Talk:Lekgoa
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Many whites know that they are called ‘lekgoa/ makgoa’ by the indigenous black inhabitants of the country, and many black people accept that this is a ‘normal’ term for white people. It seems like we are collectively forgetting the roots of the word in our violent and oppressive past as a society?
The root of the word ‘lekgoa’ is the (sesotho, sepedi, setswana) verb ‘(go) kgoa’ which means ‘to lack decorum, to be rude, to be an embarrassment, to be annoying, to be disrespectful, to have no regard for other people, to have no shame’.
The word ‘lekgoa’ (plural ‘makgoa’) denotes a person who is ‘disrespectful’ etc.
If you use the verb ‘go kgoa’ about someone, either black or white, you are saying that they have certain negative attributes.
The term ‘lekgoa’ used to describe someone means that the person is part of a class of persons (white) who ‘lack respect (for other human beings)’.
The term can be used for a black person, but with a negative content – that ‘the person thinks he/she is white (i.e., lacks respect for other human beings, thinks he/s she is better than black people)’.
It is logical, therefore, for someone to say of a white person who does not fit into the stereotype ‘ga se lekgoa, ke motho’, ‘he/she is not a lekgoa, he/she is a human being’. Similarly, the comment could be made in the form of ‘o tseba go hlompa’, that is ‘he/she shows respect (for me as a person)’ i.e., ‘you do not behave like lekgoa’. 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 term ‘sekgoa’ for the English language can be explained that the British imperialists in Southern Africa were English-speaking, and they were the first ‘makgoa’.
In a colonial and apartheid context, the term describes accurately the relationship of domination-subordination between white and black, and has the political meaning that the ‘oppressor is not human’ (even though he/she may think blacks are not human). In other words, it is an affirmation of one’s own humanity in the face of oppression, and a reversal of a negative racial stereotype.
It is not a word of neutral content. It is also not racist or hate speech as the word describes a real, historical power relationship.
The name of Stephen Bantu Biko, the South African political activist, murdered by apartheid agents, was nearly corrupted by politically correct wiki persons, fearing that the name given to Biko out of respect for his ancestors was 'offensive'. The discussion of a term lekgoa used in ordinary language, without intent to defame or abuse fellow citizens, is helpful to a society such as South Africa which is learning to understand its identities better.
Ptpare 13:50, 21 June 2007 (UTC) A suggestion would be to open a Northern Sotho Wiki and also a Northern Sotho dictionary which could fall under the Wiki site. This article is interesting because it explains a relationship between peoples in a multicultural and multilingual environment. The question is just how to arrange it best within the various wikispaces.
[edit] 2007-06-24 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 05:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] What's up with this article?
Where do the claims of this article come from? All this stuff about slurs and the etymologies, would someone like to give us references for it?
Basically, what proof can you give me that this wasn't sucked out of somebody's thumb? Because if I'm not convinced after a few that the author did not invent it all I will remove all dubious sounding claims under WP:NOR and WP:VER.
I am a Sesotho speaker, by the way, and this article simply looks like a big bucket of lies to me.
Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 14:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
