When a menu makes apartheid a joke

On Saturday, 8 August 2026, I took my son and nephews to a restaurant in Gobabis to celebrate one nephew's 17th birthday.

The establishment, Boerderij, has an undeniably warm and inviting farm-style atmosphere. Its decor is carefully curated. Its ambience is pleasant. But the warmth of the setting was quickly overshadowed by what I found on the menu.

Some of the burgers are named Groot Baas, Ou Nooi (albeit Noi), Klein Baas, and Klein Nooi (Noi). At first glance, some may dismiss these names as harmless farm humour, nostalgic Afrikaans expressions, or playful references to rural life. That is precisely the problem! These are not innocent words. In Namibia and South Africa, they are part of a vocabulary of racial domination, forced deference and humiliation.

For background, these terms come from a world in which white authority was normalised and Black subordination was expected. Groot Baas referred to the senior white male authority figure, usually the farm owner or patriarch. Ou Nooi referred to the senior white woman in the household or farm hierarchy. Klein Baas and Klein Nooi referred to the white children or younger members of that household, who were nevertheless to be addressed as “little boss” or “young madam” by Black workers, including elderly men and women who had laboured on the land for decades. This was not merely a matter of language.

These terms were integral to the colonial and apartheid systems that entrenched power imbalances and compelled recognition of racial superiority. Through these terms, Black people were taught to lower themselves, and white people to expect obedience. It taught children born into privilege that authority was theirs by birth. It taught adult Black workers that age, dignity and experience did not matter when race determined status. In that world, the white child was “baas”. The Black adult was “boy” or “girl”.

Such language predates formal apartheid, but apartheid perfected and normalised the racial order it expressed. On farms across Namibia and South Africa, these forms of address helped sustain a paternalistic system in which white landowners controlled land, wages, movement, housing and social standing. The language of baasskap was therefore not simply descriptive. It was disciplinary. It told everyone where they belonged.

That is why, with this context in mind, the placing of these terms on a restaurant menu cannot be treated as a neutral branding choice. Gobabis and the wider Omaheke Region are deeply connected to land, labour, cattle farming and the historical wounds of dispossession. Many families in this region know, directly or through inherited memory, what farm paternalism meant. They know the indignity of being expected to smile through humiliation. They know that racial hierarchy was often enforced not only through law and violence, but also through everyday words.

To print Groot Baas, Ou Nooi, Klein Baas and Klein Nooi on a menu is to turn that history into a commercial joke. It packages a painful racial past as aesthetic nostalgia. It invites customers to consume, laugh at, or casually repeat words that many Black Namibians associate with degradation and servitude. That may not have been the owner’s intention. But impact matters, especially in a society still carrying the unfinished work of repair.

Decisive rejection

There is also a legal and constitutional dimension attached to the use of these terms. Namibia’s constitutional order is founded on human dignity, equality and a decisive rejection of apartheid.

The Racial Discrimination Prohibition Act (No. 26 of 1991) specifically regulates discrimination in public amenities and the provision of goods and services, and it includes public restaurants within the meaning of public amenities.

The Act particularly prohibits the public use of language, written matter or displays made with the intent to threaten or insult persons on racial grounds, cause or encourage racial hatred, or disseminate ideas based on racial superiority.

Whether a particular menu crosses that legal threshold would depend on the facts, including intent and context. But the point is clear: in Namibia, commercial speech that revives racial hierarchy is not a trivial matter.

Even apart from legal exposure, the ethical issue is unavoidable. A restaurant menu is not a private joke among friends. It is a public document. Customers read it. It is explained by staff. It is repeated in orders. If Black waiters and waitresses must say these names over and over while serving customers, the business risks reproducing the very verbal hierarchy from which these terms draw their meaning.

Some will say this is over sensitivity. I disagree. The demand for dignity is not over sensitivity. Refusing to laugh at the language of one’s own historical subordination is not fragility. It is memory. It is conscience. It is the minimum requirement of a society that claims to have broken with apartheid.

Namibia’s project of reconciliation, with all its flaws, was never meant to require Black people to accept the casual recycling of words that once marked them as inferior. Reconciliation without dignity becomes silence. Heritage without honesty becomes nostalgia for oppression. And humour that depends on the humiliation of the historically oppressed is not humour. It is injury dressed up as branding.

To her credit, when I raised my concern with the manager on duty, she listened carefully and appeared to understand why the names were offensive. She undertook to convey the concern to the owner. I hope she did, and I hope the owner receives it in the spirit in which it is offered: not as an attack on a business, but as an invitation to do better.

Boerderij can keep its warm farm atmosphere without romanticising baasskap. It can celebrate rural life without trivialising Black suffering. It can honour the best of Namibian hospitality without reviving the language of racial submission.

If the owners did not know, they do now. The right thing to do is simple: change the names.

John B. Nakuta is a social justice scholar. He is a lifelong activist on justice, human rights, the rule of law, and governance. This article is written in his personal capacity.