Chapter 26: Hey, Coconut, you Klapperkop!
…continued from 4 June 2026...
FIRST TIME HERE? NO PROBLEM – START AT THE BEGINNING – WARNING YOU WILL BECOME ADDICTED TO THE STORY.
WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF RACIST TROPES – DO NOT READ IF THIS OFFENDS YOU.
Johan’s smile turned serious with a hint of melancholy as his thoughts changed to his daughters. All of them were adults now and none of them lived in Cape Town anymore. He hoped that somehow, through the liberation of the people of Cape Town, his daughters would come home more often, or even relocate back to the Cape.
His eldest, Hope, was based in Johannesburg. After doing two years of a Law degree, she developed an interest in technology after a brief relationship with a guy who had developed electronic business cards.
After the relationship ended, Hope, took the idea one step further, by using the technology to keep track of pets. It was a fight among several companies to get the prototypes approved and roll out the finished product, because several rival companies were working on similar products at the time. But Johan had pulled some strings without her knowledge, which gave her a slight advantage. In truth though, the micro-chip implant she developed was in-fact much better than those developed by her competitors.
His middle daughter, Madeleine was currently somewhere on a dig in South America. Johan wasn’t quite sure where Maad (as he affectionately called her) was from one moment to the next.
She had chosen to study archaeology at the University of the Western Cape where she graduated Summa cum laude. She was always traipsing all over the world, sending him and Lola photos of her covered in dirt, smiling like a hyena from some dig she was working on. Maad did however, make a point of coming home to visit at least once a year.
Summer, his youngest, was blessed with the gift of languages. Having been born in Cape Town where most people spoke at least two languages of the country’s 11 official languages, Johan and Lola were surprised when she picked up isiXhosa very quickly from her babysitter.
Her love for languages and ease at learning it was not a fluke. She went on to learn and master several European languages, including the difficult Czech language, after a lengthy romance with a geeky Czech guy.
Summer was a highly sought-after translator and interpreter and her clientele boasted presidents of countries and captains of industry who preferred live in-person translations instead of AI translations. She too, traveled the globe extensively, but also made a point of coming home at least once a year.
Johan and Lola saw Hope more frequently as they would always find excuses to go and visit with her up in Johannesburg. Johan blamed the country’s apartheid past as the reason his kids decided to find greener pastures. Many well-off non-white South Africans chose to emigrate rather than remain as second-class citizens with no rights in the country of their birth.
Meanwhile, Shawn and his “team” got the second part of their plan rolling, which involved Malik.
“Hey! Coconut!” Rania (Malik’s daughter) heard the derogatory term, but was sure it wasn’t meant for her. Coconut referred to a Coloured person who was thought to be pretending to be white. While Rania’s complexion was distinctly olive, her accent and vibe could arguably be considered posh and more on the vanilla side of things.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, klapperkop“, (the literal translation of this word is coconut head) and it was intended to be even more derogatory than just coconut. This time Rania spun around to confront a taller black girl and her friends who were apparently directing the racial slur at Rania.
“Excuse me?” Rania retorted sarcastically.
“Yes, excuse you,” said the black girl, laying on the sass thickly.
“What do you want?” said Rania.
“You think you white ‘cos you got white friends neh?” (neh is a slang expression meaning hey?).
Continued tomorrow 6 June 2026, before 12pm
Reader Reviews (1)
Marshal B Roaman
25 August 2026In Today’s Author Insights, I ask ARE YOU GHAM, STURVEY, OF ‘n BIETJIE RAH-RAH, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER We have our own version of the “coconut” conversation in the Cape Coloured community. Someone could be called gham if they are perceived to be too common, too ghetto, too rough around the edges. Somebody else could be regarded as sturvey, by trying too hard to be posh. And then there’s the rah-rah brigade, those whose English suddenly sounds like they’ve just stepped off a plane from London. Sometimes it’s harmless teasing. Sometimes, though, there’s a little sting behind the joke. But perhaps we should ask ourselves why we feel the need to choose. Because the truth is, most of us carry a bit of both worlds inside us. We can be proudly Cape Coloured, speak lekker Cape Flats slang one minute and perfectly proper English the next. We can know the gham life and still be sturvey in our own context. Neither makes us less authentic. So, whether your accent is rah-rah, your vocabulary is gham, or your vibe is proudly somewhere in between, own it. There is no single way to be Cape Coloured. Speak your truth. Own your story. And be proud of every part of who you are!