The revolutionary spirit is reignited at graduation ceremony
Day One
Let’s understand this: graduation is for parents. In the late 1960s we boycotted it because we loathed the establishment. But these days graduation is in vogue again and has been so for many years. Often it is a good occasion to make sociological observations and manufacture in-jokes.
A famous graduation joke at the University of the Western Cape in the late 1990s was that you could tell the size of the university’s overdraft by the quality of shoes the graduates were wearing. A friend, Paul Maylam, the Rhodes Public Orator (whose job it is to present the honorary graduates), caught the congregation’s attention at a recent graduation ceremony when he linked the name of honorary graduate Tariq Ali to the Rolling Stones — actually, he confirmed that the iconic song, Street Fighting Man was named for Ali.
Admirers of the Stones and of the Pakistani-born militant intellectual weren’t disappointed with the performance: he was on fire for the full 40 minutes he spoke, with not a note before him, the speech a call to arms in these bleak times. For my generation he may well have been singing the anthem from Street Fighting Man: “Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution ‘Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution Well then what can a poor boy do Except to sing for a rock ‘n roll band ‘Cause in sleepy London town There’s no place for a street fighting man No! Get down.”
Speech done, the “Street Fighting Man” sat down. The audience erupted as it might have for the Stones, except, that is, for a rotund couple behind us who remained seated throughout the standing ovation. Where were these guys when the joint was passed around in the late 1960s? So what’s a graduation for? To joyously see one’s daughter launched into this desolate world on the back of the rock ‘n roll and militancy of the 1960s.
Day Two
Easter Saturday afternoon. The reputation of the Johannesburg Schools Rugby Festival has spread far and wide. As promised, too, the day is deliciously wet and cold. At King Edward’s (KES), the home team is playing St Andrew’s Grahamstown. Ostensibly, we’re here to support St Andrews — well, Louise is. I’m torn. My divorced mother worked as a matron at KES and I spent several holidays playing on its ancient, stupendous sports fields, including the very one on which St Andrew’s is taking a pounding today.
I hold back, but Louise, a lone, brave voice in the packed stand, shouts for the underdog: “Come on, St Andrew’s!” Then, from the east stand to our left, a tousled, rag-tag baritone army drowns out her thin reed with this war cry: “We are the old boys; The mighty, mighty old boys. We are the old boys.” And then, from the south stand, KES pupils in green and red answer with this: “We are the SCHOOL BOYS, The mighty, mighty SCHOOL BOYS.” In the stand near us, two Old Edwardians, each under a yarmulke, beam away. In the last quarter of the match St Andrew’s, trailing by a mile and more, fight back by scoring two hard-fought goals. Match over; we struggle homewards through the crowds and the traffic.
Day Three
The man opposite me, Basil Smit, is in his mid-60s, but I see him as I did when he was 19 –tough, unyielding, determined. Over lunch, we talk about the 40-odd years since we last met. We joke about drunken parties and girls long lost when, after we left school, we tossed about looking for direction and our place in life. Of course, we talk about rugby, how we played together at school: he as captain, me just lucky to be in the side.
Our school, Capricorn High, now almost entirely populated with black pupils, is not more than 2km from where we sit, but our talk makes it out to be on a different planet and we talk about it only in the past tense — as if the school has been stolen. Quietly, the talk turns to his three sons, rugby players each one: Brian, John and David. John William. The second boy, he tells me, would have been as good a rugby player as John Smit, the present Springbok captain, if he’d had the same opportunities. I wince: life is all about opportunities, isn’t it?
Later Louise and I walk across the school’s fields and past classrooms in which my eyes were opened to literature, language, to the joy of history — and to the late-imperial games that have gone on to conquer the world through the power of numbers and, naturally, to the early Stones. We pass seven black schoolgirls dressed in the familiar blue, red and yellow uniform that the pupils democratically chose 50 years ago. Respectfully, we’re greeted with the timeless chant, “Afternoon, Sir, “Afternoon, Ma’am.”
Day Four
Mercifully, we miss the Royal Wedding.
Except for this. When I first went to school, the Afrikaans-English issue was at the centre of the national debate. On a daily bus commute, a brother and I were teased for being English-speakers — actually, the taunts were in a language a tad more pointed than I dare type here. Nationalist rhetoric was high and a visit by the 1953 Australian rugby team didn’t help because we were both mocked for being “Wallabies”, which even today I consider the greatest insult anyone has ever given me. And yet, 57 years later, on a blackboard on Peace Street, Tzaneen, for the day that Bill and Katy tied the knot, an anxious pub owner had scrawled this message: “Kom binne en geniet die royal wedding”.
Day Five
On an afternoon walk, I pass a small gathering of men — security guards, gardeners, roustabouts, drifters. “Good morning,” I shout, as I always do. They groan, tired of the same joke. Today their conversation is more animated than usual. I stop and join them and in terrible broken Sepedi, ask: “Goreng?” (What’s up?) They immediately switch to English. “How can bin Laden be dead,” one says, “if they won’t release the body?” Difficult poser this. Is it a fact/value question or does it rely on that old conundrum, the burden of proof. Or is it simply that this particular epistemic group instinctively distrusts the United States and all it stands for?
Day Six
There is no parking at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria’s leafy eastern suburbs. But there are schoolkids in sports clothes everywhere. It looks like an inter-school sports competition. Precariously, I park my motorised grey blob between a kerb and a Range Rover. In a darkened lecture theatre Cheryl de la Rey, Pretoria University’s vice-chancellor, welcomes the minister of higher education and training and participants to a workshop. She describes the centre and explains why the young people walking around are in sports clothes — and goes on to tell us why the place is littered with paraphernalia that refers to the Argentine.
It seems this was the place where that country’s team was encamped during last year’s Fifa World Cup. The vice-chancellor says that Maradona didn’t approve of his (to put this delicately) ablution amenity and insisted that a different one be installed. During a break I ask one of the helpful staff if one could see the Diego Maradona Memorial Toilet. “No”, she says, smiling, “it was removed after the Argentinians left.”
Peter Vale is professor of humanities at the University of Johannesburg