslim] snorted: ‘All-you is just a pack of kaffir'” (1958, 129-30).
As Arab traders moved down the east coast of Africa they converted many of the peoples along the coastline to Islam, applying the term kafir to the black peoples of the interior. The term was subsequently adopted by the Portuguese navigators, the Dutch and the British colonists, so that whole area of the eastern part of Cape Colony in South Africa came to be named as Cafir-land or Cafraria from as early as 1599 in the writings of Richard Hakluyt. (This was prior to the Dutch settlement in the Cape in 1652.) Kaffir subsequently became a common regional term applied to the Xhosa-speaking peoples of the Eastern Cape Colony and was extended to dozens of names of places (Kaffirstad), flora (kaffirboom), fauna (Kaffir finch), and food (Kaffir corn, Kaffir beer). In the 1890s the term started to become current in the parlance of the London Stock Exchange to refer to South African mining shares, the sector being termed, not very complimentarily, “the Kaffir Circus.”
Because the term was not used by the peoples themselves, but applied to them by foreigners, it acquired a derogatory sense. (The same dynamic is found in hottentot and nigger.) The Reverend William Shaw observed in his Diary: “‘Kaffir’ is not a term used by the natives to designate either themselves or any other tribe… The Border Kaffirs know that the white nations apply the terms to them, and many of them regard it as a term of contempt” (December 28, 1847). The Border in question represented the frontier between the native people and the English settlers who had been encouraged to take up land there from 1820. The consequence was a protracted series of Kaffir Wars. Reporting on a punitive expedition in 1812, Lieutenant-General Sir John Cradock wrote the following arrogant remarks: “I am happy to add that there has not been shed more Kaffir blood than would seem necessary to impress on the minds of these savages a proper degree of terror and respect” (cited in Thompson 1990, 55).
From the earliest accounts, the stereotype of the savage predominated, especially in the categorization of the “red” or “raw” kaffir, so called because of the red ochre that they smeared on their bodies. An early Geographical Dictionary (1691) by Edmund Bohun shows typical ignorance and prejudice: “The inhabitants [of Cafraria] are so barbarous that they are called by this name [Kaffir] which signifies the lawless people; they were all heretofore man-eaters and many of them continue such to this day” (cited in Pettman 1913, 244). The noted novelist R.M. Ballantyne opined that “The Red Kaffir is in truth a savage” in his study with the revealing title Six Months at the Cape (1879, 44). However, not everyone saw the people in the same way: the liberal journalist Thomas Pringle observed in 1834 that “the Kaffers are a tall, athletic handsome race.” Lady Anne Barnard, the first lady of the Cape, gave an artist’s impression in a letter of July 10, 1797: “I had a visit at the castle from one of the caffre chiefs with his train of wives and dogs; he was as fine a morsel of bronze as ever I saw” [receiving gifts] with “gallantry of nature” (Robinson 1973, p. 56).
In their Zulu Dictionary (1948), C.M. Doke and B.W. Vilikazi included the following usage note: “Term of contempt for a person (black or white) of uncivilized manners (a swearword if used direct to a person).” In general usage and in literature kaffir has steadily disappeared, except in the mouths of characters, usually Afrikaners, marking them as conservative racists. Yet some authors, notably Herman Charles Bosman (1905–1951) used the term with sophisticated and disturbing irony, notably in Mafeking Road (1947), a story set at a critical point in the Boer War (1899–1902). Bosman, like Mark Twain, uses a naive persona or narrative voice, one with paternalistic views and uncomfortably racist vocabulary, thereby inviting the more perceptive reader to put a different interpretation on the narrative. Bosman’s usage is unusual and daring, to the point that his readership has declined and most universities avoid teaching him in post-apartheid South Africa. Virtually no modern or contemporary author uses the term, in any context. The parallel with Twain’s use of nigger and its repercussions is notable.
As kaffir became increasingly taboo, it was both replaced by synonyms or abbreviations. Thus the kaffirboom (Erythrina caffra) was renamed the “coral tree,” kaffir beer was retermed sorghum beer or KB. Following the latter practice the initial “k” was brought into play in euphemistic forms like k-sheeting (from 1981) for a thick soft cotton material traditionally known as kaffir sheeting. A contemporary coinage is the k-factor, meaning “an expected degree of abuse in machinery requiring built-in self-protective devices.”
The insulting personal use of the term has increasingly led to civil proceedings. The Eastern Province Herald newspaper reported on April 4, 1976: “The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the word ‘Kaffir’ was an insult and awarded an African damages of R150 (about $225).” Today such usage falls under the South African legal category termed crimen injuria, defined as insulting behavior, linguistic and other, that is a deliberate affront to a person’s dignity. In his discussion of the category, Professor Jonathan Burchell, a legal authority, comments: “The epithet ‘kafir’ [sic] has become to be regarded as self-evidently an injuria” (1997, 752). Partly because of these legal actions, the word has become genuinely taboo. There is no reclamation of the term, as there has been with nigger.