Everton icon Steven Pienaar watched TV on floor and dodged bullets

Everton cult hero Steven Pienaar once revealed he was forced to sit on the floor to dodge bullets during a tough upbringing in South Africa. Pienaar’s formative years coincided with the final years of Apartheid, and the former winger claimed he remained subjected to racist attacks and violence as he grew up. 

A tricky winger who starred in the Premier League for Everton, Tottenham and Sunderland, Pienaar did not have an easy upbringing. He was raised in Westbury, a suburb of Johannesburg which, several decades earlier, became the first area of South Africa’s capital where black people could legally live. 

Pienaar’s upbringing was surrounded by ‘gang violence, drug dealings and shootings’, he once said. The now-Ajax youth coach was not able to watch television normally, instead sitting on the floor so he would not be struck by bullets. 

“What can I say about Westbury? There were some rough areas in and around Johannesburg, but it had to be one of the roughest. It is hard to describe just how bad it was, because gang violence, drug dealing and shootings were everywhere,” Pienaar told the Mirror before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

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“One thing that sticks in my mind is watching television sitting on the floor. We had a couch, but I wasn’t allowed on it, because you never knew when a bullet was going to come flying in through the window.

“If you were on the floor, you were below the level of the glass and safe. If you were on the couch, you were taking your life in your hands, and there were stories of people who had been hit by stray bullets.

“It has calmed down a bit now, but in those days, when I was eight or nine, you witnessed violence and drug dealing at close quarters on a daily basis. You grew up with it. It was part of your life, and no one ever dared try to do anything about it.

“My mum always used to say to me, ‘Stay away from trouble, if you can, son’. It was easier said than done, though. Soon after I joined Ajax, I lost a close friend to the violence back in Westbury. It is too personal and upsetting to talk about, but it just underlined how the threat was always there.”

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Apartheid officially ended with the democratic election of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party in 1994. But Pienaar revealed he still experienced racism, including the firing of small bullets intended to bruise the non-white population. 

He continued: “Apartheid was still around as well. I had some experience of it myself, because I can remember going to some shops with friends and being shot at with daisy guns. 

“They fired small ballbearings, and you knew about it when they hit. It brought you out in a big red bruise, and the people firing knew that. They were trying to do us as much harm as possible, and they were doing it for one reason only. Because we were coloured.”

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