Old Takkies Indaba

It was not love at first sight. It was hate. The first time I met you was when I was five years old, at a bilingual nursery school. In between belting out the lyrics of Stevie Wonder’s “I just called to say I love you” on the tyre swing, I had a war to fight. There was our jungle gym, and there was yours. Ours was the “rooinekke” one and yours was the “afrikaaners vrot bananas” one. Our weapons were words, and the occasional stick or stone. I cannot remember who won these battles, or what we were fighting for. I don’t even remember speaking to your people because they were in the vis class, and I was in the fish class.

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The neighbourhood that I grew up in was, I suppose you could say, predominantly Afrikaans. There was one local school about three blocks away that had full khaki uniforms (sans shoes) and being a student at a private school ten km’s away, I didn’t exactly have the motivation to go out and be friends with my neighbours.

I know that my mother and her siblings were given a hard time by the local kids when they arrived in South Africa in the early 60’s and I believe that a lot of rooi nekke were in the same boat, especially the ones with fresh English accents.

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