Jo-Anne Reyneke on being targeted for her 'whiteness': They'd ask me to speak English

Jo-Anne Reyneke may have grown up in a black home but that didn't stop the kids in her hood from thinking she was a white girl and taunting her to speak English.

Because of her light skin, people thought she was a coconut and speaking to Trending SA this week, she said she had to learn to shrug off the teasing or it would have broken her.

"Because I grew up in a township there was a whole lot of people calling me white and asking me to speak English, I had to have a good sense of humour about it. You either cry or you laugh."

Of course, Jo-Anne wasn't born a yellow bone. She gets her lighter skin from her daddy.

"I grew up with my mother, so I consider myself black. I met my dad when he passed away but I never got to know anything white about me."

The teasing hasn't really stopped with social media users constantly referring to her as a yellow bone.

While sis survived the teasing, she admitted to Sowetan several years ago that she was envious of classmates who spoke about their dads. She said her mother told her that her father lived far away, that's why they could not see him.

When she was older she even went on to Khumbul'ekhaya to plead for help to find her pops.

"I have done well for myself. I am successful but I feel the need to meet my father for my life to be complete," she said at the time.