by Phil Chard

The way societies view celebrity has always been an enigma to me. An artist will become famous because they are a talented musician; they will be loved and lauded because of those talents. But for some reason, we expect these people to be infallible and all-knowing on the issues that matter to us when, in reality, most celebrities are just humans. Humans with an incredible talent. It's why, as the famous Dave Chappelle joke goes, news outlets ran to interview Ja Rule to get his opinion after the 9/11 attacks.

News outlets rush to call celebrities after a tragedy for the same reasons we follow their every move on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. Iit because an artist's opinion holds more value than anyone else's because of the influence and following they yield. We're more likely to trust their opinion because they are famous. We'll align ourselves to the politics of our favourite singer simply because their music has touched us in some way. Brands seek for endorsement from celebrities off of this principle of blind trust.

When one of our celebrities on the African continent is granted an interview on a non-African platform, they not only represent themselves, they represent their home nation and Africa as whole (because Africa is a country and what not).

I was perturbed when two of South Africa's biggest rappers were granted interviews on Sway in the morning which broadcasts from America to the millions of listeners of Sirius XM's network (not to mention Sway's 1 million YouTube subscribers). On both occasions the rappers went onto the show and declared that nigga isn't considered a racial epithet in South Africa. They did this while also misrepresenting the origins of kaffir.

When asked about the N-word, Cassper said:

"For us it's like guy. It's just means 'man'.It's never had that racial connotation...We don't get offended when white people say 'nigga to us. For us it's kaffir.....that is like our nigga,....that's what would aggravate or agitate us, that's what they use to call black people, kaffir which means monkey."

Cassper was possibly conflating kaffir with Bobbejaan

AKA was on Sway’s show and got asked about the word’s meaning. His response?

"Well, for us basically if you're a person of colour, you see me, I'm a coloured person and in America that means something totally different.....when we say [nigga], that is something we learned from rap music....even on our commercial radio stations they don't edit the word nigga..... It has no legacy it has no offense to it"

Here is the video of Cassper saying he doesn't get offended when white people call him the N word pic.twitter.com/90P91s7eBx

— Phlynt Phlossy™ (@PhilChard) June 24, 2016

When Sway then asked about the K-word, AKA responded: "You see I don't even wanna say it." He went on to attribute the origins of the K-word, saying that it is some substitute for a monkey.

Firstly, the word Kaffir is derived from the Arabic term Kafara or Kãfir which mean "outsider" or "non believer". It is believed that Arab nomads would refer to the black populace of Southern Africa as Kaffir because they were not practising Muslims and were not of their culture. Around the 18th century white settlers pitched up on our shores and since they couldn't think up their own slurs they appropriated the term used by the Muslim Arabs and shifted it from a simple adjective into an incredibly painful slur used to dehumanise and oppress our ancestors.

The storied origins of the K- and N-words follow parallel paths. It is is widely believed that the word nigger was a derived from the negro or niger (Latin word for black); or nigré (a French pejorative term). Once again, the descriptor was twisted into a painfully biased and powerful term that was used to justify the abhorrent treatment of a people for over 400 years. Both words are extremely powerful and elicit strong emotions, especially amongst those who have had those words used against them.

AKA's refusal to even mention the word is a sign of that.

Today, the words carry different meanings in the respective societies in which they are used.

In America a group of black people attempted to reclaim the word and used it as a term of endearment. I discovered Hip Hop as an adolescent. I heard all of my favourite artists use it freely. I, too, rationalised that we had indeed reclaimed the word and it no longer held power. I recoil when I think back to a time when I would allow white friends to use the word around me as well.

As an adult, I know better.

A few years ago Trevor Noah tried to do the same with the K-word in his special That's Racist. He tried to reclaim it in the hopes of removing the word's power. He argued that to remove the word’s power we should start using the K-word positively, in a similar way to how black America reclaimed the N-Word. Thankfully those efforts failed and were frankly painful to watch . The reasons behind why the N-word is such a divisive word in America and why it is still so powerful and loaded in South Africa require more in-depth discussion. I encourage you to read this and this.

The N-word gaining popularity amongst Africans via Hip Hop culture, and it being seen as a term of endearment, does not erase the pain linked to it. That much is clear when observing how black people in America struggle to find the word's place in their society and how offensive it still is when a non-black person uses it.

Cassper said that we don’t get offended when white people use nigga on us. It’s important to separate Cassper's own feelings about the word from the feelings of people at large. If Cassper has absolutely no issue with being called a nigga by a white person, then that is his personal choice. However, I know a number of South Africans and people in Southern Africa (where the K word was widely used by white oppressors) who would be extremely offended if a white person used that word.

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By framing their answers in the way they did, Cassper and AKA have made it seem like we appropriate the parts of American Hip Hop culture that we like while completely ignoring the significance and history of words like nigga and the pain associated with them

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What both artists failed to articulate is that words mean things, and that the context in which words are used is very important. As we've seen, these two words were derived from adjectives and twisted into something more sinister. In isolation, the words have no power. But when they are loaded with the hate and oppression that coupled their use, the words acquire a new meaning, in much the same way that an innocent word, when used in a racist context, takes on a new meaning.

Let's look at the word monkey, for example. When I was a precocious and adventurous child my sister and I would often climb the trees in our yard. It was great fun but it also resulted in a few scrapes, falls and bone breakages. My mother would call me a monkey. I know for a fact now that my mother's use of the word was not rooted in hate. Just the other day, AKA himself referred to his beautiful daughter as a monkey. No logical human would dare assume ill-intent.

It's this monkey's bday tomorrow 💜😂 pic.twitter.com/pcwF67lrnj

— AKA (@akaworldwide) July 7, 2016

SparrowWhen Penny Sparrow, a white woman, used the word monkey to describe black people on the beach front, we automatically knew the context and intent of her usage of that word.

If a friend of mine were to call me a nigga, I would understand the context. Are AKA and Cassper saying that they wouldn’t be offended by a white person referring to them as niggas?

Are they saying that even if they were called a nigga by white person in America they would fail to recognise its significance?

The N-word may not have any real cultural legacy in this part of the world, but the Africans that live here understand fully the context behind the word. By framing their answers in the way they did, Cassper and AKA have made it seem like we appropriate the parts of American Hip Hop culture that we like while completely ignoring the significance and history of words like nigga and the pain associated with them. Those frustrations were evident in some of the calls both rappers took from listeners while on Sway’s show.

In the same token, we as Africans need to interrogate why we even use such a word in the first place. Why do we want to carry the burden of using a word created by oppressors who look a lot like the people that oppress us, and who used a word to hurt people that look alot like us in the first place?