Kaffir (ethnic slur)

Kaffir (alternatively kaffer; originally cafri) is an ethnic slur used to refer to a black person. In the form of cafri, it evolved during the medieval era as a non-derogatory equivalent of "negro". In Southern Africa, the term was later used as a neutral exonym for Bantu peoples. The designation came to be considered a pejorative by the 20th century.

Under crimen injuria, the epithet kaffir has been actionable in the justice system of South Africa since 1976. In 2000, the South African parliament also enacted the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, which has among its primary objectives the prevention of hate speech terms such as kaffir. When describing the term, the euphemism the K-word is now often used instead of kaffir.

Kaffir has also been used to refer to an ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Kaffirs, who are partially descended from 16th century Portuguese traders and the slaves that they brought from their colonies in Africa to work as labourers and soldiers. Unlike in South Africa, the Sri Lankan Kaffirs do not consider the term offensive.

The word kāfir is the active participle of the Semitic root K-F-R "to cover". As a pre-Islamic term, it described farmers burying seeds in the ground, covering them with soil while planting. Thus, the word kāfir implies the meaning "a person who hides or covers". In Islamic parlance, a kāfir is a person who rejects Islamic faith, i.e. "hides or covers [viz., the truth]".

"Kaffir" is derived from the Arabic word (Arabic: كافر kāfir) that is usually translated into English as "non-believer", i.e. a non-Muslim. The word was originally applied to non-Muslims in general, and therefore to non Muslim black peoples encountered along the Swahili coast by Arab traders. The Portuguese nation who arrived on the East African coast in 1498, encountered the usage of the term by the coastal Arabs (but not the Swahili who used the term Washenzi (meaning "uncivilized") to the 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. This interpretation was probably passed on to other Europeans in succession, the Spanish, English, Dutch and French. From the Portuguese the termed was passed onto their Asian possessions and exists in several Asian languages including Konkani in India as "Khapri" and in Sinhalese as "Kaffir". The terms are descriptive of people of African descent, but are not considered offensive in either Western India or in Sri Lanka.

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