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Words, names and songs that hurt, that can cut so deep into the very soul, as to leave the victim completely destroyed! They’ve been there since man learned to speak like we do today, and since the first crime on earth was committed no doubt, but they are better confined to the dungeons below.

In the military, or when men go out hunting, in a soccer match, in drinking sessions, in political rallies and everywhere … when men are gathered in large numbers and emotions start rising like dough before baking, then words explode like mortars, songs cut through the air like lightning, and hate speech, depending on whose side one is, demolishes opponents.

This writer has had his experiences with racism, hate speech, and words that bite deep in the soul such as “ Is that your mother that @#%@# !”

In an outburst of raw fury and hatred, a young black man poured out his gall on a young English journalist in Johannesburg recently. The televised scene was thrown on the world screens for all humanity to witness the spectacle. It was as raw as they come.

In another neighbouring country, an English-speaking white man is being traumatised and shunted hither and thither by the rulers, charged with offences that can’t stick, yet ironically, at the same time emissaries are constantly sent to London to request the authorities there to lift sanctions against the same authorities that are traumatising the Englishman.

Apparently the English don’t care about what happens to the illustrious sons and daughters in their previous colonial possessions in Africa.

In a bizarre twist of fate, the leaders of the party to which the person who swore at the British journalist belongs, made London their home for half a century while they were fighting apartheid. They walked the streets of London as if it was their home, with no hazards at all, until their country attained democratic rule.

Then, idiotically, out comes ‘stank vir dank’ from a young “leader”, who has no clue whatsoever about the past, and rubbishes an Englishman. Oh, man, you sure made the journalist’s day.

Well now, one might ask, do black men really understand white men? Are black men aware of the fact that white men are better united than Africans for that matter?

In Namibia if we were at all united, we would have at least two political parties. Period. Unfortunately, many of us don’t seem to know at all how white people think.

We don’t seem to know that even when they are very angry and at war, white men take a tea break with bombs falling around them.

If our leaders allow young untrained and misdirected minds to play roles for which they are ill-equipped, then we are surely shooting ourselves in the foot.

All Africa’s economies cannot survive for half a day without those guys over yonder across the oceans. We cannot even dream of a good sunrise without them, so please, let us rein in the young bucks, the young braves among us, whose raw and uncouth behaviour will lead our countries into total disarray.

Having said that, it is important to take a look at words and phrases, political and war songs of the past and present, and the harm done by racists and demagogues in our midst.

Vicious chain reaction

In a neighbouring country, the same young man who had humiliated a British journalist, also unlocked a vicious chain reaction of hate speeches and terrible anger from the white citizenry, by singing an apartheid era guerrilla war song; “Kill the Boer!”

The resulting reaction of anger had not settled down when the leader of the white “resistance” movement AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging – Afrikaner Resistance Movement) was allegedly murdered on his farm, by, of all people, his workers. His followers immediately attached his foul murder to the singing of the guerrilla song a few days earlier by the young man of journalist-bashing fame. An electric shock ran across South Africa then.

Western countries that have invested heavily in Africa, will withdraw their investments immediately when stability is rocked by political chicanery. We have seen how most, if not all of Africa’s economies, collapsed after the exodus of the colonial masters.

Namibia and South Africa’s economies will follow suit once the white population packs up and goes, make no mistake about that.

It is not difficult to fathom why over ten million ‘refugees from all over Africa crossed the borders to go south. A white exodus from the last bastion of white sanctuary in Africa will bring about a black exodus as well.

Throughout Africa, black people composed songs of liberation in their various vernaculars. When a man is angry, he sings rough, terrible and violent songs. Our liberation fighters sang songs of anger, frustration, liberation and death. Words like “Wafa! Wafa!” (You die once and no turning back), echoed through the forests of Africa day in, day out until finally freedom was achieved.

The Boere of South Africa understand more than anyone else why the black people fought for their freedom, because they themselves were oppressed by the British in South Africa.

In 1881 they went to war against the British, and lost. The big one came in 1899, when all-out war was declared and Britain brought every available manpower to South Africa to crush the Boer commandos once and for all.

The Boer commandos called the British “Die Rooinekke” (The Red Necks) because of their uniform. But to the Commando fighters a Rooinek was a creature similar to a kalkoen or turkey with no feathers around its neck, which every Boer mother, child, uncle, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, broer and swaer, commando, etc, had to hate to the core, and shoot it down like a marauding hyena.

The British called the commandos “Boers”, a term which a British soldier conjured up to mean a creature that was uncouth, uncivilised, uneducated because it could not speak English, a raw saliva-dripping imbecile riding on horseback armed with a musket, which was creating trouble on Her Majesty’s Imperial Government’s well-earned Commonwealth possession called South Africa.

The British soldiers came like vultures from the sky to kill and maim, to starve and punish, to subdue and to restore British power in the southern tip of Africa.

When the dust settled, they celebrated with whiskey and gin, singing “On, on, on, the boys came marching,” and many other songs of British valour. The Boers were indeed subdued. Hundreds of them died in concentration camps.

The shoe on the other foot

Barely eight years after the Peace of Vereniging (Unity) between the British and the Boer commandos on the Free State border with Transvaal, South Africa was united in 1910, and the Union of South Africa was formed, with General Louis Botha as first Prime Minister.

The Afrikaner people did to the blacks then what the British had done to them – they oppressed them. Two years after Union the African National Congress was formed when the black population felt left out of the Union.

In 1913 the Land Act became law, and the woes of the black masses began. They became landless. Ugly names were coined: Maburu; Omburu; Amabunu. Songs of freedom emerged, with Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika eventually becoming respected as the undeclared African national anthem.

White political parties in South Africa came almost as an afterthought, after the black party of the ANC was formed. During the period from 1910 to 1948, the struggle for black political consciousness and freedom was put on a new footing.

During the 1940s the ANC formed a youth wing to prepare young people for future roles in their country. Songs were composed and sung in the township shebeens, in the streets, and some were even recorded on the 78 speed gramophone records of the time.

In 1948 Seretse Khama, a traditional leader in the then Bechuanaland, married a white woman and created havoc in southern Africa’s white community. Black South Africa on the other hand, composed the song, “Seretse ke kgosi, o nyetse lekgowa, mme Maburu ba mo tlhoile” (Seretse is a king, he married a white lady, and the Boers hate him),” while the poor white lady did not know what all the hype was about.

Hot on the heels of the song, the National Party of South Africa, under Dr Malan, gained power in 1948. White bread was introduced, parallel with the apartheid ideology, and the song, “Dr Malan unomthetho nzima,” (Dr Malan rules with vicious laws) saw the light of day.

“Abelungu O damn, basibiza oJim,” (damn the whites for calling us Jim); “ Ba ile Mankanisi” (my brothers have all died in the manganese mines); “Dikoloi tsa Maburu,” (they died tied to the wagons of the Boers); and many other songs.

With the dawn of apartheid, the songs became rougher and more determined, and words like “Wafa, wafa” (die if need be), also used by Mandela himself at his trial, emerged and black society was transformed forever. Liberation songs similar to the one Malema sang recently became common place.

Racist politicians decided for black people what was good for them, and for a long period of time black people became conditioned to hardship, like the children of Israel in Egypt.

When democratic rule eventually came to South Africa in 1994, millions of black people emerged with their huge baggage of conditioning and straight-jacketing of centuries. This baggage will, unfortunately, be carried around up to the next generations who will be ignorant about such heart-rending words as apartheid, ******, boer, hotnot, umlungu, lekgowa, etc.

In essence, it means that hurtful words, heart-rending songs, hate speeches, racist remarks and the like, will take centre stage for a long time before eventually fading away. But this does not mean that we can continue singing them willy-nilly, at the expense of our unity, nationalism, freedom, economic development, national reconciliation and the like.

It is equally true that whenever a group of old generation adults meet around a braai, and Klipdrift and Coke exchanges hands, words such as “daai k---f” or “ that stupid b---r” will always create humour when the polite “Mr so-and-so” will be thrown overboard. Oh, people call each other names in absentia.

Hate speech

There are mad men around the world who live in times of their own thinking, especially in the past. These are people who can’t even forgive themselves for anything. We know that the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the neo-Nazis, the supremacists, the religious fanatics, the neo-colonialists, the demagogues, the Satanists and those who would rather turn back the wheels of time, will always be there until the end of time itself.

Their speeches will always be aimed at creating friction and disorder among people of goodwill. We must always avoid giving the likes of these ready platforms from where they can crow like angry cocks.

People like the young fire-eater must not be accorded the privilege of holding press conferences with of all people BBC journalists.

In fact, very few politicians in third world countries can stand before BBC journalists, and Malema’s case demonstrates this quite clearly: “You also live in Sandton.” He did not understand the insinuation, for if he did, he would have just smiled.

Hate speech is the weapon of the failures, the greedy, the jealous to the core, and those who have no contribution to make in society. They have one great gift though: The oratory to instil hatred in the hearts of their listeners. One should listen to ET’s oratory to realise how dangerous the tongue can be.

Hate words and hate speech are very common in Africa

“You bastard!” “You son-of-a-bitch!” “Jou moer! F—k you!” “You Wambos! Damaras! Tswanas! Caprivians!” etc., are words used to belittle, humiliate, dehumanise and so on.

Many of these words are used by people who still have to develop socially and religiously. Many such words are used by soldiers and other fighting men who think life is very bad, when in fact it isn’t. Rough and uncouth language seems to motivate soldiers.

In the late 1970s, while walking on the sidewalk next to Windhoek Post Office, a big car with a Cape Town registration drew up on the kerb next to a local black politician. The driver was a black man in chauffeur uniform. The man riding shotgun was an elderly wealthy looking white man, with a large cigar in his mouth.

Said that worthy: “John, can you direct me to … ” and he mentioned the name of a prominent business concern in Windhoek. The mood in the capital city at that time was: “Get rid of words that hurt” – hotnot, ******, bliksem, etc.

So, with an air of grace the politician said: “Well sir, seeing that you already know my name, I think you should already know the place you want,” and with that he sauntered away, leaving the white man dazed.

Nations of the world who were fortunate to advance quicker in the various civilisations, trained huge armies which went on endless campaigns around the world to conquer and to subdue those weaker than themselves.

The Mongols, the Barbarian invasions in Europe, the wars of Alexander the Great, and in southern Africa the wars of Shaka the Zulu king, all went with foreign racist, supremacist and demagoguery words, songs and expressions identifying those who were conquered.

Southern Africa received its large slice of hurtful words long before black politics was set in motion. The word was “******”, an Arabic word which means unbeliever, a pagan, one destined for hell or something to that effect.

White settlers and missionaries applied this ugly word to the black population in Africa. A “******” or a “******” became any black person because he was black and “ugly” because he was not white.

The black man became the evil thing that had to be eradicated from the face of the earth. We saw millions being transported to the Americas, the biggest human trafficking crime in human history. And they were used, abused, sworn at, called all types of names, killed for sport, humiliated in front of their offspring, songs composed about them and their condition, you name it, it was poured out as though it was revenge. Yet it was against people who did not even know where the white men came from.

From the time when black men began to understand the European languages, they heard the words loud and clear: ******; barbarian; bastard; you black swine; baboon; lazy thing; houtkop, blikskottel, and many others.

It was the way these and other words were thrown at the victims that traumatised people the more. The words were meant to dehumanise, to put a person off, to crush one right into the soul, to destroy.

Many people in our generation, including this writer, have had their experiences with destructive words in their lives, from white to black, black to white and black to black experiences.

A more lighter side of offensive words
• White visitor to shop-owner in Swakopmund during the early 1980s:
“I want a ******pot.”

Storekeeper: “ What kind of pot is that sir?”
Visitor: “Ag, man, you know. The one with three legs.”
Storekeeper: “Oh. You mean an iron pot?”
“Is that what you call the thing here?”

“Yes, sir, an iron pot.”

The visitor paid for it and asked that one of the black workers carry it for him to his truck.

“Can one of your irons bring the pot to the truck?”
…
• “What are you looking at, hotnot?”
“Sir, I’m not a hotnot.”
“I don’t care. To me you are just a hotnot.”
Black man angry: “I say I’m not hot.”

Sauerkraut
During the two world wars in Europe 1914-1918, and 1939-1945, all armies involved in those wars had motivating words for their armies, all ugly, swearing and humiliating words:

The English called the Germans “sauerkraut”, while the Germans called them “schweine hund”. And so, the French called the Germans “le Boche”, and every nationality in Europe got its “hate name”.

In southern Africa, the Zulus under Shaka referred to anyone who was not of Zulu stock “isilwane” (animal), and it had to be killed on sight.

Africans use parts of the body to swear, to humiliate, to hate, to express racism:

“Your penis”, or “testicles” are words used to swear at each other. An Englishman will probably ask: “What about my penis, eh?” A black man will make a hell of a fight. Ironically, the Afrikaners, being African, also use parts of the body to swear or belittle.

“Jou gat, man” (your anus/arse man) is quite common. An Englishman will want to know: “Sir, what about my anus?”

Racists (black and white) have tried by all means throughout the centuries to show that other people are inferior to themselves:

“You blacks; My Wambos”, etc. meaning that I own them.

‘Don’t marry with Wambos’, ‘Damaras’, etc.

“Ons Damaras; Ons Wambos; Ons Hereros, etc, are words used to denote superiority of one tribe to others, etc.

“You must look at me well, I’m not a Wambo, Tswana, Damara,” etc.

The advent of Black politics and liberation wars
The first black party was called “The African National Congress” back in 1912. The word African had to come in to distinguish it from European, Asian, American, etc. It could have been: The Democratic National Congress, or simply “The National Congress of South Africa”, in order to include all colours. But we know what the situation was like in those hazy days.

The songs we sang:

• Songs of prayer to God to help us: “Morena boloka sechaba sa heso”, (Lord protect our nation);
• Songs of defiance: “Doctor Malan unomthethonzima” … (Doctor Malan does not rule us well);
• Songs of violence: Similar to the Malema song;
• Songs of self-pity: “Ke ne ke re ke a iketla” (I thought I had peace, when in fact I was in trouble).

Words of war, defiance, motivation

Phambili ! (attack); A di ba je! (Eat them up – kill them); Bulalani abathakathi: (Kill the wizards – Dingaan); racist regime; minority regime; apartheid regime; amabunu (Zulu for Boers).

See how innocent words can turn a peaceful situation into a tense, terrific or even violent confrontation.

Where are we now?

We recognize the crucial role that young leaders such as Malema must play in the politics of the day. In South Africa in particular, the young generation of the seventies challenged the system of the time, and faced a mighty police force and army in the streets of the townships. Many died fighting for their freedom.

However, in order to demonstrate our total appreciation of their sacrifices, the freedom we have today must grow stronger by the day. It must benefit the poor masses whose children died in the streets.

Young leaders must learn the art of diplomacy, and refine it so well that they should be able to tell anyone to go to hell in such a way that the person looks forward to the trip.

In Malema’s own language the proverb says: “Tloga-tloga e tloga kgale, modiš’a kgomo o tšwa nayo šakeng”: Young people who want to take the lead must learn the ropes as early as possible.

And so, while we want to be proud of our offspring, we must coach them to do the right thing.

In 2002, in an article about the Father of the Nation, this writer referred to Dr Sam Nujoma as a walking

Andrew Matjila/New Era