The Bakkie

“The vehicle was a bakkie, a small truck with a three-litre engine, fourteen-inch wheels with heavy-duty ten-ply tyres, and a sturdy standard chassis on which the buyer fits a fibreglass canopy with windows, air-vents and foam-padded benches running along either side, behind the cab. It makes a cheap car-cum-caravan for white families, generally Afrikaners, and their half-brother coloureds who can't afford both. For more affluent white South Africans, it is a second, sporting vehicle for purposes to which a town car is not suited."  – Nadine Gordimer, July’s People

Most mornings I count about a half-dozen bakkies on my walk into work. Usually the cargo beds of these pickup trucks, 4 feet long at best, are filled with 6-8 day laborers (or is it labourers?), most likely migrants from the surrounding provinces and countries. The workers, dressed in snappy blue domestic uniforms – the instant identification of class in South Africa – sit 3-4 across on the side panels, taking in those needed minutes before the start of the work day.

There is something deeply liberating about the bakkie (pronounced bah-key). I think the fact that there are no laws in SA against sitting in the back of a bakkie plays into that sense of liberation. Maybe it returns me to the myths of the America West, with all that road going, and the frontier adventures so closely associated with those myths. By no means am I a “truck guy,” but perhaps the truck speaks to the essential need of Man to haul things. Maybe it is just another point of contact with South Africans that makes me take note of them. Or maybe after a month in SA it’s time to kick up some dust and hit the open road – in a bakkie.