CHAPTER 7

Transformation and beyond

As we moved towards the change of education departments, as a school we wanted to be a sincere and significant agent for change. To achieve this, we would need to strategise on a number of issues that would enable us to assist the new department but at the same time not compromise our high standards. As mentioned in the previous chapter, a major priority was to increase the number of boarders. With a campus as large as ours – Boys High covers an area of 40 hectares– it seemed obvious to me that the school would be required to take more boys in the future.

We had a further injection in size by having the buildings that housed the Pro Arte art and ballet school, on our northwestern boundary, returned to us. This area had been expropriated some years before and a totally prefabricated collection of buildings had been erected, including a ballet hall and an organ room with a pipe organ. Our boys rather enjoyed having Pro Arte on our boundary, as they were able to watch the girls doing their physical education classes, which did not impress the staff of Pro Arte.

We heard through the grapevine that the department was considering amalgamating Pro Arte with another school that was also not full, and made representations to have the area handed back to us. Strangely, no documentation could be found with regard to the expropriation, but fortunately the Transvaal head of education was sympathetic to our cause and ensured that the property was returned to us.

Aerial view of Pretoria Boys High School.

Bigger is certainly not necessarily better, so taking the decision to grow the school required us to make some important, far-reaching decisions. We decided that we would grow the school by 100 boys per year at the Form I (Grade 8) level, which would mean that after five years the school would have grown from 1 000 to 1 500. We undoubtedly had the infrastructure to accommodate more boys, and we would over the five-year period increase the number of teachers so as to maintain our internal policy of having no class bigger than 30 (and preferably smaller).

And so the governing body started appointing new teachers, with the total number standing at more than 50 by the time I retired in 2009. It was my firm belief that increasing the size of the school before being made to enabled me to be in control of the intake, and thus in control of the standards we wished to maintain. My biggest concern was to ensure that we did not compromise on pastoral care and that all boys had a place in the sun, despite the increased numbers.

We restructured the school on house lines, which made sense as we already had three boarding houses and three day houses, although at this stage the day houses did not really operate in a pastoral sense as they were too big. We added a further four day houses over a two-year period, naming them Hofmeyr, Matheson, Abernethy and Armstrong after four of my predecessors. Each house had a housemaster, a position that was treated as a promotion post within the school, and a tutor for each form.

Once the school reached 1 500 students, the size of each house was just under 200, making each tutor group about 32. We created venues for a weekly house assembly, house flags with relevant heraldry were made, all academic reporting was done through the house system by tutors and the housemasters, and a weekly meeting with the headmaster was added to the timetable. The prefect system was enlarged through the appointment of house prefects, each of whom would work with a tutor in the various form groups.

The leadership opportunities here were an important by-product of the house system. I firmly believed that a housemaster was a headmaster in microcosm, and a four-year housemastership would equip him or her for a principalship in another school. A further innovation was the introduction of Form IV (Grade 11) trainee prefects, known as duty panellists. Selected by their peer group on a quarterly basis, the trainee prefects were mentored by the senior prefects through a shadowing process with individual prefects. While this rather large leadership and pastoral team never quite reached the level of perfection I envisaged, it nevertheless enabled the school to function efficiently in spite of the 50 per cent growth.

Our next challenge was to put structures in place to assist boys of different races to cope with an educational standard and ethos that they were unfamiliar with. Planning began during 1993 in order to have various academic-support models operative for implementation at the start of 1994. Staff had to be appointed, as we soon realised that to achieve what we needed would be a full-time job. All policy and planning documents had to be developed according to the emerging educational needs of a changing South Africa and the specific needs of Pretoria Boys High.

We appointed Des Sinovich, a South African who had been living in Australia, to head the planning process. Des had trained in education in Melbourne and Sydney, and he had a particular interest in academic-support programmes. To assist him, we appointed two well-qualified and experienced teachers, Cynthia MacPherson and Julie Shand. Together they developed specific syllabi for the various components that were to be introduced and created great excitement in the staff common room among their colleagues, some of whom were going to be needed to assist as well.

A number of different programmes were introduced, the most impor­tant of which was the pre-Form I programme. Here, boys from disad­vantaged primary education systems, who through no fault of their own were not going to cope in a former white secondary school, were able to apply to Boys High, provided they were young enough – a year younger than the average age of entry – and had shown a degree of academic ability in their primary schools. Pre-Form I was a one-year course in which they were fully integrated in the school, participating in all sporting, cultural and other school activities, but academically they followed a specially designed syllabus across the curriculum.

There was also a need for social exposure. With the help of parents and other volunteers, the boys were taken on various excursions around the city and were given a choice of different non-academic skills to master. There was also a volunteer group of adults who read with the boys on an individual basis. This programme developed beyond the pre-Form I group as more volunteers from the local community were prepared to give of their time and talents to assist individual boys.

The pre-Form I programme was one year in duration, after which the boys would move into the mainstream Form I (Grade 8) classes. As one of the criteria for admission was that they had to be a year younger than the average Form I, age was not a factor. The demand was such that in 1995 we ran two pre-Form I classes, but this was not continued as it put too much strain on the staff. The programme ran for four years, and of the five groups – amounting to roughly 100 boys – only two did not succeed in secondary education. With the first group matriculating in 1999, we were delighted at how many of the boys in this programme had become top sportsmen, musicians and prefects.

Further programmes were developed during this period to facilitate a growing school and a more diverse intake. Apart from the adult-assisted reading programme for boys who were struggling with communication skills, an integrated English programme was developed for boys with limited language proficiency. As it grew, it became an across-the-curriculum programme, and boys from all subject areas were required to attend additional classes after school.

The cross-age tutoring programme was another innovation, in which high achievers among the seniors could become tutors to junior boys in various subjects. This programme proliferated over the ensuing years, with benefit to both the junior and his academic mentor. Two further programmes were a structured after-school study programme, supervised by staff who were not involved in the extramural programme and who volunteered their time and skills, as well as time-management and study seminars.

All these initiatives, and particularly the pre-Form I class, were works in progress and developed significantly over the following three years. So successful were they, though, that the academic-support department received visitors from far and wide, including departmental officials, politicians, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), diplomats, and staff and principals from schools across the educational spectrum. Our planning trio also started visiting other schools to assist in setting up their own programmes. This was the beginning of Boys High’s extensive outreach programmes, which started as academic assistance but moved in many different directions, including visits to orphanages and old-age homes and social interaction with a variety of township schools.

While the Gauteng Department of Education was fulsome in its praise for these initiatives, especially the academic-support programmes, they made no contribution in any way. It was left to us to find donations and sponsorship, as we had not only to find money to assist in paying our three staff members but also to fund the programmes and improve the facilities of the former Pro Arte campus, where most of these programmes took place. We were fortunate in that a number of high commissions and embassies, as well as local banks and corporates in which parents and Old Boys were involved in senior positions, came to our aid splendidly. These actions were undoubtedly the forerunners of the corporate social investment and black economic empowerment scorecard programmes that developed later.

Our efforts at handling the transformation in education post-1994 was certainly challenging but very exciting and required a great amount of collective ‘thinking outside the box’. I was blessed to have a staff who embraced what we were trying to do and were passionate about wanting Boys High to take a leading role in righting the wrongs of the past and transforming our school into a significant part of the rainbow nation.

Of course we made mistakes, and some of our initiatives were rather naive. A good example of this was when we adopted a wonderfully well-run primary school in Atteridgeville called Banareng. It had a brilliant principal, Paulina Sithole, who had invited me to visit her school. I was blown away by what I saw at Banareng. It was spotlessly clean, in spite of being surrounded by poverty, and part of the community it served was an informal settlement on the hill behind the school. They had a vegetable garden laid out in various geometric patterns, parts of which were named after famous struggle icons, and the children learned arithmetic, history and other subjects through the layout of the garden. There was no watering system, so the children brought grey water in bottles to school to water the gardens. From the vegetables that were grown, a team of mothers provided a cooked lunch for the whole school and all the vegetable peelings were recycled for compost.

I think Paulina was the original recycler, as the children were required to bring recyclable materials to school on a daily basis, and nothing was thrown away. If she could not use the items at the school, she sold them. I was so moved by my experiences at Banareng that I offered a full five-year bursary to the top academic boy, and that if an appropriate boy could be found annually, this programme would continue in perpetuity.

Towards the end of the academic year, Paulina phoned to tell me that they had identified a candidate who she guaranteed would be successful and a credit to both Banareng and Boys High. I certainly trusted her ability to choose the right person, and so one morning Cherry and I drove out to Atteridgeville to meet Lucky (whose surname I sadly can’t remember) and to give him his blazer and tie and a case full of other items of uniform.

There was no school hall, so all the boys and girls were assembled on a dusty field in the boiling sun to witness Lucky’s induction as a Boy High pupil. He shyly put on the blazer, and as the ceremony ended, a large group of his classmates hoisted him onto their shoulders and marched around, chanting, ‘Good luck, Lucky!’ Lucky’s mother ended up in Cherry’s arms and we all shed a few tears.

In our naivety, we did not realise that Lucky lived in the informal settlement, where there was no electricity and not much water and sanitation. He refused to have his uniform in his family’s shack because it would smell of smoke. Hastily, one of his teachers agreed to have him stay with her in Atteridgeville during the school week, as she had electricity. We realised that we would have to pay rent for him, as well as taxi fares, as his mother did not work. We had simply not thought about how he would get to school.

As might be imagined, there were other issues we had not thought through, given our lack of any real knowledge of life in the townships and the unique challenges faced by disadvantaged students. One of the really difficult issues that cropped up halfway through Lucky’s first year was when one of his older brothers stopped him from staying with the teacher. The brother claimed that their mother was giving Lucky away and abrogating her responsibility as a parent. He was forced to return to the shack, and his daily journey to school then involved a stop at the teacher’s house, where he put on his school uniform. We arranged for him to eat with the boarders, and our caterer, who virtually adopted him, gave him food to take home as well.

These problems made it difficult for Lucky to realise his academic potential and to get involved in the full educational programme at the school. We had a gap in one of our boarding houses at the start of Form II (Grade 9), and we decided to offer it to him, obviously at no cost. Again, big brother was not happy, nor was his mother, but ultimately sense prevailed. The first term or two were extremely difficult for Lucky, but with the help of his dorm mates he eventually settled and never looked back. The last I heard, Lucky was at the University of Pretoria doing a BSc in chemistry, having been awarded financial assistance. We learned a great deal from the Lucky experience, and in future we made sure that we had a better idea of such a student’s personal background and true financial position so as to assist him better.

The successful relationship with Banareng Primary led to our involvement with another Atteridgeville school, Masizani Primary School, whose outstanding principal, Brian Marivate, became a great personal friend. During a ten-year association with this amazing school, our art department did some wonderful murals, including painting the new national anthem on their walls, and we assisted in the establishment of a library, the refurbishment of an existing water system that had not functioned for decades, various outreach initiatives from a burgeoning Outreach Society, the establishment of a bursary for Boys High, and a trophy with a suitable prize for the teacher of the year (elected by the school staff).

These two primary-school initiatives were extremely rewarding for all of us – headmaster, staff and boys who were involved – and we were certainly richer for the experience. I will never forget the farewell function Masizani organised in my honour on my retirement. There was dancing, poetry written and recited by the pupils, and a handing over of gifts, all with symbolic significance. The Outreach Society, together with an extensive academic outreach programme to secondary schools in the townships – particularly in mathematics, science and accounting – became a significant aspect of life at Boys High and our contribution, small in the greater scheme of things, towards a new South Africa.

While on the subject of transformation and the fairly rapid increase in the number of coloured, black and Indian boys entering Boys High, I have tried to reflect on whether we had any significant problems in integrating these boys into the school. As I write this, more than 20 years later, at a time when our society seems to be more racialised than it was at the advent of democracy, I can honestly say that I struggle to recall any incidents that were particularly worrying. In talking to the many black Old Boys who return for 10- and 20-year-on reunions, their memories of their time at school (some of whom were in the pre-Form I classes) seem to be largely positive and fun-filled. They seem proud of having attended the school and grateful for the post-school opportunities that Boys High created.

One of the Old Boys reminded me of how we had to adapt our hair rules after 1994. It was something that hadn’t occurred to me, but we soon realised that we could not have the same rules for boys from different race groups. I had no idea what would be viewed as acceptable, so I established a ‘hair committee’ from among the senior black boys and required them to set the standards for the hairstyles of the black boys. We also asked them to assist us in implementing the standards. They were extremely conservative (no dreadlocks and no shaved heads, for example) and were very tough in ensuring that all boys conformed. I do not believe there was a hair issue from then on.

I do recall a racial incident in 1997, but I have forgotten the exact details. When I discussed how we should respond to it with the head prefect, Nick Ferreira, he suggested that I leave it to a panel of senior boys to resolve. He would chair the panel. I was invited to sit in but was politely requested not to participate. I swallowed my pride, and also my habit of wanting to be in control, and played the part of an observer. The boys from both sides talked as though I was not there, and under Nick’s skilful chairmanship the problem was amicably resolved. This group met a couple of times about other issues and remained constituted under the chairmanship of the head prefect for a good few years.

The Greek boys were a special component of Boys High, and one of the highlights of our year was the Greek dance they performed at the matric dance. For many years, there had been a Greek table outside the tuckshop. Only Greek boys were allowed to sit at this table, and it was a rare privilege for a non-Greek to be invited. I cracked the nod once, but there was an ulterior motive. After being given a gorgeous piece of baklava, I was told that the boys from Solomon House had been using the Greek table as a toilet and they needed me to do something about it. After a second piece of baklava, I promised I would, and I duly addressed Solomon House. The accusation was hotly denied, but I believed the Greeks and not the Solomonites. When I walked to school from my house, I would groan inwardly when I saw a posse of Greek boys waiting for me, ready to show me the evidence of yet another attack on their beloved table. I managed to broker an uneasy peace for a while, but almost inevitably further incidents took place.

I mention the Greek table only in the context of other group identities that developed over the years as the school population became more diverse. During breaks, the Afrikaans-speaking boys would gather under one of the Norfolk pines on the front lawn, and the tree became known as the Boereboom. Not to be outdone, the boys of Indian origin annexed the other Norfolk pine, which was named the Taj Mahal. Just below the tuckshop, close to the Greek table, many of the black boys gathered for breaks, and the area was christened the Black Wall, while the Portuguese boys gathered at the Porra tree.

There were staff members who lamented the fact that the boys chose to identify with their racial or language groups instead of mixing with boys from other cultures, and thought that we should try somehow to put an end to this practice. I disagreed strongly, as we had had enough social engineering in our country in the past, and the boys were totally comfortable with each other in the classroom, on the sports fields, in their various cultural activities and in their houses. I felt that these groupings, and the pride with which the boys acknowledged their identities, did a great deal for the character of the school.

What was interesting as these groups grew was that there was an unintended cross-pollination as senior boys allowed their juniors (skivs) to join them at break. The juniors were not necessarily of the same cultural, racial or language group. The skiv was usually there to get food from the tuckshop or pack his boss’s case for the next number of periods. The beauty of all this was its naturalness, which I think had a great deal to do with our having relatively few racial problems. All of these areas were very public, so it was easy for staff and prefects to police and deal with issues before they could develop into something bigger.

While my first year at Boys High passed in something of a haze, there were a number of significant events that required me to find my own way to deal with them over the remaining 19 years of my headmastership. The first was the matric dance, about which I certainly could not legislate until I had experienced the Boys High version.

By that time, Cherry and I had endured 20 matric dances, seven of which were with me as headmaster. To be truthful, these occasions were not the highlight of our social calendar. As head, I found the responsibility of ensuring that no harm came to the participants weighed heavily on me. However, we always pretended that we thoroughly enjoyed the event, as it meant so much to the boys and girls. While at Rondebosch, we had a tragic fatality on the night of the matric dance, and I always mentioned this when briefing those in my care as to the behaviour expected of them, particularly at the infamous after-parties, which were unfortunately part and parcel of the occasion.

The mother who was in charge of the matric dance organisation decided that we should arrive at the dance in style, so she ordered a stretch limousine to collect us. It was too long to be able to negotiate the turn into our gate, so we had to walk to the gate for our drive. We both ended up on the floor as we got in, as we did not realise how far back the seats were. Having duly rescued ourselves, much to the amusement of the driver, we drove through the main gate and were ceremoniously welcomed at the front of the school. Fortunately, not too many boys and their partners had arrived, as we had to be there early to greet the arrival of the boys.

The dance went off relatively well, although I was appalled that more than half the couples started leaving at about 10.30 pm, with the dance due to end at midnight. The staff informed me that this was normal practice, but I found it unacceptable and an insult to everyone who had spent countless hours and a considerable amount of money to orchestrate an evening to be remembered. This, together with a number of other issues, needed to be remedied for the future. As we said goodnight to the last of the boys and staff at about 12.30 am, it suddenly dawned on us that no limousine had been ordered to take us home. The road up to our house had not yet been tarred, so Cherry dispensed with her high heels and walked home barefoot.

The school was a stunning venue for the dance. It could just manage about 400 couples, and over the years the décor and themes chosen were first-class. It was for this reason that I never entertained the idea of holding the event off campus, as so many of my colleagues did. For a matric dance to justify its existence, there had to be formality in dress and decorum, otherwise it became an excuse to spend unrealistic amounts of money, to have a function that was merely a precursor to the real event – the after-party – and to flirt with danger in terms of varying degrees of antisocial behaviour. Apart from one year, when I unfortunately had to de-prefect two outstanding young men for bringing liquor to the dance, I am happy to say that the tone and behaviour at the matric dances were exemplary.

Cherry and I would open the dancing, together with the head and deputy head boy and their partners. This was preceded by a marathon hour and a half at the door as the boys introduced their partners to us. We also made sure we were on the dance floor for the last dance, as we then reversed the etiquette and said farewell to everyone. In spite of going through this ritual for 27 years, I still do not waltz properly, but then nor do most of the boys.

I made it quite clear, in talking to the boys and in letters to the parents, that our responsibility ended at midnight, that we did not approve of after-parties and so they took place without our blessing. However, there was a caveat, namely, that were problems emanating from after-parties to end up on my desk, I would have no option but to act. By and large, the parents responded well to this, to the extent that the various boarding-house parents’ committees organised buses to transport the boarders to the various parties and returned the boys and partners to the school the next morning to be collected by their parents. The after-parties were generally well supervised, and it would seem that, in most cases, the parents knew where their offspring were.

Ironically, when talking to the boys afterwards, many admitted that the after-party was a bit of an anticlimax and that the dance was indeed the highlight. I never slept particularly well on the night of the matric dance and was always greatly relieved when no unpleasant or unhappy phone calls had been received by about midmorning on the Sunday. This is one occasion I do not miss.

The other major event at the end of my first year was the annual Old Boys’ Dinner, which in those days took place in late October or early November. I was told by many throughout the year that this occasion would be the real test as to whether I would be accepted as a worthy new headmaster. I was also frequently reminded of the oratorical brilliance of Malcolm Armstrong, my immediate predecessor, whose Friday assembly addresses were legendary.

As a result, I viewed the approach of this event with considerable trepidation. The dinner was held in a marquee specially erected for the occasion on the cricket oval at the Old Boys’ Club. To add to my woes, I was told that a larger-than-normal marquee had been ordered. There was a great deal of curiosity about this new headmaster from Cape Town; my appointment was almost sacrilegious, as I was not a Transvaler and in particular not an Old Boy. The only previous ‘Uitlander’ to have been headmaster was Billy Hofmeyr, who came from Stellenbosch to be the founding headmaster of the school in 1910 (when the first incarnation of the school, Pretoria College, merged with Eendracht School).

The evening was a black-tie event, and there would be a whole raft of speakers, including Malcolm Armstrong. I would speak last and respond to the toast to the school. I prepared more thoroughly than usual for this event. It was probably not the right tactic, as I was not a great public speaker and normally spoke from the heart. I was terrified when I arrived at the Old Boys’ Club.

After about an hour of pre-dinner drinks, we took our seats and dinner was served, with various speeches punctuating the different courses. Armstrong was a brilliant speaker, but a couple of his critics made a show of walking out as he stood up to speak. Will Hofmeyr, a retired deputy head and one of the sons of the founding headmaster, spoke briefly. He criticised me for not living in School House, as all my predecessors had done. Since I had spent nine months in School House, and had just moved in to the new headmaster’s house a week prior to the dinner, his criticism did little to boost my confidence.

There was a tradition that the head prefect attended the dinner, and was required to deliver a speech. I recall that Neil Cutting, my first head prefect, did so with great aplomb, and my one thought was that I should not let him down. I was called on to speak, after a somewhat lengthy introduction, at 11.20 pm – not the ideal time after a long and liquid evening. I do not remember much about the speech, but it must have been satisfactory, as I received a standing ovation when I took my seat, although I surmised that this may well have been traditional as well.

Finally, I could relax and enjoy the company of many who did not seem in any hurry to go home. There were about 30 Old Boys and governors left at about 2.00 am when I went downstairs to the toilet. I remember standing at the urinal and talking to the guy who came and stood next to me. The next thing I remember was lying on the floor of the men’s toilet, hearing that they had sent for an ambulance, and being attended to by Ian Hay, a paediatrician, and Brian Southwood, together with a whole group of onlookers.

The first thing that went through my mind was that everyone would assume that I was drunk and had passed out. I could see the Pretoria News story on the Monday about the new Boys High headmaster passing out in the toilet after having too much to drink. The fact that I had had quite a bit to drink was undeniable. I think I passed out temporarily again, as my next recollection was of lying fully clothed on my bed at home with a very anxious Cherry, who had been woken up, and a gaggle of Old Boys and governors, who had driven my car and me home, all clustered around the bed. My urinal friend was there too, and gradually they pieced the whole tragic episode together.

I had suffered a momentary blackout, as a consequence of which I had lurched forward, hit my head on the urinal, and then fallen heavily backwards onto the floor. With great presence of mind, my urinal friend immediately ran for help. According to medical opinion, the blackout had been brought on by the stress and tension of the evening, coupled with a drop in blood pressure, which is not uncommon, and no doubt a little help from alcohol. A subsequent medical examination revealed that I was in superb health and confirmed that the factors mentioned above were indeed the cause.

I was also the beneficiary of the most superb loyalty and friendship. In spite of there being at least a dozen or more witnesses to this rather dodgy episode, it was never talked about and only became known many years later when I spoke about it at an Old Boys’ Dinner. If ever there was an occurrence that cemented my relationship with the Old Boys and made me feel that Pretoria Boys High was my place, it was this.

With my first Old Boys’ Dinner representing a seminal moment in my relationship with the Old Boys, it is appropriate at this point to chronicle my vision for their role in relation to the school and how together we developed something very special. I have mentioned the importance I attached to the role of the alumni, particularly in boys’ schools and in schools that had a history and a valued tradition. What I realised early in my time at Boys High was that there existed a very special feeling towards the school from the Old Boys, and that this was something that needed to be developed and strengthened.

There were a number of sporadic branch functions in Cape Town, Durban, Nelspruit and Tzaneen; the annual dinner in Pretoria; annual cricket matches against the school; and a publication, named The Phobian, which appeared from time to time. Bob Fair, the legendary English master, had done a great job of recruiting Old Boys to join the association, but there were no records, so most of the boys from the 1960s and 1970s did not know whether they were members of the Old Boys’ Association, and there was no database to assist in contacting them.

Roger Herbert, then secretary of the Old Boys’ Association, put in a lot of time and effort at this time. He coordinated most of the functions single-handedly, edited The Phobian, attended every function where it was felt an Old Boy presence was necessary, and practically attended every Old Boy funeral. Between Roger and Tony Wilkes (another Old Boy), who was the school secretary for many years and on his retirement the school archivist, their institutional history and knowledge was of incalculable value in our efforts to expand the work of the Old Boys’ Association.

Roger was still working for the Pretoria City Council when I arrived as head, so with all the ideas we had for setting up databases, reinvigorating the branches and establishing new ones, and starting reunions for different year groups, he decided that he needed a ‘secretary’. Before I knew it, I discovered that I was married to his secretary. Soon a computer was delivered to our home and an informal office for the Old Boys formed part of my study.

Another initiative we put in place early on in my tenure was to recruit membership from the leaving Form V’s (Grade 12’s). Should they join as life members before officially leaving school, they paid a reduced membership fee, were allowed to wear their Old Boys’ tie to their final assembly, were given a year’s free membership as a social member at the Old Boys’ Club, and, once the bulk of the matric examinations were over, they were invited to have a ‘Beer with the Boss’ at the club as the guests of the Old Boys’ Association. The last-mentioned idea was Roger’s brainchild. He wanted to name it ‘Shots with Schroder’, which I vetoed. Had I given him his head with this function, I think his generosity would have bankrupted the Old Boys’ Association. Initially, this function was a bit of a learning curve, as boys arrived with weird hairstyles, tattoos and piercings all over the place. We put this right after the first year, as I felt they were guests of the Old Boys’ directorate and as such should not embarrass some of the older members with their attire.

The ‘Beer with the Boss’ evening was great fun, and once we had settled on a modus operandi, it worked well. Boarders who had not finished writing exams by that stage were allowed to attend and were taken home by their housemasters after a beer or two. In good years the number of boys who joined the association exceeded 80 per cent, and the house that recruited the most was given a prize at the function. On the night before the final assembly, our home was a bit of a shambles as the packaging of ties and membership cards was done. Anyone who visited or who, like me, looked as though he was idle was dragooned into being part of this important conveyor belt.

By 1994, we had put on a number of boarding-house Old Boys’ dinners and decided to try dinners for particular year-groups, starting with a 40-year-on dinner for the class of 1954. The success of this resulted in the introduction of a 25-year-on dinner, and within a few years we held annual dinners for all decades from 10 to 60 years on. The 10’s and 20’s had a formal dinner on a Saturday night, while the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s had a weekend programme, starting on the Friday and including wives or partners.

Participants would register and meet on the Solomon House lawn, from where I would do a guided tour of the boarding houses and grounds, assisted by the prefects. Bearing in mind that many of the Old Boys had not seen each other since leaving school, it was not all that easy to keep them moving, so the prefects had to act as sheepdogs, rounding them up from time to time and pushing politely from the rear. These walkabouts were great fun, with loads of banter and frequent stops for updating and reminiscing.

One of my favourite stops was on Main Drive below the headmaster’s house, from where I would point out the new house, visible through the trees and bushes. Many felt the house was thoughtlessly placed there, as it would have been to the detriment of the ‘koppie kayas’ – valued dwellings of yesteryear in which the boarders would smoke and brew a variety of dodgy concoctions. I assured them that I was mindful of this, and that this was why Cherry and I smoked (initially when we moved in), as we had to keep these traditions going.

After an hour and a bit of walking, tea would be served in the library, followed by the traditional Friday assembly, at which the head prefect of the year, or someone designated by him, was invited to address the school. Apart from the normal school business, a special musical item of some kind would be presented. The school song was sung by the boys as a welcome and the assembly ended with ‘Forty Years On’. This assembly was a very emotional experience for most of the Old Boys and an eye-opener for the wives.

The address from the Old Boy head prefect was not meant to be longer than ten minutes, but on one occasion the speaker went on for about 45 minutes. The boys were wonderful and sat stoically on the floor through a very dull, lengthy address and clapped politely at the end. After the Old Boys and wives had left the hall, I went back to thank the boys for their behaviour and gave them a couple of periods off on the Monday as a reward. I received a far warmer and longer ovation than the speaker had!

An informal lunch would follow the assembly, lasting well into the afternoon. For those with stamina, port was served under the west Norfolk pine in front of the school at 5.30 pm for the sounding of the ‘Last Post’ from the West Tower. I had introduced this tradition in the early 1990s, with the ‘Last Post’ played by a trumpeter every weekday evening at 5.30 pm to honour the memory of those Old Boys who had died in the two world wars and on active service afterwards, as well as for those boys and staff who had died while at school.

Wherever the boys were in the grounds, they stood still while the ‘Last Post’ rang out. They took this tradition exceptionally seriously: games were stopped, much to the amazement of the opposition (including water polo, where they would stop and swim to the side), and parents were encouraged to get out of their cars and stand with bowed heads. On one occasion, with about 50 Old Boys and partners gathered on the front lawn, the trumpeter for the day did not appear, much to my anguish and embarrassment. With characteristic Boys High humour, one of the Old Boys chirped that the occasion should be renamed the ‘Lost Post’!

The Old Boys would be left to their own devices on the Saturday, with the formal stag dinner held on Saturday night – frequently into the early hours. These reunions were time-consuming and took many hours out of my weekends, but they paid dividends in reuniting the Old Boys with the school.

In addition to the innovations mentioned above, we established annual functions in a number of branches, such as Bloemfontein, George, the Natal South Coast and Port Elizabeth. During the centenary year (see Chapter 10), we held functions in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, England and Israel. The more I had to do with the Old Boys, the more I realised what an important component of the school they were; their friendship, loyalty and passion for the school was unique in my experience.

Unlike some of my colleagues, who found their Old Boys had too much influence in decision-making that should have been left to the school’s management, I never had occasion to feel that the tail was trying to wag the dog, or perhaps I did not allow it. Whatever the reason was, my relationship with the Old Boys, young and old, is something I still hold dear.