By Feizal Samath
PUTTALAM, Sri Lanka, Jan 8 1999 (IPS)

Like many of Sri Lanka’s small ethnic groups, the Kaffirs, whose forefathers are said to have been brought from Africa as slaves, are struggling to save their identity and culture.

“These people are becoming extinct. Except for a few words, they don’t even know their language, which is similar to Portuguese but is a kind of Creole,” says anthropologist Karunasena Dias Paranavithana.

The Kaffirs live in coastal Puttalam. Over the years there has been some intermingling through marriage with other communities. Some Kaffirs have traces of their African ancestry in their features, but culturally they are swamped by Sri Lanka’s main community.

“It is only our faces that make us look different from the rest. In many ways we are like the Sinhalese, the majority community,” explains Joseph Elias whose 84-year-old mother is the matriarch of the small community in Puttalam.

Having shrunk to just 75 families, the Kaffirs speak of isolation, being neglected and not looked after like other ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka by the government. The Kaffirs are ignored by local politicians since they are a tiny vote base.

“Even the Veddahs are better looked after by the government,” laments Elias. The Veddahs, the oldest inhabitants of this Indian Ocean island continue to hunt and gather food from the forests, though it has become harder for them to live off the jungles.

The government tried to move the Veddahs into houses built for them in the late 1950s, but they defied the order and remained in the jungles.

They number a few hundred and live in the north and central forests, in protected forest areas where they have let themselves become a tourist attraction – earning some money from curious tourists. The government has provided schools and education facilities, and some Veddahs have gone to university and work as teachers.

The Kaffirs are isolated. Like the island’s Malays and Burgher communities, they arrived in the 17th century when the island of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was known until three decades ago, was colonised by the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and later the British – all of whom wanted to control the spice trade.

Elias says his forefathers were brought to Sri Lanka in chains, and were owned by both Portuguese and British merchants and administrators.

Anthropologist Paranavithana, now head of the Department of Humanities at Sri Lanka’s University of Raja Rata, who first studied the Kaffirs 18 years ago, found that they came from Mozambique which was ruled in the 16th century by Portugal.

“They came as slaves but later worked as loyal servants of British and Sri Lankan administrations,” Paranavithana said in an interview. The Kaffirs are devout Roman Catholics, having been converted by the Portuguese who introduced the religion in Sri Lanka.

The island nation’s small ethnic groups – some just a couple of hundred people – are tiny in number, and do not have a political voice. The Malays, whose ancestors were banished to Sri Lanka during Dutch rule of Malaysia, are the largest ethnic group, numbering some 50,000. Sri Lanka has a population of 18 million, most of them Sinhalese and Buddhists.

The Burghers, who have both Portuguese and Dutch ancestry, are less than 25,000 in number with many of them having migrated to Australia since the 1960s.

Paranavithana, currently studying lost languages and dialects during Dutch rule, spoke of another small Burgher community living in the eastern town of Batticaloa, who are more fluent in Creole than the Kaffirs. It is a struggle, he pointed out, but they are “holding on to their rituals and traditional practices.”

None of the Kaffirs owns land or property. The most successful have made it to minor government jobs. The problem is an absence of opportunities, Elias who retired as a local government official, says. “Most (Kaffirs) are doing minor government jobs. They are not well educated,” he confirms.

Most Kaffirs live in Sirambiddi village where Elias grew up before marrying a girl from his community and moving closer to Puttalam town. According to Elias, his mother is among the last survivors of a generation that has seen Kaffirs who were brought to the island as slaves.

“No one cares about us because we don’t belong to the main communities in Sri Lanka and have no political representation,” he said.

In Sirambiddi, Kaffirs can be seen working on construction sites and as daily wagers. None has risen higher than a petty government job, which may be as cleaners in hospitals and other offices, earning meagre salaries.

There are schools in the village, but Kaffir children dropout due to the inability to keep up at school and the need to work for a living, to supplement family incomes – ensuring they stay trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty and joblessness.

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