Let us not beat about the bush here. The term kaffir is a word imposed on black people by racist whites. When Irvin Khoza accuses other blacks of ”behaving like kaffirs”, he is thus accusing them of acting in keeping with standards set by the white racists.
It is not the intention of this piece to argue whether Khoza was correct in accusing an unnamed journalist of ”behaving like a kaffir” for questioning if there was infighting within the 2010 Local Organising Committee.
There are times when black people’s behaviour is so egregiously in line with the worst stereoÂÂÂtype that even Frantz Fanon would excuse racists for feeling that their racism is justified.
Though it will never be acceptable for whites to call blacks kaffirs, it remains black people’s responsibility not to give racists the opportunity to feel vindicated when they do.
There is a difference when blacks say that someone is ”behaving like a kaffir” and calling a person a ”kaffir”. The first instance implies that the person so described is behaving in a manner that the racists expect of them. The latter says that you associate yourself with the racist moniker. The two cannot be guilty of the same offence.
There are many examples of blacks behaving like kaffirs and being told as much. The Bantustan leaders and Urban Bantu Councillors (or Useless Boys’ Clubs) of the apartheid years behaved like kaffirs because they happily went with the oppression of those who looked like them in return for being in the good books of their baas.
It is kaffir-like behaviour when blacks smile and grin foolishly when ”stout baas so-and-so” physically and sexually abuses them.
There are those black folk who still harbour the dream of sex across the colour bar just so that they can feel they have ”achieved” something worthwhile in their lives. This belief that one’s sense of worth should be measured against their ”access” to whites is behaving like a kaffir.
Sometimes being a kaffir is less innocuous, an example of which is when ”black” playwrights write shows such as Umoja, the driving ethos of which is to reinforce the caricature of blacks who sing when they are happy and even when they are sad.
So when one is accused of ”behaving like a kaffir” it would be best if one looked honestly at whether one is perpetuating the myth of black incompetence and impotence.
It is meant to say that such behaviour is nothing less than perpetuating the belief that blacks are sub-human.
Uttered by blacks on other blacks whose behaviour seems indifferent to how we are all impacted, it cannot have the same colonial connotations.
It is heartening that some white compatriots seem to have been hurt on our behalf.
If only they knew that up to today isiXhosa-speaking people accuse one another of being iqaba (an uncultured person) when a person’s behaviour is at variance with what is acceptable Western standards.
Like kaffir, being an iqaba (as opposed to being igqoboka — a Christian convert) implies failure to embrace Christianity and with it, ”civilisation”, reminiscent of the Arabic roots of kafara which means non-believer.
Maybe Khoza should have used the everyday phrase ”onyela batho otshaba makgoa” (”you shit on blacks, but are afraid of whites”). Stripped of its colourful language, it accuses one of behaving like a kaffir.
Like the African-Americans who last year symbolically buried the N-word, I hope that we will one day soon bury the K-word. But first we have to stop behaving like kaffirs and tell our own people when they delay us killing the monster.