Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (S.Afr.) to beat up, to thrash.

1916		S. Black Van Kalabos in Gray Three Plays (1984) 237: Van K: I come from Cape Town I want a commission in the army, man I’m related to a British general I dondered an old coolie op [DSAE].
1959		E. Mphahlele Down Second Avenue 42: Are you going to tell the truth, ‘jou donder’?
1960		J. Taylor ‘Ballad of the Southern Suburbs’ 🎵 Won’t you take us to the wrestling, / We wanna see an ou called Sky-High Lee. / When he fights Willie Liebenberg there’s gonna be a murder, / ’Cause Willie’s gonna donder that blerrie Yankee.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 98: Smash them! Donder them!
1973		P. Driscoll Wilby Conspiracy (1991) 152: You should be locked up for dondering policemen.
1977		C. Hope Ducktails in Gray Theatre Two (1981) 59: Howellsie dondered a cop.
1980		Optima 29:2 112: Before if he (a Black miner) didn’t do what you said, you’d donder (hit) him [DSAE].
2008		IOL News (Western Cape) 16 Oct. 🌐 The solution is to fight fire with water—donder them [...] and let them learn the lessons of life the hard way.
2010		IOL News (Western Cape) 20 July 🌐 They used to donder us if we didn’t do phys-ed.

2. to beat, to overcome, to defeat (someone or something).

1976		S A. Matthews in East Province Herald 26 Oct. 2: Security has come to mean ‘dondering’ of any opposition that offers a serious challenge [DSAE].
1980		M. Mutloatse Forced Landing 5: We will have to donder conventional literature [...] We are going to pee, spit and shit on literary convention.