Stanley calls Du Toit and his son, Johan, "lanie", yet this is never explained. When Du Toit asked him what it meant, Stanley said, "you've had enough for one day", meaning to me he would learn later. But when I watched for it the rest of the film, it was never referenced again.
Anyone know what it meant?
Laanie means fancy or posh. I think he was referring to Du Toit's (Sutherland) expensive and priviledged white lifestyle.
shareI watched this many years ago so my memory maybe a little bad, but if I recall Stanley was the gardener.
And yes Laanie or lanie (as the other poster put it) can mean posh, fancy. But used in this context it denotes a boss/employee relationship in a mostly informal setting. A gardener would call his boss "laanie" and the boss more often then not would refer to the gardener as "boy" or something similar. In the same way a gardener would have referred to a female boss as "madam".
Hope this clears it up.
Gordon was the gardener, Stanley was the taxi driver -- or as he referred to himself, "a mean black cat in the night." The use of the word was a (semi-)pejorative, if I recall first used when Benjamin was reminiscing about his childhood, how he grew up just like any other South African boy. Stanley replies (paraphrased): "Yeah right, pass laws, Robben Island jail... careful, lanie."
Then later he calls Johan "little lanie," although by this point he's warmed up to the du Toits enough to realize that their hearts are in the right places.