Ticks or spit? The origins of an insult

John Shaw Diphaha : Professor Nhlanhla Maake is reported as saying that the word "Kgoa" cannot be a noun. This is not true.

The word exists in Setswana and means a "tick". It would seem that Antjie Krog is therefore closer to the truth than the professor, except that she mistakenly refers to them as "lice".

Now, how is "Kgoa" connected to Lekgoa?

Lekgowa or Lekhoa is found in Setswana, Sesotho and Sepedi languages . My comments are restricted to my understanding of the usages in Setswana.

With respect to Kgoa and Lekgoa, in Setswana, all nouns fall into eight to 10 classes. Class 1, with the prefix "Mo", is normally reserved for speakers of the three languages indicated above; the rest fall under class 3, which has the prefix "Le". Thus the noun Kgoa (a tick), with the prefix "Le" would refer to a person who is not a Motswana or Mosotho, in this case, a white person.

But why choose a tick to construct a nomenclature in reference to a white person? The answer is controversial and is most probably influenced by the politics of the time. Tswana-speaking exiles in London explained that the reference is to whites behaving like parasites in their dealings with Africans in the same way that ticks do on "the hindquarters of domestic animals" or any animal.

In Tony Harding's explanation some years back, the word "Lekgoa" was derived from the verb "Go Kgoa", to spit. As a noun, "Go Kgoa" falls under class 5, and when the "Go" is dropped and "Le" is prefixed, a class 3 noun is created. The word Lekgoa then takes the meaning suggested by Krog and Harding.

A further refinement has been suggested, which is less offensive than the other two. The spitting here is said to refer to "those who have been spat out by the sea", a reference to how the whites first arrived on African shores.

But the question is, why the choice of the word "spit" as a root for the word? Why not a descriptive word relating to the sea, "Lewatle", their supposed place of origin, as is common in Setswana when naming anything? My teacher's explanation was that the whites were so acquisitive and inhuman, even the sea could not hold them; it just "threw them up".

Things have changed, with the old concepts and mode of expression having been overtaken by the global village. Lekgoa has metamorphosed; the black middle-class are also referred to as Makgoa (the plural form of Lekgoa). Whatever linguistic twists are adopted, Lekgoa is by no means complimentary to white folks. Should it be "K-worded"?