igxagxa, noun

/iˈɡ͡‖aːɡ͡‖a/
Plurals:
amagxagxa, occasionally gxagxa.
Origin:
IsiXhosaShow more IsiXhosa, one who has become poor, a poor White person, from ukugxagxa to become poor and squalid.
Note:
Usually in plural.
1. A poor White person; a derogatory term for a White person (especially one who shows hostility to Black people). See also poor white.
1956 A. Sampson Drum 158To most Africans, white men are enormously rich. The rudest word for a white man is Igxagxa, ‘poor white man’: an Igxagxa is like a hen which doesn’t lay eggs.
1983 Frontline June 29In Xhosa there is a long-standing distinction between Izingamula, ‘gentlefolk’, and Amagxagxa, poor whites...Amagxagxa has taken on a connotation of hostility towards blacks and has also, say various Xhosa-speakers, come to be generally applied to all whites.
1987 Frontline Aug.–Sept. 36We would have to stop calling poor and sloppy whites ‘amagxagxa’...Now it is only low-class whites who are amagxagxa.
2. One who falls between two cultures.
1980 [see maskanda].
1987 Frontline Aug.–Sept. 36To start with, the ‘amagxagxa’ were the people who came to the towns and began to behave half-way like whites. This was around the early years of the century, when those people would wear a white-type suit, but with Zulu-type sandals.
1988 K. Sole in Bunn & Taylor From S. Afr. 263They (sc. migrant workers) still find their creative identity to some degree in the rural areas.., although many of them spend their lives mainly in the urban centres...Known as ‘the people between’ (amagxagxa), they play a significant role in a number of recent cultural developments..as they assimilate and mould elements of their own Western and urban township life-styles into something which has meaning for them.
A poor White person; a derogatory term for a White person (especially one who shows hostility to Black people).
One who falls between two cultures.
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19561988
igqwira, nounn.ihlambo, nounn.
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