An Afrikaans song about dragging black people behind a truck and siccing dogs on them has been making its way through South Africa in the form of a ringtone. It's unclear, at least from the press coverage Gelf has seen, how widespread the use of this ringtone is or who may have had a hand in creating the song. But it's interesting to see the varied ways media outlets have covered the explicit and racist lyrics in the songs, as well as the technology that has allowed them to spread.

The story was first reported when a concerned citizen notified a reporter at the Cape Argus about the ringtone. The resulting article (mirrored at the Independent Online) is fairly specific, though it does asterisk through the words "fucking" and "kaffir."

The chorus has a blatantly racist tone to it, as someone sings "Sleep hom bietjie hier, sleep hom bietjie daar. Sleep daai f***** k***** sommer deurmekaar" (drag him here, drag him there, drag the f****** k***** all over the place) and ends with an instruction to put dogs after the "k*****".

Perhaps the reason that the paper did not use the word is that its use is illegal in the country. The word "kaffir" in South Africa has—simplistically—the same connotations as "nigger" does in the U.S. According to the BBC, using the word has been illegal since 2000; Answers.com states that use of the word has been actionable in court since the late 1970s.

But Reuters, which makes no pretense of doing any additional reporting, doesn't even mention that the k-word is used in the rington. The BBC, which, like Reuters, borrows quotes from the original story and adds little in the way of fresh information, at least gives some specifics: "The lyrics of the song, according to a local newspaper, refer to a black person as a 'kaffir'—an outlawed and derogatory term in South Africa."

While the various press outlets seem to have different standards when it comes to printing the slur, all seemed to agree that one major salient point was that the ringtone is being passed from one person to another via "Bluetooth wireless technology."

The original article goes to great lengths (and flawed logic) to point out why the spread is Bluetooth's fault:

However, [Dr Lionel Louw, chief of staff for the Office of the Premier in the Western Cape and representative of the Moral Regeneration Movement] said, it was in circumstances like these that modern technology counted against investigators, as the Bluetooth application used to pass the ringtone along made it virtually impossible to trace the perpetrators, similar to a chain e-mail.

"And if the file was spread using Bluetooth, it will be impossible to trace unless you can get hold of a phone that received the file," [Yolanda] Meyer [from Designi, which specialises in cellular applications] said. "Usually, some phones do keep a log of incoming and outgoing Bluetooth activity, but these logs can be cleared."

The BBC adds:

But it may be difficult to trace the culprit as the file has been distributed via wireless technology. According to a computer engineer, such technology makes it possible for any computer user to record any type of ringtone. If the file is distributed via Bluetooth it is very hard to trace especially if the user clears the activity logs.

The Daily Dispatch, a South African paper, even titled its version of the story "Racist ringtone spread by hi-tech cellphones." Which I guess sounds better than "racist ringtones spread by racist fuckheads."

Related on the web

Techdirt, commenting on the anti-technology press coverage of a death of an Indian woman struck by a train while talking on her cellphone, writes a post aptly titled, "Stop Blaming Technology For Stupidity."

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