MOTHO KE MOTHO KA BATHO

I'm going to quote a very interesting editorial I found from this week's Sunday Times here in South Africa. As a "white" man living in a rural South African village, I feel that this article has a lot of relevance. (ps: "lekgoa" in Sotho is "mulungu" in Shangaan, "makua" in Venda, etc...)

enjoy. The article is linked at : http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/article.aspx?ID=505687

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"As divisions blur, we will find new meanings for old words

Tony Harding unpacks the word ‘lekgoa’, used to refer to white people, and demonstrates how its interpretation is changing to deal with new social realities in South African society.

A friend was telling me how a group of pre-school neighbourhood children were engaged in an animated conversation. The topic was identity — well, at least it was to parental ears.

The topic arose out of the incongruous fact that a child in the group had a white father, but the child was black, just like his friends. The children, in all innocence, pressed the child: “Your father is lekgoa.”

The child responded: “Ga se lekgoa. Makgoa a tshosha (He is not a white man. Whites make you scared).”

In South Africa many whites know that they are called “lekgoa” (plural ‘makgoa’) by a section of the black population of the country.

Similarly, expatriates in Botswana and Lesotho learn very quickly that children shout out spontaneously “lekgoa” (more accurately ‘lekgooooa!’) when any white person arrives in a township or village.

Many black people have accepted that lekgoa is a normal term for white people. Why has the word lekgoa established itself in popular language? I started trying to understand the deeper meaning of the word while working as a rural development activist during the ’80s and it has fascinated me ever since. Of course, in those times it was quite tough to be white in the villages of the then northern Transvaal. Most of the whites in the area were policemen, soldiers or farmers, and tensions were high between blacks and whites.

I have listened to the word used in countless exchanges with people and this has given me some sense of how the meaning of the word is changing to deal with new social realities.

Although the word is now used by the black youth without any real sense of its deeper origins, it is very clear to me that the older generation continues to have a clear sense of its meaning.

Let’s be a bit technical and look at what language specialists call the root of the word. Lekgoa derives from the (Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana) root verb “(go) kgoa”. The dictionary meaning of the verb is given as “to tease, provoke, challenge”.

However, in popular usage, the verb “(go) kgoa” is used in the sense of “to lack decorum, to be rude, to be an embarrassment (or a person who embarrasses you), to be annoying, to be disrespectful, to have no regard for other people, to have no shame”. The word lekgoa denotes a person who is “disrespectful” by denigrating the integrity of another person. The English language talks of “defamation of character”, and this is sometimes given as a further meaning of the word.

If you use the verb “(go) kgoa” about someone, either black or white, you are saying that they have certain negative behavioural attributes. There is no way of avoiding the conclusion that the term lekgoa describes someone who is part of a class of persons (white) who “lack respect for other human beings”.

Of course, it is not quite as simple as that. In introducing a white colleague, it is possible to say “ga se lekgoa, ke motho (he/she is not a lekgoa, he/she is a human being)”. Likewise, once a relationship has been formed between strangers, the comment could be made in the form of “o tseba go hlompa (he/she shows respect for me as a person)”.

Also, it is common in conversation to say “ga se lekgoa, ke motho” to indicate that someone else under discussion is not a white person, but a black person (a human being). The word “motho” (plural “batho”) is used generally to describe blacks. In real terms, it means “human beings”.

In a reversal of the dehumanising media stereotype of blacks in apartheid years, the discussion of a fatal accident will attract comments such as “one motho and five makgoa were killed”.
What does this all mean — and can the term lekgoa be defined as a contemporary racial slur? The answer, I think, is no.

Lekgoa is not racist or hate speech as the word describes real historical power relations in society, with the intent of restoring lost dignity as a result of dispossession of property, labour and identity.

In a colonial and apartheid context, the term describes accurately the domination-subordination relationship between whites and blacks — and has the political meaning that the “oppressor is not human”. In other words, it is an affirmation of black humanity in the face of oppression.
The term lekgoa is also revealing of the negative impact of colonialism and apartheid on social identity.

The sense of the statement “setlhare sa mosotho ke lekgoa”(the medicine of a [black] is a white) — which is expressed by the elder generation when they get upset with internal squabbling among black leaders — is of a complete loss of power to influence the course of history. That was the reality in many black communities that led to the resistance politics of the ’70s Black Consciousness movement.

Let me deal briefly with another question. Why is the term “sekgoa” used for the English language when “seburu” is used for Afrikaans? This can be explained by the fact that the British imperialists in Southern Africa were English-speaking, and they were the first makgoa.
Language in popular use is very dynamic, like society, and the boundaries of the use of the word lekgoa are always changing. For example, the use of lekgoa for a black supervisor — that is “the person thinks he/she is white” — is common in the days of “coconuts” educated at private schools in the suburbs.

The question is: will our popular language and discourse change to include more blacks under the meaning of the word lekgoa, as differences in economic class or social status influence relationships in our society?

The idioms “good fences make good neighbours” and “motho ke motho ka batho (we are people because of our relationship with each other)” illustrate the defining values of two societies — one white, the other black.

It is possible that the word lekgoa will continue to evolve in popular discourse to reflect the effects of class and social status on both white and black value systems — particularly as the privileged of all races adopt lifestyles that conflict with the values of “ubuntu/botho (being human)”.

It is increasingly common to hear the popular expression “lekgoa la ka (my boss)” being widely applied to both black and white.

In recent years, a new kwaito sensation hit the music scene in the form of young Afrikaner Francois Henning, who adopted the fast-paced style of music and created his own variant of tsotsitaal, a township lingua franca combining elements of many South African languages, including Afrikaans. He called himself “Lekgoa” and his public relations experts say that this means “white boy”.

Of course, it was a clever marketing ploy to take on a name used so frequently in everyday township talk. He has become popular among audiences across language groups and even received a nomination for a Kora All Africa Music Award for Most Promising Artist before taking his multilingual career into the local television soapies.

There are also moments in our society when our ability to keep the boundaries between the stereotypes of ourselves “fall apart” such as in a recent episode of Strictly Come Dancing, the popular evening entertainment programme on SABC2.

Sandy Ngema, host of the show, asked popular music star Hip-Hop Pantsula’s blonde partner how it was dancing with Hezekiel Sepeng (whose partner is also a blonde). She responded: “I don’t know, but HHP is fantastic” (or words to that effect). Referring to his colleague, co-host Ian von Memerty quipped: “That was a blonde moment.”

Talk about blurring the boundaries. Yet as we embark on a process of collective forgetting, as a society, about this country’s divided past, it is likely we will find new meanings for old words — and will forget about the deeper meanings of words and about relationships that bind people to fear. Steve Bantu Biko wrote in the ’70s that fear is the root of oppression, and we all need to be liberated from it. "