Background on universities, particularly during the
Apartheid years, which straddled my time as an undergrad.
Some of what follows is repeated with minimal editing from what is in “Ancyent blog08 Background on schools and universities in South Africa (during the Apartheid era)”.
You may notice that some sentences are in the present tense and some in the past tense. I use the past tense for things that were as I described them but have since definitely changed (such as official racial segregation) or that I suspect may have changed. I use the present tense for things that I presume are still true.
Universities in the US versus in South Africa
The United States has a mix of private and public universities, varying in size from major research institutions with tens of thousands of students to small liberal arts colleges that may have fewer than one thousand students https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college. Public universities fall under state government control, rather than that of the federal government. South Africa has (or had) no private universities, with all universities under the control of the central government. North Carolina alone has more universities than the whole of South Africa. There are 17 institutions (including one high school), in the University of North Carolina System, some of which are HBCUs (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) https://www.northcarolina.edu/institutions/. There are also several private universities, two of which are major research institutions – Duke University and Wake Forest University. In South Africa some of the universities had English as the language of instruction, such as the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand. Others had Afrikaans, such as Universiteit Stellenbosch and Universiteit Pretoria, and the University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) had classes in English in some departments and in Afrikaans in others. As noted below, there were also separate universities for the various race groups, such as the University of Fort Hare (alma mater of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela) for Black students https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Fort_Hare and, in the Cape Town area, the University of the Western Cape for “Coloured” students https://www.uwc.ac.za/.
Most coursework is restricted to undergraduate (and honours) level, with masters and doctoral degrees typically (though not always) requiring just a thesis rather than additional coursework. Medicine is (or was back then) a 6-year undergraduate degree, with the first-year classes being physics, chemistry and biology, second-year classes being anatomy and physiology, and then 4 years of more clinical training. The degree awarded was an MBCbB (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery). Some other professional degrees, such as Engineering, were 4-year undergraduate degrees. Students wanting to become lawyers had to take a bachelor’s degree, usually a BA, followed by an LLB (Bachelor of Laws).
If in what follows I refer to a “senior” student I mean it loosely to be one who has been at university for a while, rather than in the American sense. South Africans don’t use the categories freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, instead saying just first-year, second-year, etc. A first-year student was often referred to as a “fresher”, especially in their first few weeks at university. Even in those days before political correctness had been invented, the gender-neutral “fresher” was used, unlike in the US where “freshman” is used for both males and females. Further, more advanced studies after one has graduated with an undergraduate degree are called post-graduate studies, and the corresponding students are called post-graduate students, rather than graduate students.
Grades at university level are first class (75-100%), upper second class (70-74%), lower second class (60-69%), third class (50-59%) and fail (below 50%). There is no equivalent of a GPA at university level.
In the US, “faculty” refers to academic staff but in South Africa they are referred to as staff, along with administrative, technical, and other staff. In South Africa “faculty” is used to refer to what in the US is called a School or College. So, what is called a School of Engineering in the US is a Faculty of Engineering in South Africa and what here at UNC is called the College of Arts and Sciences (often referred to just as “The College”) is uusually two separate entities in South Africa, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science.
The term “Dean” has the same meaning as in the US, being the head of a Faculty (SA) or School/College (US). In South Africa the academic in charge of a department is called the Head of the department, rather than the department Chair (US).
The names of the academic ranks also differ somewhat. In the US the ranks are Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and (full) Professor, with “Instructor” sometimes used for someone who teaches but is not considered as being on that hierarchy. In South Africa the ranks are Junior Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, and (full) Professor. In most fields in the US, especially in the sciences, one has to have a doctorate to get a faculty appointment. In South Africa a Junior Lecturer, and sometimes even a Lecturer may not even have a master’s degree (I was a Lecturer before completing a master’s). Also, South Africa does not have a tenure system. After a relatively short probation period one’s permanent position is confirmed. That has similar protections to tenure but is attained through a much less onerous process.
Another of the differences between US and South African universities is what is meant by the title “Chancellor”. In the US the Chancellor of a university is essentially the CEO whereas at South African universities it is a ceremonial role rather than being someone involved in the day-to-day administration of the university. The Chancellor is typically a prominent politician or businessperson who visits the university just on certain formal occasions. Several of the Afrikaans-language universities had government cabinet universities as Chancellor. For instance, the Chancellor of Stellenbosch University was B.J. (Balthazar Johannes) “John” Vorster, who was Prime Minster from 1966 to 1978 and then State President (a largely ceremonial position until the end of Apartheid) for about a year after that. Those were some of the worst years of the Apartheid era. The CEO of a South African university is called the Vice-Chancellor. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_(education).
Yet another difference is related to sport. There aren’t (or at least weren’t) any big-money sports at university level. Even competitions between universities were quite infrequent. In cross-country running, for instance, there was an annual South African Universities (SAU) event, the equivalent of the NCAA cross-country championships in the US. For the rest of the season, universities competed against other (non-university) clubs in local leagues in their province. Unlike in the US, there wasn’t a limit on how many years one could be eligible to compete in inter-university competition, so one could continue to compete throughout graduate level studies. In some sports, such as rugby, for local league games the teams were open, meaning that players did not even have to be registered students. (For games that were official inter-university competitions the players did have to be at least part-time students.) Athletic scholarships were rare at English-language universities. They were more common at Afrikaans-language universities, which also tended to provide more funding for coaches and facilities.
Cape Town and the University of Cape Town
Cape Town has a magnificent setting, being wrapped around the Table Mountain range. In the image below Table Mountain itself is the flat-topped mountain in the middle, with Devil’s Peak being the mountain to its left. On the right Signal Hill is towards the front, with Lion’s Head behind it. The Noon Gun on Signal Hill is fired at noon (surprise, surprise) each day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Gun. There is often a layer of clouds around the top of the mountain, referred to as the Tablecloth – https://hiketablemountain.co.za/what-is-the-tablecloth-on-table-mountain/. There are various legends about the Tablecloth, with the one in this article being the best-known: https://celebratesouthernafrica.com/how-the-mountain-got-its-tablecloth/.
The resolution in the photo below is not good enough to be able to see the cable car or even the top cable station at the rightmost edge of Table Mountain. On the front face of Table Mountain, apart from mountaineering climbs, there is a moderate-difficulty hike up Platteklip Gorge. There are some easier hikes up the mountain from the opposite side, with the easiest being the Jeep Track Route. Although it is steep in places, it can be negotiated by 4-wheel-drive vehicles (hence the name). The Table Mountain Race was a 10-mile race that went up the Jeep Track, around the reservoirs on the top of the mountain and then back down again. One year Riëtta and I were at the top of the mountain directing runners in that race. The cloud/mist was so thick that although we were probably less than 20 yards apart, we couldn’t see one another. Runners appeared out of the mist, we made sure they took the right paths, and then they disappeared into the mist again. After the race we were supposed to get a ride back down in a Jeep, but part of the way down we had to get out and walk so that a runner suffering from hypothermia could ride in the Jeep.
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| The harbor and downtown core of Cape Town with Table Mountain in the background. The stadium towards the right in the photo was built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup (soccer), replacing the Greenpoint Stadium that was used for soccer and track & field in my day. (Source of image unknown.) |
Perhaps you thought Table Mountain faced south. It actually faces roughly north-east, across
Table Bay, which is just above where Cape Town is written in the image below. The harbor is visible just above the letters
“To” of “Cape Town”. Robben Island, just
to the north of Cape Town, is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of the 27 years for
which he was imprisoned. The Table
Mountain Range stretches from Cape Town in the north to Cape Point, at the
southern tip of the Cape Peninsula. The
Cape Flats are on the “shoulder” between Table Bay and False Bay to the south. The area includes many historically White
suburbs as well as some that were reserved for Black people and others for
Coloured people. Stellenbosch, which is
roughly 30 miles east of Cape Town is home to Stellenbosch University, which is
(or at least was) an Afrikaans language university and a primary sporting rival
of the University of Cape Town. (During
part of the Apartheid era most sporting relations between the two universities
were suspended because of Stellenbosch University’s support for the government
and the University of Cape Town’s opposition to it.)
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| Cape Town and environs. (Image from Google Maps.) |
Along with the wind, one of the things that make Cape Town
less pleasant than it could otherwise be is that the ocean is so cold, even at
the height of summer. Locals may try to
persuade you that it is only the Table Bay side that is cold, because that is
the Atlantic Ocean, but that the False Bay side of the peninsula is warmer
because it is the Indian Ocean. That is
based on the incorrect assumption that Cape Point, at the tip of the Cape
Peninsula, marks the dividing line between the two oceans. The actual “official” dividing line is at
Cape Agulhas, about 90 miles south east of Cape Point. As noted in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Agulhas),
Cape Agulhas (“Cape of Needles”) is the geographic southern tip of Africa and
the beginning of the traditional dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
according to the International Hydrographic Organization.
The wind and cold ocean are relatively minor drawbacks. Much more serious is that Cape Town is one of the cities with the highest murder rate in the world. It is rated as having the 18th highest rate in this article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/advice/least-friendly-cities-on-earth/. Nine of the ten most dangerous are in Mexico and Ecuador. The odd one out, in 5th place, is the metropolitan area that includes Port Elizabeth, where I grew up. (For context, the first US city on the list is New Orleans at 28th.) Johannesburg is listed much further down, at 38th. However, Johannesburg is more dangerous than Cape Town for visitors because there the violence is more evenly spread across the area, including places frequented by visitors. In Cape Town much of the violence is more localized, being gang-related in the historically Black and Coloured areas on the Cape Flats, rather than where tourists visit. Violence was endemic on the Cape Flats even during the Apartheid era. With the exception of a single occasion, I never felt unsafe in either Cape Town or Port Elizabeth. On that occasion I gave a ride home in the evening to a Coloured member of our running group who lived on the Cape Flats. Few Black or Coloured people had cars in those days (and many still don’t), with shared-ride taxis providing one of the main means of commuting. It was dark when I dropped Noel off. As I turned to leave, I saw that the whole width of the road was blocked by vehicles with their headlights shining at me. They let me sweat for a while but thankfully eventually parted and let me go by without further incident. I presume they were operators of shared-ride taxis who were unhappy that I had taken some of their business. (I didn’t ever tell Noel about that, even after we reconnected via Facebook.)
As I noted above, I never felt unsafe when growing up in
Port Elizabeth. That doesn’t mean it was
completely safe, even in “White” areas.
Family members of two of my high school classmates were murdered. First, Peter Bond’s mother was murdered in a
break-in at some time in the 1970s. I
don’t recall whether this was while we were still in high school or a few years
later, though I did hear about it at the time.
In 1987, well after our family had moved away from Port Elizabeth, Lex
Devlin’s 4-year old daughter was murdered.
I didn’t know about that at the time, first hearing about it at some
stage after Lex and I reconnected through Facebook. Below is a copy of a news report about that
murder in Die Burger (“The Citizen”), Port Elizabeth’s Afrikaans-language
newspaper, followed by my English translation.
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| Candice Devlin murder, as reported in Die Burger on June 30, 1987 |
Mother attacked, then child died
From our Port Elizabeth
correspondent
The murderer of a 4-year-old girl
from Blue Water Bay in the city and his friend, who repeatedly stabbed the
child’s mother with a knife, were apparently in the house before the woman and
her daughter arrived there. Yesterday
the police expanded the search for two Black men in regard to the Friday
afternoon murder of Candice Devlin (4) of Himeville Drive, who was stabbed in
the neck with a knife. Her mother, Mrs.
Seugnet Devlin (26), was stabbed four times in the back and once in her left
side with the knife. She is in the
intensive care unit in the Provincial Hospital in the city. Lt. Col. Eric Strydom, officer in command of
the Eastern Cape murder and robbery division said that detectives found that
the glass in a window in the kitchen had been removed and replaced before the
murder. “Yesterday we were able to talk
to Mrs. Devlin for the first time.
According to clues, the men were in the house when she and Candice
arrived there. As the two were entering
the house they were attacked from behind.
Mrs. Devlin was thrown to the floor, hit and kicked and dragged to the
room. Candice began shrieking, and in
response one of the attackers stabbed her in the neck,” said Col. Strydom. Since then a large police search has been
under way for a gardener, known as Welcome, who had previously worked for the
Devlins. Col. Strydom said he is about
26 years old. They are also searching
for Welcome’s friend, who has a slender build.
Hardened policemen flinched at the sight of Candice’s bloody body. When the police arrived Candice’s Maltese
poodle was keeping watch next to her body.
A neighbor, Mr. Blackie Swart, said that on Friday evening he was on his
way to go fishing when the murder occurred.
While he was loading his fishing gear in his light truck, he noticed
that Mrs. Devlin’s gardener was watering newly planted grass. At about 5:15 PM he saw Mrs. Devlin run out of
the house shrieking: “Dear God, my baby!”
She collapsed. When Mr. Swart got
to her, she told him “the gardener has her baby”. Mr. Swart ran to his truck, grabbed his
revolver and went to Mrs. Devlin’s house, where he came across the bloodied
girl in the master bedroom. Meanwhile
Mrs. Swart called the flying squad. According
to Mr. Swart, Candice was already dead by the time he reached her. He immediately returned to Mrs. Devlin and
raced to the Provincial Hospital with her.
The University of Cape Town (UCT)
I did my undergraduate studies at UCT. When I was there the Chancellor was Harry Oppenheimer, who was the chairman of Anglo American Corporation and of De Beers Consolidated Mines for many years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Oppenheimer He served as Chancellor of UCT from 1967 to 1999. As noted in the Wikipedia entry, he was also politically engaged, opposing racial discrimination and police-state methods during the apartheid era, as well as supporting full trade union rights for Black workers:
The Vice-Chancellor of UCT when I was an undergrad was Sir Richard Luyt (pronounced “late”). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Luyt South African by birth, he later became a British colonial administrator, eventually becoming Governor of British Guiana for a couple of years. When that country became independent and was renamed Guyana, he served as its Governor-General for several months. After that he was UCT’s Vice-Chancellor from 1967-1980. As noted in the Wikipedia entry, because of his role as a colonial administrator his appointment was initially opposed by the student body. That was before my time. He turned out to be a strong opponent of Apartheid. During my undergraduate years most UCT student protests were against the government, rather than against the university administration. The university was generally supportive of student protests.
At UCT a full course lasted for the whole academic year. There were a few half courses that, as you would never have guessed, lasted just half of the academic year. For a BS. at UCT one had to complete at least 8 full courses or an equivalent mix of full and half courses. Because there is no “general education” requirement, I could have done my undergraduate degree taking only classes in mathematical fields (Mathematics I, II, and III; Applied Mathematics I, II, and III; and Mathematical Statistics I and II. Math Stat had Math I as prerequisite, so Math Stat I and II were second- and third-year courses).
For the BSc, and I presume the BA too, the degree was awarded with distinction in one’s major (or majors) if one obtained a first class pass at the end of the major. The degree as a whole was awarded with distinction if one obtained a distinction for each major (including if one has just one major).
The academic year at UCT started in early March and ended in mid- to late-November. There was a 4-week (winter) break in June/July and two one-week breaks. They didn’t have semi-official names, such as Spring Break in the US. Each was referred to just as a “vac” (short for vacation). There was an exam period before the winter vac and a longer one at the end of the academic year. There were several days between the end of classes and the first exam and the exam period was longer than the one here at UNC. Grading of exams and releasing of results also took longer. Here at UNC graduation is held just a couple of days after the last exam. At UCT the interval was a few weeks. Results had to be “blessed” by an external examiner (someone in the same field from a different university) before they became official.
In some courses, notably in the mathematical sciences, work done during the year, whether homework or tests, counted little – if at all – towards the final grade. However, the work did count towards being allowed to write the final exam. In order to write the final exam one had to do enough during the year to earn a “d.p.” certificate, that is, that one had “duly performed” the work of the class. (Maybe in the dim and distant past the d.p. was an actual certificate, but I never saw one.) Lists of those who had earned a d.p . were put on noticeboards in each department around the time of the last class.
In most of the classes I took there were lectures five days a week. In addition, some of the classes had another session called a tutorial or practical (“tut” or “prac”), which was similar to what in the US is called a recitation or lab. In the mathematical sciences the pracs were an opportunity to work on homework, with tutors (generally more senior students) and lecturers available to provide help. In some other fields the tuts were discussion sessions, led either by the lecturer or by a tutor. The term “lab” was used only to refer to actual laboratory sessions, such as in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.
What in America are usually called dorms are known as residence halls (or, informally, as “res”), A res typically elects a House Committee for self-government, organization of social events, etc. A faculty member serves as the Warden of the res, often living in a house adjacent to the res. A few senior students may be appointed as sub-wardens, to act as advisors to other students. Sub-wardens are paid positions, similar to a resident advisor in a dorm in the US, and are usually appointed by the Warden. House Committee members are elected by the students in the res. This is what UCT currently says about residences:
- All first-tier residences –
which are intended for undergraduate students under the age of 21 –
provide three meals a day in dining halls and offer self-operating
laundries and a communal television space.
- They each have a warden who lives
on site, and some of the larger residences have assistant wardens. They
act as guardians, in the strict legal sense, to all minor students in the
residence in the event of an emergency. The warden is typically a UCT faculty
staff member.
- Each res also has a student
governing body, called the house committee. Together, wardens and house
committees aim to create friendly and comfortable environments in which
you are able to pursue your academic objectives and achieve personal
growth.
- House
committees organise numerous activities throughout the year in order to
maintain a balanced residence experience.
The res I was in (more on that below) is now a first-tier residence. That classification didn’t exist in my day and there was no upper age limit. It did provide three meals a day in a dining hall. There weren’t self-operating laundries then though. Our laundry was done for us once a week. We had to label all items (see label below) and put them in a laundry bag. They were returned to us a couple of days later, washed and ironed. (In my last couple of years there it was no longer necessary to label items.) I don’t recall whether we had to make our own beds or if that was done by the housekeepers (at least on weekdays).
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| My laundry label at UCT. The “DR” is the code for my res – more about it below. Seeing “Monatic” on the manufacturer’s label reminded me that the advertising slogan for the brand was “Be emphatic, buy Monatic. |
Driekoppen Residence
The dorm / res I was assigned to was called Driekoppen (“three heads”) Residence but was nicknamed Belsen. The original buildings were prefabricated huts that reminded students who had served in the Second World War of the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp. In an article written in 2011 it is stated “The residence was originally named Belsen, after the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in north-west Germany, as the residence initially housed students who had served in World War II. The name was changed to Driekoppen to mark the beheading of three slaves in the Mowbray area in 1724”. (See https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2011-10-03-saunders-contribution-to-kopano-and-uct-honoured.) That extract implies that “Belsen” was the original official name. I am reasonably sure that Belsen was never the official name rather than just a nickname. The article was written nearly 40 years after I started there so it seems that history has been rewritten by those who weren’t there. Below is a history of Driekoppen written in 1974 by a fellow student when I was there. The magazine doesn’t have information about who wrote it and if I ever knew who it was I have long since forgotten.
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| First page of a 1974 article about the history of Driekoppen. (4 Thwart was the name of a “literary” magazine written and published on a very irregular schedule by Driekoppen students.) |
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| The rest of the 1974 article about the history of Driekoppen. |
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| Another article from around 19 years later about the history of Driekoppen |
My memory is also that my father, who returned from the
Second World War to resume his studies, referred to Belsen as just a
nickname. He wasn’t in Driekoppen /
Belsen though, but in what was then called Men’s Residence. In 1950 that was renamed as Smuts Hall after
Jan Smuts and as of June
2021 had the interim name Upper Campus Residence. (My mother was in what was then Women’s
Residence, later renamed as Fuller Hall.)
Jan Smuts was a military officer and later Prime Minister of what was
then the Union of South Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts#
I read somewhere that he was the only person present at the signing of
the peace treaties at the end of both the First and Second World Wars. This article https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-06-21-the-name-smuts-hall-is-no-more-decides-uct-council/
notes that “Smuts’ legacy is controversial, as his government oversaw British
colonialism in SA and segregation laws referred to by some historians as “small
apartheid” to distinguish it from the official apartheid policy introduced by
the National Party.” It also states: “His
policies at home are seen by some to be at variance with his involvement in
drafting the UN Charter, which recognises universal human rights for people of
all races.” Another article, by Emeritus
Professor Timothy Crowe, paints a more nuanced picture https://www.rationalstandard.com/p/smuts-hall-past-prospective-changes. (Tim Crowe and I were contemporaries in
Driekoppen and occasional running partners.)
In the photo below the buildings on the extreme left and extreme right are Fuller Hall (previously Women’s Residence) and the one formerly called Smuts Hall (before that, Men’s Residence). The buildings immediately behind them are the Arts Block and the Mathematics Building, respectively. The mountain in the middle in the background is Devil’s Peak, with part of Table Mountain visible on the left. The statue in the middle of the photo, just above the arch, is of Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes’s will provided for the establishment of the international Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford, apparently the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes However, his legacy is complicated. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Must_Fall eventually succeeded in having his statue removed. The building in the middle with the 6 columns and a flagpole above it was called Jameson Hall in my day. The steps in front of it were called Jammie Steps and were a favorite place for students to hang out between classes. Jameson Hall was named after Leander Starr Jameson, who had some infamous collaborations with Cecil Rhodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leander_Starr_Jameson. After the statue of Rhodes was removed Jameson Hall was renamed Memorial Hall and then in 2018 Sarah Baartman Hall https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2018-12-13-renaming-memorial-hall-sarah-baartman-hall. (UNC has also had a statue removed, that of the Confederate monument Silent Sam, after student protests. Some campus buildings here that had been named after slave-holders have been renamed.)
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| UCT upper campus, before removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes. |
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| UCT upper campus, after removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes. |
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| Students hanging out on Jammie Steps. Source of image unknown. |
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| UCT with the Rhodes Memorial towards the top of the image, at the end of Rhodes Memorial Street. (Image from Google Maps.) |
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| Rhodes Memorial, with Devil’s Peak in the background. (Photo found on the Internet, source unknown.) |
In 1993 the Driekoppen House Committee proposed that a new
name be given to the res. Residents were
asked for suggestions, with the following guidelines: (1) The name can be in
any South African language; (2) The name should preferably not be that of a
person; (3) If the suggested name is that of a person, then this person should
not have or have had any specific political affiliation. According to the information I was sent about
the name change, the House Committee received 11 suggested names and chose 3 of
them to put to a vote by the residents.
The ballot first asked if the resident had an objection to changing the
name. The majority of those who voted
had no objection (78%), while 22% objected.
Of those who had no objection, 59% voted for the res to be called Kopano
Residence, with “'Kopano” apparently being a Sesotho word that means a place of
unity. I don’t know if having “kop” (Afrikaans
for “head”) still being part of the name was a deliberate link to the previous
name.
In the image below, Driekoppen is across Woolsack Drive from the UCT cricket oval. It consisted of four residential buildings named after the colors they were painted – Blue, Green, Yellow, and Brown Blocks. At the time the capacity was 253 students, all in single rooms. The L-shaped block is also a residential building, added much later. There were 4 blocks when the res was first occupied in 1965 until well after when I was there (1973-1977). I presume the L-shaped building has some shared rooms because according to information on the UCT website “Kopano houses 367 male students in five blocks, mostly in single rooms with internet connections. There are four TV rooms with DSTV, and there is also a pub.” There wasn’t an internet back in my day, and my first couple of years there were before South Africa had a TV service. There was a pub, called the Verge Inn (say it quickly), now apparently called just The Verge. Back in our day the pub did not have a license to sell alcohol. For at least a while, one of the ways around that was to make students pay up front for beer or wine to be bought for them.
The kitchen and dining hall were in the parts under the words “KleenKicksUCT Sneaker Cleaning” (whatever that might mean, it certainly wasn’t there back in the day). The building under the marker after “Kopano Residence” was the main entrance, including the pub. The second floor had a large Common Room (lounge), which later became the TV room. The house to the right of the new L-shaped building is where the warden lived.
The squash courts were already there in my time and there was a pool, though it appears to have been modified in the interim. The “UCT Gym” above the swimming pool is a more recent addition, as is the “Off Road Cycle Track” on the left in the image. What is labelled “UCT FC Kopano Astroturf” was a grass soccer field and also had a baseball diamond. Several of the buildings on the south side of Woolsack Drive appear to be new, especially those to the left of the cricket oval. There was a “Cricket Pavilion” back in the day. I presume it has been modernized in the interim. The “University of Cape Town Athletics Club” was the road running / cross country clubhouse, in a rather decrepit part of the cricket pavilion.
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| Driekoppen/Belsen/Kopano and environs. (Image from Google Maps.) |
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| Driekoppen/Belsen/Kopano relative to the main UCT campus. (Image from Google Maps.) |
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| Driekoppen/Belsen/Kopano is towards the lower right of this photo, showing the colors of the buildings – Blue block is on the left, Green block is towards the front, with Yellow block behind it, and Brown block at the back. This photo is apparently from about the time I was there, and by comparing it with the image above one can see that there have been substantial changes around the cricket oval. |
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| Front entrance of Driekoppen/Belsen/Kopano, at about the time I was there. (Source of photo unknown.) |
There weren’t any elevators in Driekoppen, though Blue,
Yellow, and Brown blocks each had 4 floors with bedrooms (Green block had just
two). UCT more generally was not very
accessible for anyone in a wheelchair.
By the way, another difference between South Africa and the US is the way floors in a multi-story building are numbered. In the US the floors are numbered starting at 1 for the floor at ground level. In South Africa the floor at ground level is usually called ground floor, with first floor being the first floor above ground level. So, for instance, in Blue block in Driekoppen the floors were called Blue ground, Blue first, Blue second, and Blue third.
Soon after writing the above paragraph I happened upon an article about what AI says about the numbering. Here are some relevant parts:
European/British
System:
The street-level
floor is referred to as the Ground Floor (G) or is labeled with a
"0".
The floor above the
Ground Floor is the First Floor (1st Floor or 1).
Subsequent floors
are numbered sequentially upwards (2nd Floor, 3rd Floor, etc.).
Many former British
colonies and European countries follow this system.
In buildings with
levels below ground, negative numbers may be used (e.g., -1 for the first level
below ground).
American/North
American System:
The street-level
floor is referred to as the First Floor (1st Floor).
The floor above the
First Floor is the Second Floor (2nd Floor).
Subsequent floors
are numbered sequentially upwards (3rd Floor, 4th Floor, etc.).
Each block in Driekoppen had one communal bathroom. The ones in Blue block had three showers (in a row, without any partitions), one bath (in a walled-off section, with a door), and several basins. On the other side of a dividing wall was a long urinal plus 3-4 toilet stalls. Each of the internal walls, including those around the bath and between toilet stalls, was made of brick and mortar, rather than the flimsy dividers used in public restrooms in the US. Even the doors of the toilet stalls were full height. On moving to the US I was surprised that “walls” and doors of toilet stalls don’t extend all the way to the ground. Americans don’t seem to like privacy when doing their “business” (see photo below). Maybe the gap under the divider makes it easier to clean the floor.
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| A typical US toilet stall with a flimsy divider and door that end about a foot above the floor. (This one is in our building at work.) |
The Driekoppen dining hall served three meals a day. On weekdays breakfast was 7:30-8:15 AM, lunch
12:30-1:30 PM, and supper 6:30-7:15 PM.
Breakfast was a little later on weekends and supper a little earlier on
Sundays. A student who had a late class
or who was playing sport at the usual supper time could request a late
supper. Coffee was served in the Common
Room at 9:00 PM. Sometimes there were
cookies too, which tended to be grabbed very quickly. Meals were served cafeteria style. The only choice at a particular meal was to
take what was being served or go without.
One couldn’t go back for seconds, but there was usually plenty of white
and brown bread if anyone was still hungry.
I don’t remember if one could request a vegetarian option. Food allergies had probably not been invented
yet. There were several Jewish students,
so I presume there was a kosher option, but almost certainly no Muslims in res
and so not a halal option. Some dishes
were served on a very regular basis, such as fish and chips (fries) – if I
remember correctly that was for lunch on most Fridays.
The Driekoppen dining hall had a “High table” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_table). It wasn’t on a raised platform and was used just for “supper” (dinner) on particular days. I don’t remember exactly when it was used – maybe once a week. I think that on some occasions the Warden ate there with a group of invited students. On other occasions, such as in the photo below, the sub-wardens ate there as a group. The people eating at high table had to wear jackets and ties (and those who had an academic gown wore that too). The rest of the students in the dining hall dressed casually. Although those who had eaten at high table usually had a glass of port afterwards, I think it was rare to have wine, particularly in the quantities visible in the photo. Maybe that was a special occasion, such as a formal dinner for the whole residence, in which case everyone in the dining room would have had to wear a jacket and tie.
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| High table some time in 1975. Seated L to R: Paul(?) Seftel, Harry Dixon, Ross Emmerton, Yours Truly, Geoff Carter, Tjalling Ypma. The waiter was William (last name unknown). Tjalling was a professor of applied math at Western Washington University for many years before retiring. |
In the prehistoric era when I started at UCT, not only was
there not yet a television service in South Africa but it was also long before
the advent of cell phones. There weren’t
even landline connections available in the dorms. In Driekoppen each floor had a telephone in
the passage for incoming calls. (In Blue
Block, because the floors were shorter, with fewer rooms, a phone had to be
shared by two floors.) There was a small
switchboard near the main entrance of the res.
Incoming calls had to go through the switchboard. The switchboard operator would then use the
intercom on the relevant floor to inform the relevant student there was a call
and then the student had to take the call on the phone in the passageway. For outgoing calls there were 2-3 pay phones
in the complex. There was a small
convenience store called Pops near the switchboard. The operating hours varied across the years I
was there. Initially it was run by an
old man, who was referred to as Pop and may have been the source of the name. Later the store was operated by students or
by housekeepers, who also manned the switchboard. I think first-year students had to operate
the switchboard in the evenings and maybe also over weekends.
As mentioned earlier, on the main campus there was one res for men and another for women and these were sometimes paired for various activities or functions. There was a women’s res called Baxter Hall a little way down the road from Driekoppen, and we were sometimes paired with them for activities. There were occasional raids between Driekoppen and Baxter. The one mentioned in the article below happened in 1971, which was a couple of years before my time. This was printed in 1974 (when I was a second-year student), in a Driekoppen magazine “4 Thwart” that I mentioned earlier as being published on a very irregular schedule.
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| Raids between Driekoppen and Baxter in 1971. |
Driekoppen had a drinking song. I think the first couple of lines were
something like “The Belsen boys are happy / And the Belsen boys are free”. There was probably something about the “Baxter
birds” in the middle. The only part I am
reasonably sure about is the ending “For
the motto of the Belsen boys / Is come and have a drink with me.”
By the time I started in 1973, initiation (hazing) had been banned by UCT, not just in Driekoppen but in all dorms. The ban went into effect for the 1971 intake and was recent enough that some of the students who were still in res in 1973 had gone through initiation. One of them was Zob Smythe, who wrote the piece below in 1974. I remember Zob, at least by name even if I don’t recall anything else about him. He mentions extra telephone duty a few times in the article. We still had to do telephone duty – because someone had to do it – but there was no longer extra telephone duty as a punishment.
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| Article about initiation in Driekoppen the last time before it was banned. |
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| Continuation of the article. |
The Warden during my first two years in Driekoppen was Prof.
Stuart Saunders, who was a very respected researcher and clinician in the
medical school: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Saunders_(academic). I don’t know how long he had been Warden
prior to 1973. He later served as UCT’s
Vice-Chancellor from 1981 to 1996. He
was a staunch opponent of Apartheid. As noted
in the Wikipedia article “As vice chancellor he violated the Group Areas Act (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Areas_Act)
by opening university's student housing to all students, regardless of
ethnicity.”
The Warden during the rest of my time in Driekoppen was Prof. John Cumpsty, who was the first Head (i.e. Chair) of the Department of Religious Studies. Because I was a more senior student at that stage, I interacted with Prof. Cumpsty more frequently than I had interacted with Prof. Saunders. However, I don’t recall much about him other than his name and what department he was in.
I’ll end this “introductory” section with copies of the Driekoppen regulations and constitution. The version of the regulations is from 1977, the constitution from 1974. It is much the same as those from other years when I was there, but the printing is a little more readable than some of the others in my files. Page 2 of the regulations has some items I have mentioned above, such as laundry numbers, laundry bags, and mealtimes. Item #1 on page 4 states that “All residents are expected to be aware of the University Council’s ruling with regard to lady visitors and are expected to adhere to these times.” I don’t know what the ruling was, though it wasn’t an issue I had to be concerned about because I didn’t have any “lady visitors”. Driekoppen was very open and difficult to police even if the university had wanted to. The other large dorms generally had a single entrance for students (though they probably had rear entrances for staff) and so it was easy to check on who was coming and going. Driekoppen, on the other hand, had 4 separate residential blocks, each with two entrances, so it was much easier to come and go.
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| Driekoppen regulations, 1977, page 1. |
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| Driekoppen regulations, 1977, page 3. |
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| Driekoppen regulations, 1977, page 4. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 1. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 2. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 3. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 4. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 5. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 6. |
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| Driekoppen constitution, page 7. |
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