bandiet, noun

/banˈdit/
Plurals:
bandiete/banˈditə/, bandiets.
Origin:
Afrikaans, DutchShow more Afrikaans (from Dutch, robber, brigand).
prison slang
bandit. Also attributive.
[1920 S. Black Dorp 162All he knew was that his house had been broken into and rifled by ‘some bandiet’ of a Kafir, that his cook had been felled by a knob-kierie.]
1974 Eng. Usage in Sn Afr. Vol.5 No.1, 9Bandiete..graduate from short sentences 2–4 and 4–8 (years) to the pinnacle of a coat or baadjie.
1974 Eng. Usage in Sn Afr. Vol.5 No.1, 13Katkop,..originates from Central(sc. Prison) where bread is cooked in distinctive small brown loaves looking like a ‘cat’s head’. Itinerant bandiete have universalised the term now.
1981 H. Lewin Bandiet (facing p.11)Bandiet, an Afrikaans word meaning convict. No longer in official use because considered derogatory. Unofficially — i.e. in common use throughout South African jails — a prisoner is called a bandiet. Plural bandiete.
1981 H. Lewin Bandiet 14It was only as a prisoner — as a bandiet in a South African jail — that I could begin to realise what life is like for most South Africans.
1984 D. Pinnock Brotherhoods 70When a boy first enters the reformatory he is placed in the ‘strafkoshuis’ (cells) for about two weeks to ‘cool off’. Then he is sent to work for about three months in the fields, where he becomes part of the bandiet workforce.
1989 Weekly Mail 27 Oct. 2I used to take gangs from the prison there...The Agnes mine also uses bandiets to work on top of the mine. They still do it. In fact everybody here uses bandiets.
bandit. Also attributive.
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