you know you’re South African when

You drive like a taxi. Not a yellow taxi placidly down Park Avenue or one of those black London taxis you see around Cape Town these days but a SOUTH AFRICAN TAXI. Overloaded, driven with a spanner because the entire steering column broke right off around 1998. Like most of Africa it’s drive like a lunatic or die. 

You say ja a lot.

Someone must just DARE to say something bad about South Africa…this includes expats, Americans, Australians, Kiwis, Europeans and mostly the Brits. You will take them DOWN. 

You complain about South Africa constantly. The government, the weather (how DARE it not be sunny and windless every day of the year? This is South Africa!), the roads, the potholes, the taxis (see above), the way FIFA took us for billions in 2010, the crime, car guards, SARS, the uselessness of the government…or did I mention that already?

But someone living outside South Africa must just DARE to say the same thing. You will take them DOWN.

You know the difference between now now, just now and now.

You remember the time that politician broke a chair during an interview on national TV and the news anchor pretended nothing had happened (watch the video here, funniest thing EVER, funnier than that Youtube sensation cat who smashes the printer)

You remember the time Julius told an international news correspondent that he was a “bloody agent”, a “thingie”.

You now use the term “bloody agent” in everyday conversation. For example: “I can’t believe you ate that last piece of lemon meringue pie you bloody agent”.

You laugh more than you cry.

You have debates with your friends regularly about whether Pick n Pay, Spar or Checkers is cheaper. And everyone will debate to the DEATH that their local store is the cheapest.

You have never said the word barbeque unless in a joke about Australians around the braai. Yes that is the proper word for grilling meat over an open fire. BRAAI.

You like nothing better than to pack up the entire contents of your home into a 4x4 bakkie and mission off into the wilderness.

You know what a bakkie is.

You eat roughly 200 cows, 4000 chickens and 95 pigs a year. And maybe a buffalo, a donkey and a few goats.

You are spirited, warm, friendly and feisty as all hell.

No matter how much you complain, you love your country and in the case of some kind of cataclysmic event would have to be physically removed with a winch.

//photo from our honeymoon on the Garden Route using my Nikon D5000