[5] The word is primarily used without racial connotation, although in some contexts it was particularly used for the pagan zanj along the Swahili coast who were an early focus of the Arab slave trade.
[6] Portuguese explorers who arrived on the East African coast in 1498 en route to India found it in common use by coastal Arabs, although the Muslim Swahili locals preferred to use washenzi ("uncivilized") for the pagan people of the interior.
Portuguese use passed the term to several non-Muslim areas including khapri in Sinhalese and kaappiri in Malayalam, which are used without offense in Western India and Sri Lanka to describe black African people.
[8][9] He uses a slight variation in spelling, referring to slaves ("slaues called Cafari") and certain inhabitants of Ethiopia, who, he says, ("vse to goe in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars").
The word was used to describe monotheistic peoples (Nguni ethnic groups in particular) of South Africa, who were not of a Christian or of an Islamic religious background, without derogatory connotations, during the Dutch and British colonial periods until the early twentieth century.
[citation needed] During the South African general election in 1948, those who supported the establishment of an apartheid regime campaigned under the openly racist slogan "Die kaffer op sy plek" ("The kaffir in his place").
[12] During the early 1980s Butana Almond Nofomela, an undercover policeman, stabbed to death a Brits, North West Province, farmer, Lourens.
[22] In July 2014, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a 2012 conviction for offences of crimen injuria and assault relating to an argument about parking in which a man used the word.
Under this interpretation, the plant name shares an origin with the South African term, both ultimately derived from kafir, the Arabic word for "non-believer".