Kaffir (racial term)

Kaffir (/ˈkæfər/) is an exonym and an ethnic slur – the use of it in reference to black people being particularly common in South Africa and to some degree Namibia and the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In Arabic, the word kāfir ("unbeliever") was originally applied to non-Muslims of any ethnic background before becoming predominantly focused on pagan zanj (sub-Saharan African) who were increasingly used as slaves. During the Age of Exploration in early modern Europe, variants of the Latin term cafer (pl. cafri) were adopted in reference to non-Muslim Bantu peoples even when they were monotheistic. It was eventually used, particularly in Afrikaans (Afrikaans: kaffer), for any black person during the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid eras, closely associated with South African racism. While originally not pejorative, it became a pejorative by the mid-20th century and is now considered extremely offensive hate speech. Punishing continuing use of the term was one of the concerns of the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act enacted by the South African parliament in the year 2000 and it is now euphemistically addressed as the K-word in South African English.
The term has its etymological roots in the Arabic word kāfir (كافر), usually translated as "disbeliever" or "non-believer". The word is primarily used without racial connotation, although in some contexts it was particularly used for the pagan zanj along the Swahili coast who were an early focus of the Arab slave trade. Portuguese explorers who arrived on the East African coast in 1498 en route to India found it in common use by coastal Arabs, although the Muslim Swahili locals preferred to use washenzi ("uncivilized") for the pagan people of the interior. The poet Camões used the lusitanized plural form cafres in the fifth canto of his famous 1572 epic The Lusiads. Portuguese use passed the term to several non-Muslim areas including khapri in Sinhalese and kaappiri in Malayalam, which are used without offense in Western India and Sri Lanka to describe black African people. Variations of the word were used in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and later Afrikaans as a general term for several different ethnic groups in Southern Africa from the 17th century to the early 20th century. As English kaffir and Afrikaans kaffer, the term became a pejorative slur for Bantus and other black groups, including Cape Coloureds during the Apartheid era of South African history to the point that it is regarded as hate speech under current South African law.
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, that is, infidels or misbeleeuers". He uses a slight variation in spelling, referring to slaves ("slaues called Cafari") and certain inhabitants of Ethiopia, who, he says, ("vse to goe in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars"). 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 northwest of the "Hottentots" (Khoikhoi) was likewise called by cartographers Cafreria.
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.
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").
During the early 1980s Butana Almond Nofomela, an undercover policeman, stabbed to death a Brits, North West Province, farmer, Lourens. Nofomela claimed that he had intended to rob Lourens, but that when Lourens confronted him with a gun and called him kaffir he was enraged and killed the farmer with his knife.
The Afrikaans term Kaffir-boetie (Kaffir brother) was often used to describe a white person who fraternised with or sympathized with the cause of the black community.
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:
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:
In February 2008, there was controversy 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:
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:
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.
In July 2024 the International Botanical Congress voted to change more than 300 scientific names of plants, algae, and fungi with kaffir-related names like caffer, caffra and caffrum, in favour of afer, afra and afrum respectively, For example, Erythrina caffra was changed to Erythrina afra.
Some indicative examples:
"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 recommends that the alternative term "makrut lime" (derived from the Thai name of the plant มะกรูด makrut) be favoured when speaking of this fruit.