BOY, DO I LOVE BARBIES!

Who says dolls are for girls? Justuis is the proud owner of 1500 Barbies and counting...

- PIETER VAN ZYL

IT SOUNDS like every young Barbie lover’s dream: 1 500 of the dolls in one room, lined up on every available surface, perfectly groomed from the tops of their glossy heads to the tips of their tiny toes.

But play with them at your peril. These dolls are not toys – they’re the cherished collection of a grown man with a tattooed chest and hairy arms.

Together they’re worth more than R1,5 million so you can’t really blame him for being a little precious about his plastic poppets.

“Some of them can speak,” Justuis Pieterse Manefeldt says as he shows us around the Barbie room of his flat in Table View, Cape Town.

The 36-year-old, who works in an interior décor shop, has a 10-year-old daughter, Gemma, but she doesn’t share his passion – probably because she isn’t allowed to play with her dad’s dolls.

Some of them are still in their boxes and that’s where they’ll stay. It’s a collector’s thing, he explains – you don’t take them out of their boxes and they have to be dressed in their original outfits.

Gemma isn’t too fussed that the room is pretty much out of bounds, Justuis says. She’s moved on and is making slime she sells to other kids.

The little girl and her mom, Justuis’ ex-fiancée Monique Kennon, live in the flat above the one he shares with his husband, Ewan (36), a graphic designer.

“We all get along really well for Gemma’s sake,” Justuis says.