Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(S.Afr.) a homeless child beggar.

1962		Casey ‘Kid’ Motsisi ‘Kid Malalapipe’ Casey and Co. (1978) 44: This pal of mine Kid Malalapipe – which means a guy of no fixed abode.
1973		M. Dikobe Marabi Dance 2: They knew Marabi as a dance party for persons of a ‘low type’ and for ‘malalapipe’, pipe-sleepers, homeless ruffian children.
1990		J.M. Swart Malunde 42: Malalapipe (those who sleep in the pipes).
2000		C. Glaser Bo-Tsotsi 49: By the early 1940s the Blue Nines and malalapipes had become a common feature of township life.
2004		Social Services in a Changing S. Afr. 166: Sometimes we say we are the ‘Malalapipe’ because we sleep in the big pipes there where they are making the buildings. In Afrikaans the name for these children is ‘skadukinders’, in the Cape they call themselves ‘strollers’.