Makwerekwere
A couple of bloggers with an interest in language have asked about the the origin and meaning of the word “makwerekwere”. It is a slang word for foreigners, and especially illegal immigrants, which I used in a post about the anti-immigrant violence that has been taking place over the last couple of months. Both Languagehat and Far Outliers wanted to know which language it comes from, and I was unable to say.
As far as I know it is a piece of interlinguistic slang. It is modified according to the language of the speaker. A Zulu-speaker might say amakwerekwere, a Sotho-speaker might say makwerekwere and an English-speaker might drop the prefix altogether and say kwerekwere.
I haven’t seen a convincing account of its origin. One suggestion was that it was like the Greek varvari, from which the English word “barbarian” comes (and the name Barbara). It has been suggested that varvari represents the strange sounds of foreign languages to Greeks. The Dutch called the people they found in the Western Cape Hottentoten for a similar reason — it was how they described the languages with click consonants that the local people spoke. So, it is said, kwerekwere represents the sounds of a foreign language.
If that is so, it may have originated in Zulu, where the “r” sound is foreign, and “l” is used instead. My own speculation (and it is nothing more that speculation) is that it may be derived from kwelakwela, an old slang word for a Black Maria (which is an even older slang term for a police van that carries arrested persons to the police station or jail). Kwelakwela is derived from the Zulu word khwela, meaning “climb”, and policemen used to say to people they had arrested (usually for infringing the pass laws) “Kwelakwela”, meaning “Get in! Get in!” Bus conductors also used to say it to passengers if the bus was running late, urging people to hurry up and board the bus.
Perhaps kwerekwere has developed from that usage signifying illegal aliens being rounded up and arrested before being deported.
Another possibility (and equally speculative) is that it could come from isikhwele, meaning sexual jealousy, and thus it could be related to the accusation that “foreigners steal our women”.
That, of course, leads to another thought. The xenophobia that we have seen over the last few months seems to be a male thing. Could that be because most foreigners are male?
If we go back a little more than a century, we can find similar distrust of foreigners by the government of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), and President Kruger, especially, seemed to distrust them. Back then they were called Uitlanders (outlanders) with a capital U, and that xenophobia led to the prolonged bout of white-on-white violence that historians now call the Second Anglo-Boer War.
Another theory I read about the origin of kwerekwere (I forget where) is that it is derived from korekore, a cultural and linguistic group in Zimbabwe.
A comment on the Languagehat posting suggeted that kwerekwere is pronounced “queer queer”, which is misleading. It is more like “query query”, but with the y replaced with the “e” sound in “bed”. But that led to an interesting discovery, for me, at any rate. When I tried to say “query query” fast, with the English “r” sound, I got all tongue-tied. If I used the rolled “r” used in African languages (as in the Herero werawera, meaning “shine”) it is possible to say it much more quickly. That suggests a possible Tswana origin. Tswana has lots of “r” sounds, unlike Zulu, where “r” is used mainly to deliberately indicate something as foreign, or Xhosa, where “r” is a voiced guttural, like the German.
Any other theories about the origin of makwerekwere out there?
Steve,
In Sesotho we use Makoerekoere to refer to non-southern African Africans. This is because we have no idea what they’re saying, and it sounds like “koere-koere-koere” to our ears. I left a longer reply at Language Hat’s place.
Best
Rethabile,
That is very interesting. Is it an old-established word? Has it found its way into any dictionaries? Or is it recent slang?
Steve,
It is an old word, and is mainstream Sesotho. Old for us is, of course, 50 years. I haven’t got a Sesotho dictionary but I’m quite it’s in one or a few of them.
Best
Rethabile,
Well, that seems to establish the origin, then.
Rethabile’s explanation for the term originating in a phonetic expression of incomprehensible language(s) (the “koere-koere”) is something I have had seTswana-speakers tell me as well.
Hence the origin of makwerekwere is similar to that of barbarian which stems, supposedly, from the Greek incomprehension of foreign languages (sounding to their ears like “bar-bar”). Hence the barbarian becomes synonymous with the non-Greek and the makwerekwere with the non-South African.
I’ve been told that the word comes from one of the migratory birds that make the sound “Makwere-kwere” And that’s why its used to refer to people of the north.
It has a sense of logic to it, but I don’t know how true it is.
Interestingly, it does not refer to people of Botswana, but does to people of Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
READ MY COMMENT. IT WILL ANSWER YOU. YOU WILL KNOW WHY IT DOESN’T REFER TO PEOPLE FROM BOTSWANA OR LESOTHO.
This is very interesting because my grandmother,who died in 1983 and had never been anywhere else other than a place called Gwanda in Zimbabwe used to refer to Shona speaking people as kwerekweres. This is a term I have known since the 70′s and it only resurfaced again when I was in South Africa in the 90′s. A lot of Ndebele speaking people in Zim used that word until in the late 90′s.
The truth about the origin of the word. {Some years back when your typical sotho/tswana speaking Southern African, was exposed to people from other parts of Africa, they couldn’t understand their language. All they could hear was “kwere-kwere-kwere-kwere”. That’s when they decided to call the language, “sekwerekwere”, then the people who spoke the language were called, “Makwerekwere”.
The word “Makwekwere was never intended to be offencive or derogatory”. That’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!!!!
I rest.
@Sirme, you are absolutely right. We basotho especially from Lesotho have been using that term to describe foreigners from accross the Limpopo because we do not understand their language. It has recently been used derogatively in South Africa, but that was never its original meaning.
The Tswana and Sotho languages have a lot of r’s. One person once said South Africans were the first to be referred to as Makwerekwere when they were in coutries like Zambia and Tanzania.