Different uses of 'kaffir' by white South Africans and Muslims

Back in apartheid-era South Africa and, in camera, probably even today, the word 'kaffir' is used in much the same way 'nigger' is used in the western world, ie. as a racist epithet directed at black people.

Recently I realised that Muslims use the word to indicate non-muslims or non-believers. Is there any connection between these two usages?

It (the pejorative usage from South Africa) comes from the Arabic word, see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=kaffir

In Kipling's story 'A Sahib's War', a Sikh is caught up in the Boer War, and says

Kurban Sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones--Hubshis--whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but they were all Kaffirs --filth unspeakable.

(Elsewhere he says "Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs"; Hubshis are a tribe of Black Indians, presumably used here where a European would say Black.)

So evidently by the turn of the century Kaffir was used in South Africa as a term for non-believers, as a specific term ('Red Kaffirs') for tribes who were non-Muslim among Muslim neighbours (compare Kafiristan, the only Afghan province which was non-Muslim), and as a term of abuse; the descending slope is obvious.

PS Yes, he is fictional, but I have considerably more faith in Kipling's research into Indian use of language than in most historians'.

The Portuguese explorers or slave traders used the term kaffir to refer to African tribes (the term nigger for 'slave' was also of Portuguese origin); the root word comes from the Arabic for 'non-believer'.

In South Africa, it was only really adopted as a derogatory term by soldiers returning from Egypt after the Second World War had ended. The British had introduced a type of caste system, with the British or English being superior, the Boers providing semi-skilled labour, and the kaffirs or blacks being unskilled and landless cheap labourers. South Africa was a British Union until 1961, by which time most of the legislation depriving black people of the right to own land had already been enacted (Land Acts 1910-1913).

The Boers have been unfairly blamed for creating this term; animosity between the races was fueled during the Boer War (a.k.a. the Anglo-Boer War), where the British military armed black groups to attack Boer farms.

So the answer to your question is quite complex: the word has had many derogatory connotations, and has been used in South Africa for many years. The Bantu Wars, a.k.a. the Kaffir Wars, took the form of a long-running skirmish; often, the Boers would side with one group of Xhosas against another Xhosa chief, so it was not strictly a war between Boers and Xhosas. The British again got involved. They drove the Xhosas from their land and taxed the Boer farmers, which spurred the latter to embark on the Great Trek (Groot Trek).

In 1976, the term kaffir was banned as hurtful speech in South Africa.