‘With Kgamanyane’s large kaffer concentration at Saulspoort, farms in this remote area of the Rustenburg area in the late 1850s were catching on’
Maybe this article comes 13 years too late but there is no maybe about what feelings a racial slur used in the book will provoke. As many years ago, a History lecturer at the University of Botswana, Professor Fred Morton, published a book titled “When Rustling Became an Art.” According to the blurb, the book tells the story of a father, son and grandson who led the Kgatla people to political and military prominence in the western Transvaal and eastern Bechuanaland during the 19th century.
“This is a story of shrewd risk-takers perpetrating calculated violence, for the times. For Boers and Africans alike, good enterprises were measured in cattle, and the Kgatla under Pilane and his two successors, Kgamanyane and Linchwe, were uncommonly good at acquiring cattle,” the blurb says.
That story is very well-researched and beautifully told but some readers – black ones to be precise – will certainly cringe not only at Morton’s use of a South African-origin racial slur but his justification of using it. The slur is one that is all too familiar to people who have had a painful experience with the meanest amongst Afrikaners: “kaffir”, which the book renders as “kaffer.” The offence of this word is such that in 2000, the South African parliament made a law, the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, to criminalise its use. The result is that using “kaffir” is now a criminal offence in South Africa and in 2012, a white woman spent a night in jail and would later be fined for using the word at a gymnasium. The country’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that the term 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.”
It still does and as a matter of fact, that is how black people themselves perceive the word. As a first-rate historian, Morton is aware of not just the word’s history and its deep offence. However, in his book, he attempts to find context in which readers should view his use of the slur as acceptable.
“The term ‘kaffer’ appears often in this book both to evoke sound and sentiment in the nineteenth century among Dutch speakers. As unsettling as it will be to modern ears, ‘kaffer’ then was in common currency among Dutch speakers and was well-known to the Bakgatla, many of whom spoke Dutch,” he writes in the terms and designations section.
With such explanation, Morton gives himself permission to use the word and he does so to excess, especially in a chapter about Bakgatla’s stay at Saulspoort: “With Kgamanyane’s large kaffer concentration at Saulspoort, farms in this remote area of the Rustenburg area in the late 1850s were catching on, making the early 1860s a good time for Kruger real estate ventures”; “Kruger led commandoes not only against recalcitrant kaffers on ZAR’s borders but against Boer rebels who defied elected ZAR officials and volksraad laws”; “In spite of Kruger’s popularity as a republican, the farmers in his own areas were unhappy with him about the difficulties in getting kaffer labour”; “Or at least it seemed so to vocal Rustenburg Boers, who knew that Kruger had plenty of kaffer labour and they had almost none”; “So too was their feeling that kaffers living on his farms were getting out of hand”; “David spoke and read the testaments in Sesotho and Setswana, understood kaffer language [isiXhosa]”; “Thus Kgamanyane – regarded as the hoodkaptein with more kaffers than any kaptein in the Rustenburg district”; “His was a mission of faith; for a man who gainsaid any kaffer’s belief except in Gonin’s version of Christianity, any reason for this timely invitation would do”; “Kruger, always ahead of the game, was on yet another way of extorting kaffer wealth’; “Kruger established his identity as the citizen toughest on kaffers”; “By designating Kgamanyane’s brothers as kapiteins, Eloff enabled large numbers of kaffers to live on his farms”; “They were particularly concerned about labour shortages on their own farms and on properties they had sold that were being leased to nearby kaffer settlements” – on and on the casual use of kaffer go.
We are unaware of any academic standard that okays the use of racial slurs to “evoke sound and sentiment.” If such standard does indeed exists, it would be deeply problematic because there is no way in the world that a word that is loaded with hatred and repulsion wouldn’t hurt, humiliate, denigrate and dehumanize people that such word was purposefully designed to hurt, humiliate, denigrate and dehumanize.
We have not been able to establish what Morton, who is originally American but has been naturalized as a Motswana, has written about African-Americans. However, by that standard of both evoking sound and sentiment for a particular historical period, he would be able to use “nigger” when writing about African-Americans who lived in the 17th century. In the particular case of Botswana and for particular historical reference, one would be able to the “Ma-” prefix when writing about tribes that are not culturally Tswana.
The standard, such as it is, doesn’t seem to consider the feelings of those whom “kaffir” was and is still used to dehumanize and is thus arbitrary. A black reader will certainly cringe with shock and disgust at the casual use of a word which, in Southern Africa, is the ultimate expression of white racism and white superiority.
Throughout history, white people have always arrogated to themselves, the right to determine how blacks should feel about what happens to them in the course of interacting with white society. This is the equivalent of stepping hard on someone and insisting on being the one that gets to determine how that feels. This pattern continues with Morton because by making light of his use of kaffer, Morton has expectation that no black person should be offended. That is context in which he uses “unsettling”, which word is not strong enough to describe casual use of a word that has been purposefully designed to hurt, humiliate, denigrate and dehumanize black people.
Morton retired from UB last year and as he states in the book, lives in Ruretse farms, near the Phakalane stockbroker belt.
