Proscribed racial terms

The use of hurtful, offensive or discriminatory language and terminology of any kind is frowned upon in South Africa today, and in some cases even categorically forbidden or proscribed.

For this reason the basic policy of ESAT is that all contributors should shun such usage in their own writing.

However, because ESAT is intended to be a reliable resource for researchers, much of the content is based on historical materials and research in which such terms often occur in the titles and content of works, citations by the writers from such materials are not censored or "cleansed", but retained as originally written.