Definition of "rooinek"

Again and again the surprise was effected, not by the nation of hunters, but by those rooineks whose want of cunning and of veld-craft had for so long been a subject of derision and merriment.

1900, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, published 2011, page 470

“Well,” said she, “if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be ashamed of myself.”

1904, Sabine Baring-Gould, The White Flag

'My father was at Bronkhurst Spruit,' he continued. 'How they shot the rooineks down that day! Our men lay in the long grass, while the redcoats stood in line on the road, and they shot them like rabbits. The fools! Their guns were in the carts.'

1906, William Henry Fitchett, Ithuriel's Spear, published 2008, page 240

That evening […] the other, quite frankly, said that these rooineks got her down, they were all the same, they thought they owned the earth they walked on.

1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 13

I couldn't care that the ous call me rooinek and sometimes whiterat because of my hair and face. At least I am not a hairyback I tell them.

1975, Sheila Roberts, Outside Life's Feast: Short Stories, Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, page 27