Corrie Holloway is one of an increasingly maverick pack of women challenging racial and gender stereotypes by being the only white biker in a motorcycle club in Soweto.
With her blond and dyed Afrikaner hair and green eyes and ”biking in the blood”, Holloway embodies the rainbow nation by being a member of The Eagles, a motorcycle club based in South Africa’s most famous black township.
Every day, come rain and wind, she rides her splendid black Yamaha 1 000cc to the salon where she works as a hairdresser in Roodepoort, a white Afrikaner suburb on Johannesburg’s western fringe.
”I am the only woman and the only white in The Eagles,” the 26-year-old says proudly.
”Not everybody likes it, but I don’t care. These guys are my family.”
Holloway says she does not own a car or a licence to drive one.
”I love speed and freedom too much,” she says. ”I don’t want children because I’ll have to make a choice — and that choice would be my bike,” she said.
Her biking has not robbed her of her feminity: she wears discreet make-up and a beautiful African necklace made of black pearls.
She has piercings in her eyebrows, chin and nose.
”When I was a child I always wanted to be a hair stylist. I love my job but biking is my only passion. I started riding when I was very young with my dad teaching me when I was 12,” she remembers, growing up in the small and ”too quiet” seaside port of East London.
When she got to Johannesburg in 1997, she bought the first of her five two-wheeled rockets and naturally joined a biker club for Afrikaners.
”Once they took me to a biker rally and just left me there. The Eagles drove me safely home back to Roodepoort,” she says.
The young woman came back to Soweto to join The Eagles, one of the country’s first black motorcycle clubs which was founded in 1986, and today boasts 25 members.
Once a month, she joins up with the other riders who park their bikes in front of the monolithic Baragwanath Hospital. Often the bikers collect food and clothes for orphans, or hit the road to take part in motorcycle rallies, which can draw up to
20 000 fanatics in this two-wheeler-crazy nation.
”My parents don’t have a problem with that,” says Holloway. ”As long as I am happy.”
But many white bikers are conservative and can at times get nasty, she says.
”’What are you doing with these blacks?” What will people think of you?’, they say to me,” she says.
”I just laugh. They are surprised to see blacks on expensive bikes. They don’t know that some of these guys have very good jobs.”
As for The Eagles, having Holloway around poses no problem.
”We like her a lot. She is a good rider and very comfortable with us,” says Alfred Matamela (43) who works for an investment house.
”It’s a sport traditionally for whites because it is expensive,” he says.
”There are very few black bikers, but a lot of young people are interested and Corrie motivates them,” he says. – Sapa-AFP