Thrown to the snob wolves

Chapter 3 - Thrown to the snob wolves (1987-1991)

My parents decided not to send me to one of the local high schools in our feeding area. Some of the schools had serious social issues like teen pregnancies, kids leaving school early on, kids not getting matric exemption to enroll for university, etc. I won’t say that quality education necessarily lacked, but these schools were environmentally challenged areas with socio-economic problems. A lot of the girls I went to primary school with, became pregnant in these High schools.

My dad had a degree and even though we lived in Mountain View, we could not always identify with many of these families, with no higher education. They were mainly in the blue-collar working class; plumbers, electricians, and mechanics. I guess dad did not want me to be absorbed and swayed by this mindset and culture, so he decided to send me to a boarding school in Eastern Pretoria.

It was the Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool or more intimately known as Affies, an Afrikaans high school for boys, the oldest of its kind in the world. It was in January of 1987 that my parents took me to the school to enroll. It was before the start of school, that all the kids who would stay in the hostel, had to be at school, for induction and initiation purposes. I was confident and self-assured, not afraid to speak my mind, one might say very cocky.

‘Ontgroening’

The culture and traditions of the school dictated that all the grade eights had to undergo a yearlong initiation process. You are a bottom feeder, with the matric masters at the top of this hierarchy. This meant all sorts of emotional, mental, and physical abuse at the hands of the older kids, but most specifically the matrics (Grade 12’s). We were to call them ‘Master’ and we were each given a nickname, which you would carry for the rest of your schooling career at Affies.

I was given a particularly humiliating and degrading name called Quaffer. It was a compilation of two words: Qua-Qua, a place in the Free State, where only black people lived, and Kaffir, a derogatory name Whites used for Blacks in the old apartheid South Africa (now, of course, it is considered hate speech and politically incorrect, but in the eighties, it was not an issue). So, I was basically called a black person from Qua-Qua, and for the next five years, I was known only by this name.

Initiation or ‘Ontgroening’ as it is known in Afrikaans, was a practice in Apartheid South Africa, whereby newbies at all levels within organizations would be initiated in a debased manner, that would humiliate them, and put them into their place; that they are the bottom feeders, that they have no authority, and  that their only purpose is to serve those in the upper levels of the organization. It was practiced right through high school, University, Military service, and even at a junior level as an employee. It was the Afrikaner way to discipline you into ‘line’, to subdue you and make you submit. When you get to the top of the structure, you can do the same to ‘newbies’ that was done to you.

We had to serve our ‘masters’, meet all their needs, especially when you lived in the hostel, and you could not escape them. Each one had a master that he was responsible for, from warming the toilet seat for him during winter times to carrying his bookcase and making coffee. They could beat you and bully you whenever they wanted to, whether you were a good servant or not. One had to wear a huge box carton sign around your neck with your nickname and degrading information written on it, that you had to wear all over school so that you will be recognized as belonging to the lowest rank.

During break times, all the grade 8’s had to go to the hall, to get taught the traditions and culture of the school; the instructions on how to function within these rules and traditions, and to get rebuked for our ‘bad’ attitudes, arrogance and pride. We would then have to lift our bums up and down, slamming it into the floor, whilst sitting, and say repeatedly in Afrikaans: “Harde gat word sag”, which one can’t really translate. Literally, it means, hard bum (ass) gets soft, and it boils down to getting your bad attitude or arrogance fixed into a soft submissive state. 

It was a systematic ‘brainwashing’ cycle of making you into one of them, and in order for you to achieve this state, you had to be humiliated, broken down, and reshaped into their ideological sub-culture and traditions. It was certainly, a school for rich kids, with parents in the higher echelons of society, powerful, white-collar professionals, who certainly thought that they were better than people lower on the ladder. This mindset was passed onto their kids. Like the English would say, they were of better breeding and held a higher station in life than the rest, an Afrikaner nobility of sorts.

Grade 8 was like being in the army, the toughest year of your life, but you remember only the good stuff. However, there were abuses that some of us won’t forget. One night in the hostel, I was forcefully taken by a bunch of boys, thrown onto my bed. They held me down, pulled off my pants, and while some held me down, my pubic hair was shaven. It was extremely humiliating. The next day I had to play Rugby and it itched a lot for weeks to come, but it pales in comparison to the humiliation I suffered. One boy, nicknamed Potiphar, was forced to stand against a wall, while matrics would throw tennis balls at him. If he flinched or ducked, he would be punished.

House Pannevis

I was in house Pannevis, an old building far from the other hostel complex. It is an old building with huge rooms. We were thrown 10 boys into a huge dorm type room, five beds on the one side and five on the other. Every morning we stood inspection at 06:30, military style, with punishment if you failed it. Lights out were at 10 pm and if you were caught outside your bed, there were repercussions. At times you had to do things for your master, and if you didn’t you would be in trouble with him, but if you did and was caught by a teacher, you would be in trouble too. So it was a no-win scenario, and one could only choose the option of lesser pain because pain there would be. I spent a total of 3 years in the hostel, and my experience was that if you didn’t get corporal punishment during school hours, you would almost certainly get it at the hostel. It was sometimes even used as a preventative measure.

Punishment & Discipline

Today corporal punishment is unconstitutional, a degrading and humiliating punishment, but in those days it was part of our lives. You had to bend it like Beckham and taste the ‘rottang’ stick on your butt on a regular basis. Even the matrics had their own system and methods of punishment, so even if you did escape a teacher’s wrath, you would still be eligible to receive your punishment from the matrics.

In grade 8, I once got angry at the first rugby team captain for throwing me with water during break time. I pretended that I was going to hit him….still a bit arrogant at that time. He later found me and after deliberation with the matric disciplinary committee, they decided that I was to receive 10 ‘krokodille’ (lashes). This meant being picked up by a matric on his back, so that your back was exposed. Several matrics would then take the open sides of their hands and slap you as hard as they can on your back in quick succession. It was a traumatic experience for anybody who ever had to endure it. It was both extremely painful and debasing. Crowds of boys usually gathered as onlookers to the spectacle, and it felt like a public flogging.

Before important rugby matches, the school had a tradition, which entailed that everyone would simultaneously run away from school to close-by Magnolia Park, to go and sing songs, to build morale and unity before the big event. Even though it had been a 75-year tradition at that time, and teachers knew it was going to happen, we were threatened with punishment if we did. If you, however, stayed, your punishment, by the matrics, upon the return, would be a lot worse. So nobody ever stayed behind. This meant that upon your return, you would get 4 lashes from a teacher, another no-win scenario. It behooved you to uphold the traditions of the school, even if it was contradictory to school rules.

Rugby

I was a relatively good rugby player but was always in the B-team in my age group. Our A-team, in three years, never lost a match and ended up winning the Transvaal Administrator’s cup for under 15’s. I would probably have played in the A-team at any other school, but in the big dam, I was just a mediocre fish. Seven of these players later became part of the Northern-Transvaal Rugby School’s team. Again I think I liked rugby because it was a team sport, where one had to work together to win. It was about the team and not the individual’s brilliance. I was not competitive enough.

The A-Team once lost a player due to injury, and the coach had to choose between me and another player in the B-team to replace him. We had a small try-out and Benito, my teammate was chosen over me. I just did not have the drive and aggression to win. In retrospect, I also think, that I was also conditioned, through bullying, to believe that I wasn’t good enough. Benito later played in the first team and received provincial colors. I, on the other hand, had an injury in Grade 12 and never even played rugby that year. In a rugby school, like Affies, that made a huge impact on your social status. First team rugby players were treated like gods by learners and teachers alike. 

Rugby match between Boys High and us - 1988

Teasing & Bullying

In a high testosterone environment, gentler boys were targeted, by more aggressive boys. Bullying was a common thing. Older kids bullied those on lower levels of the hierarchy. Stronger, athletic type boys picked on those more artistically and culturally inclined. Teasing and humiliation of the weaker boys took place, and learners were not the only culprits. I had a grade 9 Maths teacher who went out of his way to humiliate me in class every day. He shook my confidence so much that I eventually had to take Maths on Standard grade.

Boys who fit the profile were treated with more respect by teachers, whilst boys, who weren’t rugby or other sports stars, were sometimes even targets of teachers themselves. The traditional structure and hierarchy of the school, as well as the focus on being number 1 as the only acceptable place to be, forced mediocre boys back into their shells.

There were fights on the school grounds almost every break, and it was a huge source of entertainment. Boys were manipulated into fighting each other. They would say to one boy that the other boy said something bad about him, just so that there would be a fight. Fortunately, I knew how to stay out of it. I was not the fighting type at all. Only once, in grade 7 in primary school, was I involved in a tussle with another boy, which I won, but only after he pushed it too far.

There was one boy, in particular, Henri Rex, who had his knife in for me. He went out of his way to insult and humiliate me in front of others. To my regret I never challenged or opposed him, I just took it. I think in retrospect that many lost respect for me because I was not willing to fight him. Respect was earned violently at Affies and peacemakers or a ‘turn the other cheek mentality’, meant losing respect. Like a prison sub-culture, you had to beat respect into others. Eat or be eaten. Rex was a tough boy and one of the best fighters in the school, and even though in the same grade, a year older than me. I never stood a chance against him, but I regret not trying.

From early on in my schooling I was teased about my physical appearance. Some boys teased about my big ears, my feet, and my small eyes. There is and was nothing wrong with me physically, but kids are cruel and they take features and blow them out of proportion. I was very self-conscious at that stage, I guess like almost everybody else. It did, however, leave a mark. Due to these continuous remarks and insults, I came to believe that I’m not an attractive person. I had no girlfriends during my high school career, mainly because I did not feel good about myself. We had socials with the girl’s school across the street, and even though I could see some girls were interested, I never fully believed that I was good enough. I think this sums up the whole theme of my high school career. Over a five year period, I was systematically broken down by a sub-culture, in which I never fitted, up to the point where I believed that I was nothing, that I was not worthy.

Your socio-economic background determined your position in the social hierarchy of the school. As I came from the Western part of Pretoria, it automatically excluded me from certain social cliques within the school. One of the first questions I was asked when I started at Affies was: Where do you come from? I will never forget their expressions when I told them. After your background has been determined, you were categorized, assigned a status, and consequently either included or excluded. I was never truly accepted by the ‘elite’ in the school....and it had nothing to do with personality or attitude; I simply was not one of them, my dad was not a lawyer, a doctor or a government minister, and we did not stay in a fancy house in the East of Pretoria, nor did we drive luxury cars. My biggest shame and embarrassment was when my dad would drop me off at school on Monday mornings in our old beat-up 1977 Toyota Corolla. To reach the hostel, he had to drive quite a distance across the school grounds where the other boys were gathering. I usually did not know where to stick my head in. As we passed them I felt their stares and glares.

The naughty years

After 3 years in the hostel, I asked dad to leave. He complied and took me out at the end of grade 10. After a couple of months I regretted my decision and asked to return, but he refused. The early years in the hostel are actually the most difficult; it gets easier in later years as you gain seniority. I saw that my ex-roommates had a ball and I wanted to be part of it, but dad refused. I was now a day scholar and had to take 2 buses from Mountain View to Affies and two buses back home every day to go to school. It was a different kind of trauma. The buses had their bus bullies too, which made life difficult. It was also very time consuming, spending almost 3 hours per day waiting and riding on buses. It did, however, bring a certain amount of freedom. My two cousins Marcu and Francois, who came from Ermelo, moved to Pretoria in our Grade 10 year. They were for most of it a bad influence on me.

In our Grade 11 year, I increasingly slept over at their home in Centurion. Many times Marcu and I would, after being dropped off at school, board a bus into Sunnyside to go watch movies and eat out. Marcu and I both had part-time jobs at Pizza Hut in Arcadia, very close to Sunnyside. We worked at Pizza Hut for R 2.32 an hour on weekends and during holidays. I was a runner in the restaurant, assisting the waiters, while Marcu worked in the Take-away section. Marcu and I would bunk school and he would stick me for movies and eat outs at Wimpy. I just though his parents provided royally for him, and never complained. Later it was discovered that he stole money from the till at Pizza Hut and they fired him. I got his old job. One of the waitresses, later stole R 50 from my till. That day I worked a 16-hour shift, which brought my income to R37.12. I was responsible for the money in the till and instead of making money I had to pay in R 12.88. I guess I got a bit of my own medicine, as I was an unknowing and naive accessory to Marcu’s theft.

In that year I was truant more than 60 school days to go on these escapades with my cousin. We lived the ‘high life’ on stolen money, but we were eventually caught. My other cousin played truant on his own, so when they wanted to know about his whereabouts, they wanted to question his brother, who was being truant with me. So the school phoned my dad to ask where I was and he told the school that he dropped my cousin and me off at school in the morning. My cousin and I were playing video games and smoking at a cafe in Mountain View, when my dad walked in. He just waved us over and told us to get into the car. It was on a Friday afternoon, and we had to wait the whole weekend for our punishment at the principal’s office. It was to be four lashes on the buttocks. I stressed the whole weekend. On Monday morning I was called into the principal’s office over the intercom. My classmates laughed at me as I got up to walk the long and lonely road to pain. You could almost hear the words: “Dead man walking”. I took my punishment like a man, but needed to get out of the office as soon as possible, as my butt was on fire, so I hurriedly left not wanting to show the pain I was in.

In Grade 10 mom took me to a clothing department store, called John Orr’s, in central Pretoria to start a job she organized for me. I guess they thought I needed to stay out of trouble, have some purpose and earn a bit of cash on the side. It was my very first job. I was 16 years old, and I guess my mom thought that since she had to start working when she was 16, it was time for me to do the same. So every Saturday at 8 am I clocked in until 1 pm when my shift ended. I was a floor assistant and had to help the salespeople in fetching things from the storeroom and making sure that everything was presentable on the floor. After customers have gone through the lines of clothing and created chaos, I had to reorganize everything. Braam, a school mate, also worked there and we became good friends. Even though I had an employee discount on clothing, I once gave over to the temptation to ‘take’ some items. It was a once-off event, but it is something I always regretted.

When I was about 5 years old, my mother and I visited my great grandmother at the old age home. She had a ‘boyfriend’ Oom (Uncle) Pottie, whom we went to say hello to as well. While we were there, I saw his pocket knife and took it. Later I was found out by my mother and grandmother who gave me a good piece of their minds and punished me. In high school, my one cousin, Francois, went on shoplifting sprees, stealing anything from food to pop music cassette tapes. I never shoplifted as I was too scared to be caught, but I did enjoy the shared spoils. Fortunately, my ‘kleptomaniac’ days did no go beyond my childhood.

Trying to fit in

Francois and Marcu were both very attractive and popular boys. Francois was a good fighter at school and that gave him a certain status. Francois was expelled in our final school year and attended a different high school, a school with girls. He arranged wild parties during school hours at my aunt’s house, with girls and booze. During one of these parties, I got so drunk on house wine that I puked all over the place. At another party, I walked into Marcu’s bedroom while he was in bed with a girl. I’m not sure if their parents even know what occurred at their home, but I got the feeling that their parents allowed them a lot more leeway than mine. Both their parents smoked and drank socially, something that never happened in my conservative home. I hung out with my cool cousins, who gave me a certain status and acceptance in school with the cooler kids, but within that setting bullying and humiliation also took place.

Braam, my workmate at the Clothing store often invited me to join him during break times to attend Christian student meetings, but apart from attending here and there, I never really committed. I guess I wanted people’s acceptance. The irony was that the more I tried, the more I was rejected. I gave up my values to gain acceptance, and in the end, that didn’t even work. Acceptance was the most important thing for me at that time. I joined the smokers during breaks or after school to smoke cigarettes, which was against school rules, to be cool and be accepted. I even got an earring, which was very fashionable in the eighties, to show my commitment to be part of the group. Looking back, there were kids who wanted to be my friends, but I rejected them because they were not high up in the social structure of the school, because they weren’t cool enough; they could not offer me what I desired.  

The scars

In my final year, I faded away in mediocrity, too scared and emotionally bullied to attempt to stand out and excel. I made a silent vow that I would show them all how successful I would become, it became the driving force behind me. For a lot of successful kids, who excel in high school and achieve many things, life ends when they complete high school. They may have reached the ceiling too quickly. We have a saying in Afrikaans: Vroeg ryp, vroeg vrot”, which means that those who become ‘ripe’ too early, becomes ‘rotten’ early. As I ended my high school career at such a low point, I became driven to show everyone how wrong they were about me, how wrong they were to reject me. I came to resent rich people in general.

School photo - 1990

At my ten year reunion, it seemed that very little changed in a lot of boys. They were stuck in the high school phase of their lives. Many have reached the pinnacle of success at school and they lost the motivation to succeed after school. At the reunion the same boys who were in the cool clique at school gravitated together, still refusing to socialize with the ‘uncool’ kids. The irony was that many of these uncool kids became lawyers and neuro-surgeons, whilst many of the ‘cool’ kids could not even complete a college degree. They were stuck in this time capsule of earlier success, still riding on the wings of fame; still living in a world where they are still the cooler ‘kids’. Maybe their social status and stardom were so blown up by fellow students, the system and teachers, that they believed they were little gods. But as soon as they were released back into the real world of objectivity, where your birth and socioeconomic status don’t matter, they couldn’t cut it; they never learned how to survive in a tough environment.

Affies was to a large extent a nightmare; the trauma of the bullying and rejection still affects me to this day. It taught me to think of myself in a certain way, and my place in a social hierarchical system, where I need to know my place. To have been in a school where competitive success was the only real thing that mattered, that your personality, character, and heart was of no real consequence, de-valued me in totality. Success or worth was measured in physical terms, in worldly terms only. You were only a success if you excelled at or won in sport, academics, or culture. 

You only achieved social status and acceptance, if you were a winner. This was an environment where a sensitive kid with a good heart, who believed in teamwork and the upliftment of others; who believed that relationships supersede winning at all costs, could not thrive. Irrespectively, I was rejected and bullied because I was not cut out of the same ‘rock’ as they were. I was a foreign concept to them and they did not know how to deal with me. I was the wrong person in the wrong school, and I expressed this to my parents countless times, but they refused to listen and help.

When my brother went to Affies after me, he was the anti-Henry; he gained standing and acceptance because he was successful at everything the school deems successful; good at sport, academics, arts, and culture. My parents gained social status and standing in the parent community based on my brother’s successes. He was competitive and he won, and the school, its traditions, and culture of winning were promoted. That is until he developed the Koksaki virus and could no longer compete; he also faded away in mediocrity.

I am however grateful for the things I unconsciously learned during my painfully traumatic time at Affies. I learned to be strong in adversity, and to persevere under trial. It became the foundation of my motivation to make a success in the real world. Adversely, it had an effect on my social development. Single-sex schools pose certain challenges. At university, I initially struggled to relate to females. I felt socially awkward and did not know how to approach them. These are all important skills one learn during one's development in a mixed gender school. I did my military service after school, which was also a single-sex set-up, so I was 19 when I first had to deal with women in my teens.

Do I regret my time in Affies? I think I never reached my full potential at school, and that will always be tragic, but I did have good times too and wonderful memories. Would I be part of it again, if I had a choice? In retrospect no, but I can see the hand of God in all of it, that He allowed me this painful process, so that I can be the person I am today. It shaped me and molded me for better and for worse, but I think mostly for the better. God was with me in that horrible situation of rejection and fear, like he was with Joseph, and like he, I survived. I want to take the good from that and also understand, that similar to Joseph’s dungeon experience, my experiences in the school, served as a ‘school’ in preparing me for the life that laid ahead.