The word kafir is used countless times in this book Siener, a story about the Afrikaaner prophet who foresaw the rise and fall of the white government and the takeover by black nations. It is a translation of the original from the 1800s and the translator had tried to preserve the spirit of the time and had chosen to keep the term. But the term does not have that negative charge that it seems to have in modern day communication. Infact, there is an essense of an unknown power attached to it, and everytime he utters it, I sense his fear of the the other rather than his disdain. This man foresaw black nations take over South Africa (the tip of the most central continent), a notion that he foresees spreading out to the rest of the world like a ripple effect and he feared this. He felt that this happening was even biblical. Black cultures spirit of ubuntu was in line with the love thy neighbout as thy love thyself notion that became societys central focus in the AD years. I wonder if this fear of an unknown power was what eventually turned the term most people dread into something so negative. This isolated term is what many of us hold as solid proof of the expression of hatred one race had long had for another. When used in later context, it represented the sense of supriority of the caller over the sense of inferiority of the callee. It has therefore since been banned from society. George Washington Carver said that the Fear of something is at the root of hate for other with no real reference to South African society but I think that theory applies. Its so fascinating to see the revelations of society through its language, especially the story behind its forbidden terms.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:41:13 +0000
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