Liewe Heksie TV Programme – TV Programs
Show me an Afrikaans Saffa between 25 and 50 who has never heard of Liewe Heksie, and I’ll show you a Pommie who has never watched the X-Factor. This rather incompetent and absent minded witch was created by Afrikaans children’s book author Verna Vels all the way back in 1961. It was dramatised on what was then called Radio Suid-Afrika (now Radio Sonder Grense) and made into a popular Afrikaans television programme from 1981. On both radio and TV, Verna Vels herself provided the voice of Liewe Heksie.
8 EPISODES IN THE PLAYERS
Use the top left “PLAYLIST” option to switch between episodes.
I remember being told by a close friend’s mother that I wasn’t supposed to listen (I received the Liewe Heksie record on a long-playing vinyl record as a birthday present and showed it to all and sundry) to the stories because I would be supporting witchcraft, but I instinctively knew this was bullshit – even at the age of 7. The stupid witch called Livinia with her house in Blommeland (Flower Land) had no magical skills, she never turned frogs onto princes or anything else and was mostly funny – not evil. So why would I fear her skills of conjuring up a horse out of thin air every time she said “O Griet!”.
Her best friend, an elf called Blommie, and her cat called Matewis, never feared her, so why would I? Her friend Karel Kat had a motorcar and piloted a helicopter, even more reason to be fascinated by her world. And I knew I should never eat anything I didn’t know from plants in the fields close to our home because the evil Yellow Witch would deploy her minions, called Little Poison Apples, to kill us. What more did we need to understand of the world at that age?
Now, at the age of 49, Liewe Heksie is no more evil than she was back them. So lets be honest, and “Moenie vir my lag nie”, but “Ek wil nou nie snaaks wees nie, maar… O Griet!”, let’s hope Liewe Heksie will still be around another 50 years from now.
