A mother's koeksister recipe helped a family of 14 survive for 21 years. Marnette Wiese, from Pretoria North, turned to her mother's recipe all those years ago when she found herself with 14 people in her 2-bedroom railway house. With the help of her widowed sister, Lensie Luiters, and their domestic helper, Sara Mafora, she started baking to make ends meet. The children would go out selling the koeksisters door-to-door. Eventually they were baking 300 dozen koeksisters per day, using 4.5 kg of flour and getting up at 00:30.
Sakkie Luiters, the eldest of Lensie's four children, was in Standard 8 when the family started selling koeksisters. Wilnette Viljoen, one of Marnette's three children, used the money from her sales to study and today she owns a hairdressing salon. Nowadays it is only Marnette's brother, Barnie Nolte, and his youngest son, Barend, that sell koeksisters. Barnie and his two children moved in with his sister nine years ago after his wife and eldest son died. He sells amnogst motorists on the corner of Duncan Road and Charles Street in Brooklyn. Barnie and Barend usually sell 25 to 30 packets of koeksisters per day. Marnette and Sara now bake 80 dozen over two days.
Marnette's husband, Willem, worked on the railways back then and often helped plait the dough after work. It was his idea that they start selling koeksisters. Marnette started using some of the income for an evangilical outreach project amongst the homeless, including a mission trip to Zimbabwe recently.
