Evil doesn't need a word in local languages

Xenophobia is about hatred and violence, but there is hope. The poor, those who Operation Dudula claims to represent, are opposing it

- Nigel Branken

A friend recently commented on a Facebook post I shared about the counter-protest we held against Operation Dudula on Thursday, 17 July. She referred to something Thabo Mbeki once said to a group of African congregants: "What is xenophobia in our African languages?

Apparently, the room went quiet. She was suggesting that maybe, if we don't have a word for xenophobia in our languages, the concept itself is foreign — or maybe not real in the way it's being described.

She went on to say that people who do have the words — shaped by other histories — sometimes use those words not to understand others, but to control them or to feel morally superior. And that those who are being labelled often have every reason to reject the labels, because they weren't part of shaping the words in the first place.

She said if we really took the time to listen, we might discover that there's no hate at all — just frustration and disillusionment.

I've been thinking about that. And I want to respond not just in my comments but more publicly here.

The fact that a word doesn't exist in a language doesn't mean the thing it describes doesn't exist. Patriarchy, racism, apartheid — all of these systems existed long before we had names for them. Evil doesn't wait for language. It just acts.

And this argument — that something doesn't exist because there's no word for it — has been used before. Hendrik Verwoerd said apartheid wasn't oppression, it was just "separate development". They tried to rename injustice to make it sound benign. But we all know renaming it didn't make it any less violent. If anything, it made it harder to fight.

The same is true of xenophobia.