Makwerekwere – derogatory in any language

With the latest attracts on foreigners, particularly traders, and threats or danger of widespread xenophobic violence perpetrated by South Africans against other Africans from various nationalities, a new word - makwerekwere -  is increasingly finding its way into our collective vocabulary across indigenous language barriers. We can, in broad terms, fairly accurately describe the meaning of the word. Its origins, however, are more obscure.

The term makwerekwere is a slang word that means "foreigners" (particularly illegal immigrants) and is mostly used as a derogatory term by black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks. To the black South African, makwerekere refers to black migrants from the rest of Africa.

It is, however, unsure from which language the term originates. Some sources claim it is a piece of interlinguistic slang. A Zulu speaker may say amakwerekwere, a Sotho speaker makerekwere, and an English speaker may drop the prefix altogether and say kerekwere.

While the origin of the word is not fully known, there is a suggestion it was similar to the Greek word varvari, from which the English word barbarian is derived (and the name Barbara).

It has been suggested that varvari represents the strange sounds of foreign languages to the local Greek ear. The Dutch called the people they found in the Western Cape Hottentoten for a similar reason; it is how they described the languages with click consonants, which the local people spoke.

Similarly, some sources claim that kwerekwere represents the sounds of a foreign language.