School reunions are the crack letting in the light. It used to be the crack of the headmaster’s cane.
I went to my first reunion ever on Friday and came away stunned, enlightened and a little tipsy.
Firstly, my dread. The days of imprisonment at Cambridge High, staring out the windows at the smoke stacks swinging from perfect surf weather wind to onshore slop.
Secondly, dating the headmaster’s daughter as a teen — not the most strategic, when she calls saying if I bunk school tomorrow, I would be lashed.
And, of course, the thought of being caned by your girlfriend’s dad is beyond thinking thereof.
Thirdly, the naughty kid I was, making a catapult in my woodwork vice-grip, and firing a little block of wood at my enemies in the front rows.
It flew well, hit the corner of a bench, lobbed into the sky, and landed on the head of a poor gal who had arrived to give Mr McDonald a message. Well, that 2×4 in the back office sure did hurt.
But there were better memories — playing rugby against George Randell on a Wednesday afternoon, then piling into the English teacher’s kombi and going for a surf at Nahoon Reef! Thanks Phil Schneider!
And then the headmaster’s daughter — she was fantastic, top of the class and a little rebellious.
You ask me, what was high school like? Well, I fell in love. Six stars.
Today, the battle-weary tjom and I discover, I tell him, that being in a wheelchair has weird unintended positives.
There is no way we are getting him down to the field below, so we spend the entire first half of the ceremony sitting high in the shade of the pines while all the others in the Class of ‘76 must sit in the dignitaries’ chairs on the field, in the blinding sun.
I look at Dom and say well, at least you have your own chair, and plonk myself down on the bleachers together with the rows of scholars, all neat as can be in uniform.
At one point, a little puff of mirthful song breaks out in the ranks down on the field, which is set out in the shape of a staple — the long embankment rows with little side stands.
The master patrolling the stand, his academic cape flowing like Batman’s, swings on his heel as he rounds on the miscreants and gets in their grill.
We don’t hear what he says, but next thing he is sitting in a chair, staring not at the action on the podium but at the group. No squeak would emerge from any part of that young body of pranksters. Talk about intimidating. It’s … super funny.
But it does indicate how serious and proud this school is in its 147th year of producing young scholars. That is a gargantuan feat. Worthy of a salute, and we will soon get plenty of that.
For now my curious gaze falls upon the parade of intellectuals who sweep past me — the teachers from both primary and high schools.
Oh my gosh! Now this is change! While all about is a silent, serried, uniformed amphitheatre, the central column of knowledge is a riot of colour, fashion and individuality.
The schoolchildren were showing pride of place, the scholars were showing the incandescence of scholarship.
There was purple hair, a full-sleeve tattoo, some smart weaves and one oke in proper vellies and school tie.
This was magnificent, and then came the main speaker, class of 2002, Unathi Kildase, vice-president of operations for megastore Game.
She was post-Comrades marathon, her first — slim, sleek and full of fun and incredible advice, delivered with such warmth. Her speech was the same — sleek, tight and loaded with easy-to-peel wisdom. More of that later.
First we get to the singing and we start with the littlies doing a popular ama-jive song. Now we move off to the eastern side of this school of 1,053 teens, I think. The spaces are difficult but the design is immaculate.
Round the one parking lot come the cadets in brown, boys and girls, and they line up somewhere near the war memorial monument.
In our semi-courtyard come the Cambridge girls in black jerseys, green skirts, stockings and sensible black shoes, except they are not in a gaggle, they are in squads and they march, left! Right! Squad halt! Stand at ease! — all that stuff I did most reluctantly here 51 years ago.
I snap a pic and send it to my sister, Winks, who is two years ahead of me. “You had it easy!” I tell her.
Dom and I look at each other. This war stuff is difficult for us. I was a conscript in the late ‘70s, and he and I were part of the End Conscription Campaign in the mid-‘80s.
War memorials can feel so stiff and two-dimensional, mourning, rigid with dread, over the multitude who died, possibly not fully aware of why, and a profound sense of the dead soldiers’ honour and courage.
It’s a debate because the war memorial I attended for the city a few years ago saw speeches of devastating insight being delivered about the real impact of war. Something for history teachers to ponder, no doubt.
This thought gets canned at tea time. Here I learn one disturbing truth about the drive to achieve matric passes — the curriculum assessment policy or CAPs leaves no time for a full educational experience.
I am horrified to learn that the way I learnt history here, literally underlining the textbook as the history teacher droned on, has not changed.
Our depleted education system has created children who struggle to read for meaning up to the age of 10, and this carries on into high school.
So sad. But hey, those cane-wielding autocrats in Bhisho are getting their pass rates and crowing about how capable our children are to move on and become successful earners.
Well, if so, it comes from the artful skill of dodging the bureaucracy, I think as I relish the art on display.
Some are typically teen — dark and frightening yet thrilling.
But there’s also light whimsical stuff, space critters and spotty octopuses.
Then I moved on to where the galz of ‘76 were having a hose, posing as Bond girls next to a giant movie-like outline of 007 and friends.
And so it was that I came across Willie H, last seen 51 years ago, after I smacked him near his eye with my squash backhand and he had to have it drained in hospital.
I took a quick walk around the school. Oh my hat, so gloomy and institutional!
When you clean infrastructural neglect, you bring that corruption into focus. The stairs and passageways are spotless, thus revealing the faded-to-grey flooring, the lips of stairs missing or chipped. This is a great school being humiliated by bureaucrats who control our taxes.
I meet two fun teachers, bright and fresh in this dim prison, and they talk about how new flooring is starting to happen from over there somewhere.
It felt joyful to see in the stairwell, a bright Warhol-esque poster of Che Guevara’s images. Turning a revolutionary leader into logo branding does create the next question — what was actually going on in Guevara’s life?
I move back to the light, the hall with tea and zarms, the art and a glass box displaying school treasures and messaging.
And there is a clipping from the Dispatch about Val Viljoen, headmaster Tony’s wife, written by the crazed environmentalist I live with.
Now to that speech of Unathi Kildase — what did I learn?
You are going to change. That is both terrifying and wonderful.
Your personality is not a defect — “I’m an introvert”. It will change. There will be different versions in public of how you “should” be — hold on to you.
Confidence makes you look well put together. Humour helps you keep your head while others lose theirs.
Work means travel and that is always an opportunity to learn something new. Sign up for every single opportunity. If anything came along to learn something, she took it — “every small course, I took it”.
If there were any unpleasant assignments, she took them — even if it meant two all-nighters in a row and Red Bull. Her effort to diversify and build new skills was recognised, and she started to get new offers.
Perfectionism is problematic. People who look and sound perfect only show a snapshot of themselves. Nothing is as it seems. Everyone is often just trying to make it through a day.
Sometimes you will have to let go of people. Choose great mentors and keep them around you, and try and do better every day.
As you go through life and ascend in the economy or socially, kindness is vital. The world will be unkind and extremely difficult, but you do not have to become unkind.
She has tattoos. Someone came and asked her about them. “In 2026 was this was still a real thing?”
You have to earn the right to be exactly who you are — “but please don’t tattoo your face”.
Have fun.
Congratulations to Cambridge schools for a splendid, well-organised and heartfelt day.
Aluta continua in the struggle against tick-box education, and viva to critical thinking!
I wish you all the freedom to grow in thought and expression
All love,
Two Detainees from the Eighties.
Non Vobis! Not for ourselves, but for the greater good! — Daily Dispatch
