Kenyans not ready to be compared to dogs; forget idioms, it’s still an insult!
What you need to know:
- The object lesson in these episodes is that editors must be alive to African sensibilities and sensitivities to dog comparisons.
- For example calling someone “a bitch” — literally a female dog — is probably the most offensive appellation that you can give to a woman.
- In Kenya we come to blows, even kill, because we’ve been likened to a dog. In May 2010, a 15-year-old boy from Kojonga village, Narok, confessed he had killed his seven-year-old cousin for calling him a dog.
On Monday last week Business Daily carried a front-page story about Kenya’s high-flying businessman, with a deck headline: “Benson Ndeta emerges as one of the top dogs in the fight for multi-billion contracts.” In this context, a “top dog” is a person who is successful or dominant in their field.
Africans in general, however, don’t like being compared to dogs, even metaphorically. Today, I am taking up a “dog” complaint, not by Benson Ndeta but by Law Ongoma who complains that the Daily Nation of January 15 refers on its front page to Ivorian footballers Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto’o as “old dogs”.
He says that is demeaning, inhuman, and shameful language to use in a family newspaper. The complaint, I must confess, is not earthshaking. But all complaints deserve a response. So here goes.
The English use many dog idioms and expressions. Some are seemingly harmless, such as “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks”.
Most, however, are insults.
BITCH
For example calling someone “a bitch” — literally a female dog — is probably the most offensive appellation that you can give to a woman. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a bitch as a lewd or immoral woman or a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman.
And, according to English language historian Geoffrey Hughes, the expression is “a metaphorical extension of the behaviour of a bitch in heat”.
Most Africans — and many others — view comparisons to dogs as severe insults.
When in 1986, US President Ronald Reagan called Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi “the mad dog of the Middle East”, Arabs were furious. Comparing a person to a dog, leave alone a mad one, is the most offensive name you can give to an Arab.
In Kenya we come to blows, even kill, because we’ve been likened to a dog. In May 2010, a 15-year-old boy from Kojonga village, Narok, confessed he had killed his seven-year-old cousin for calling him a dog. The boy told Nakuru High Court Judge Anyala Emukule that he hit him on the head with a hammer.
Most of the insults taken to courts across the country are about dog insults, even when other words such as prostitute, witch, or devil, are thrown in for good measure. And one of the common charges is creating a disturbance likely to cause a breach of the peace by calling someone a dog.
In divorce cases, dog insults are often seen as constituting cruelty — one of the grounds for granting a divorce. In the case of M.N vs R.M.O, the wife told the court that on several occasions the husband insulted her by calling her a dog, a prostitute, a moving toilet, among other things, in the presence of their children and neighbours. Justice Leonard Njagi accepted that as cruelty.
AFRICAN SENSIBILITIES
In politics, calling a rival a barking dog is a big insult. That was the case when on October 1, 2014, Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale called National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale “a dog barking” seeking to please President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, Mr William Ruto.
And who can forget the February 2006 “dog insult” to all Kenyans? The country was facing the possibility of a famine. Christine Drummond, a New Zealand dog-food company owner, offered to help by shipping an energy-boosting formula. Kenyans criticised the offer as insulting, even though Drummond said the product was not dog food.
Furious readers sent letters to the Nation. “Our children aren’t puppies, madam,” screamed one headline. Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua said Drummond was trying to help without understanding the culture of the people.
The object lesson in these episodes is that editors must be alive to African sensibilities and sensitivities to dog comparisons.
I’m sure the Nation sports editors used the “old dogs” expression as an English figure of speech to mean veterans, old hands, old timers. But who cares? To a typical African, that is an insult.
Let me also say the apparent penchant for some Nation sub-editors to use dog expressions is surprising. Most of the dog expressions are colloquialisms — best used in street talk, not formal writing.
Email your comments to [email protected] or send text messages to 072198926, or visit the Public Editor at Nation Centre in Nairobi.
