Recollections of my first two years at UCT – 1973 and 1974
After the lengthy introduction in “Ancyent blog27 Universities and residence halls”, we finally get to more personal memories.
Here in the US high school students typically go on campus tours of at least some of the colleges they are considering applying to. Most students apply to several colleges. Our two kids each applied to just two colleges. In each case we went on tours of both of them. (Both applied to UNC, were accepted, and completed their undergraduate degrees here.) I don’t know about other South African students, either back in my day or now, but I didn’t go on any campus tours. Further, as I mentioned towards the end of “Ancyent blog26 High school, wrapping up grade 12”, I applied to just one university – the University of Cape Town (UCT), the alma mater of both my parents. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I liked math and science, as long as the latter didn’t involve laboratory experiments, but didn’t want to be a math or science teacher. Initially I applied to do a BSc. Then someone (I don’t recall who) said that because I was good at math I should consider becoming an actuary. UCT had a 4-year Bachelor of Business Science (BBusSc) degree with one of the options being to major in actuarial science. So I decided to switch to that while keeping my options open by continuing to take some science classes.
My parents didn’t take me to Cape Town. Instead they put me on a train in the last week of February 1973. There wasn’t a direct rail route from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town. (There no longer appears to be any way to travel by train between those cities.) The route from Port Elizabeth involved heading a long way inland, to a small town in the Karoo called De Aar, which was little more than a railway junction. De Aar is on the main line between Pretoria and Cape Town that is still used by the luxurious Blue Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Train_(South_Africa). At least we didn’t have to change trains, though maybe there was shunting around of carriages so that some went on to Pretoria and others to Cape Town. I think the journey took at least 24 hours, with the stop in De Aar being in the middle of the night. For more on train travel in South Africa see the entry “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”.
There were several other students heading to Cape Town on the same train. When my parents were seeing me off at the station, my father recognized one of the other parents and took me across to introduce me to their daughter, Mary-Anne Potts. I think her father was a doctor and that’s how our fathers knew one another. Mary-Anne was going to study medicine (and did indeed qualify as a doctor). Being very shy, I don’t think I said anything to her. Once at UCT we may have greeted one another a couple of times in passing but I don’t recall ever having hadf a conversation with her.
While still at the railway station I didn’t meet any of the other students. I don’t recall who I had to share a sleeping compartment with on the train, or even if they were fellow students. Once we were under way I did manage to meet some of the others, with a few of them even heading for the same res / dorm as me. The ones I met happened to be Chinese South Africans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_South_Africans. Their ancestors had moved to South Africa in the late 1800s or very early 1900s. so their families had been in the country for at least a few generations. The Chinese community was small and their status under Apartheid was ambiguous. They generally had to live in their own communities and attend their own schools. But at least by the early 1970s they were allowed to study at “White” universities, including living in the university residence halls. Their status on the train was particularly ambiguous. They were allowed to travel in a “White” sleeping compartment on the train (though maybe they weren’t allowed to share it with a White person). However, they were not allowed to eat in the “White” dining saloon but had to get a steward to bring their meals to their compartment.
One of the Chinese students was Pat Wong Fung, who was going to be in his second or maybe third year, and was also heading to Driekoppen Residence. His brother, Lester, was starting his first year but was going to be in a different res. We became quite good friends. Pat is at least partly responsible for the profession I ended up in. He was majoring in Mathematical Statistics and later persuaded me to take a class in that field. The only photo I have of Pat is the one below from the year before I started at UCT.
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| Pat Wong Fung is second from the right in the front row in this photo of our dorm’s 1972 intramural soccer team. (Some of these guys had left res or graduated at the end of 1972. I remember a few of the others who were still there in 1973.) |
A few years later Pat and his family moved to Vancouver, Canada. We exchanged a letter or two after that. But because I was a terrible correspondent in those days before email, we eventually lost contact. Over the years I have tried multiple internet searches without finding any trace of Pat.
An aside about an incident involving Pat a year or two later: After Bill Clegg (second from the left in the front row in the photo above) posted that photo to a Facebook group for UCT students from the 1970s, I commented:
When Pat Wong Fung turned 21, we
drove him a few km up Main Road and dropped him off in his underwear, making
him run back to Belsen like that. At the
time streaking was quite popular. Pat decided that he needed to streak
properly, not just in his underwear. So he took his underwear off. Unfortunately, just then a police van drove
past and they arrested him.
Bill responded:
David Couper I recall that it was
a very cold night when Pat streaked and was arrested for indecent exposure. A journalist with a sense of humor reported in
the newspaper that he was released due to lack of evidence.
Another mutual friend, Tom Amoore, added:
David Couper we picked him up as
he was about to pass the police station. Then we let him out again just before the
Woolsack. Unfortunately some lady had
complained to the police and they were following us. I waited with him in Wynberg police Station -
non-white section! - till Saunders [Prof. Stuart Saunders, the warden of
Driekoppen] came to bail him out. Saunders held me responsible for the event
forever thereafter.
I have no recollection of how I got from the railway station in Cape Town to Driekoppen. I presume I took a taxi with some of the friends I had made on the train.
The first week in res was designated as Freshers Week, intended for us to get oriented, settle in, and meet one another. (As I noted in “Ancyent blog27 Universities and residence halls” the gender-neutral term “Fresher” was used rather than “Freshman”.) So, for much of the week there were mostly just first-year students around, with a sprinkling of more senior ones. There were no classes scheduled, though we probably had to register for classes. There were various events, including various inter-res games and sports, as well as a Freshers’ Hop. At the Hop some students referred to something called “hunt the grunt” which was a very male chauvinistic pastime. There’s actually a version defined in the online Urban Dictionary, though it is more “formal” and cruder than the one at the Hop: “Game played after guys have had a few drinks to see who can score with the ugliest [woman]”. There wasn’t any mention of scoring at the Hop. Considering my own looks, or lack thereof, I didn’t exactly have much room to refer to a woman as a grunt. I remember dancing with one young woman who looked quite good in the dim light at the Hop, but not so great when I later saw her in daylight. She doubtless thought the same about me. I have no memory of what her name was.
For better or worse, I spent little (any?) time chasing women while a student at UCT. That was in large part because I was painfully shy, and also because I was lazy. In all my years as a student there, I don’t think I ever kissed a woman (or a man, in case you were wondering). I was still pudgy in my first couple of years at UCT. Unlike most of my fellow students, who back in those days were generally svelte, I seldom wore T-shirts, because they emphasized my pudginess. I have also never been even remotely handsome, and I have no fashion sense. I don’t even have any personality. I probably spent too much time thinking my own thoughts rather than trying to engage more deeply with other people. I am officially the most boring person on the planet. That was still true when I was already in my late thirties and married: “David is so boring that not even the Devil would be interested in him” – announcement by Allegra (last name unknown), a friend of some friends, at a barbecue at the latter friends' house (to their great embarrassment and to the amusement of Riëtta). Boring but not bored, that’s me.
I recall the names of just two female fellow students, one because of an unusual nickname (and an unusual pronunciation of her last name). Driekoppen had an annual formal dance. I think I attended in my first year and that my date was Patricia “Tree” Botha, “Botha” being pronounced the way it looks, rather than the usual South African pronunciation, which is more like Boa-ta (with a silent “h” as in Mississippi). Helen Bradford majored in math with me. She was intimidatingly intelligent and usually finished top of each class. She could have been cute if she hadn’t had a terrible skin condition on her face, perhaps from a very bad case of acne. She also seemed to be very shy. Our final-year math class was quite small, but although we probably greeted each other, I don’t remember us ever having had a conversation. I did hear her speak occasionally though. She had a very deep or hoarse-sounding voice. I later occasionally ran with her brother, Peter.
If the above makes it seem that I was unhappy, nothing could be further from the truth. I enjoyed my time at UCT. I probably enjoyed it too much. If I have any regret – at least for something that was under my control – it was that I didn’t put in more effort academically.
A few fellow students did spend more time chasing young women. One of them was my old high school friend and fellow Driekoppen resident, Peter Bond. One evening he was visiting a young woman in her room in a residence hall where male visitors were not allowed in the women’s rooms. A warden or other official was making rounds. To try to avoid detection Peter climbed out of the window and stood on the windowsill. But he lost his grip. I don’t know what floor he was on or how far he fell. Peter broke something in his back, though fortunately he wasn’t paralyzed and didn’t appear to suffer any long-term consequences.
Of the Freshers’ sports, the only one I remember participating in was athletics (track and field). That took place on the Saturday before the first day of class. It was held on the university’s track in the suburb of Pinelands, some distance away from the main campus. I don’t see a track in Pinelands on Google Maps, so I presume it no longer exists. I had been signed up to run the 800m, 1,500m, and 3,000m for Driekoppen. The day of the meet was very hot and I seemed to be coming down with a case of the flu, so I withdrew from the 800m. I don’t know where I finished in the 1,500m but managed to place second in the 3,000m. Both races were won by Graham Brodrick, who was also in Driekoppen. Graham had gone to the same high school as me but had been a year ahead. I think he had taken a gap year, maybe in New Zealand, though perhaps he had done his national service between high school and university rather than deferring as I and many others had done.
I remember a couple of activities or incidents in that first week that were not official parts of the “program”. For the first few days I mostly hung out with a couple of classmates from high school who were also in Driekoppen – Peter Bond and Neil Solomons (mentioned in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”). One of those events was my one and only political demonstration (or at least attempted demonstration) in my time at UCT. The other was related to a drinking game (for which I was just a spectator).
That week the government issued a “banning order” for Paul Pretorius, the President of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_South_African_Students). A banning order was much like house arrest and is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_subject_to_banning_orders_under_apartheid. That page contains a list of people who were subject to banning orders, which shows that the one for Pretorius was issued on February 27, 1973, which confirms that it was in the right time frame. One evening we got word that Pretorius was flying back to Cape Town that evening and that there would be an anti-government demonstration held at the airport to greet his arrival. Peter, Neil, and I, as well as various other students, took taxis out to Cape Town Airport (at the time it was called the D.F. Malan Airport, named after the man who was the South African Prime Minister from when the National Party came to power un 1948 until resigning in 1954 at the age of 80). No-one seemed to know what flight Pretorius was on or when he was expected to arrive. Either he wasn’t on any flight that evening or government agents managed to get him off his flight and spirited him away without anyone seeing him. So the demonstration was rather a damp squib. Pretorius went on to become a highly respected lawyer. It is somewhat surprising that there isn’t a Wikipedia page about him, especially considering that nearly everyone else in the Wikipedia list above of people subject to banning orders has one.
After the first few days in res, Peter, Neil, and I had made other friends and so spent less time hanging out with one another. The first-year students in Driekoppen had quickly become acquainted with a favorite student watering-hole, the Pig & Whistle, usually referred to as just “The Pig”. The Pig has long since ceased to exist and looking at Google Maps I am no longer sure of where exactly it used to be. I think it was on the corner of Main and Grotto Roads, Rondebosch. It was a relatively easy walk from Driekoppen – less than half a mile away as the crow flies. But it was at a substantially lower elevation, which meant that the return journey was mostly uphill. In addition, there wasn’t a very direct route, so it was probably more than half a mile, particularly if staggering back after having had a beer or two too many. On one occasion, one of my friends, Peter Hofmeyr, took a more direct route, climbing over fences. Later he realized that he had gone through the official residence of the South African State President. Fortunately for him there didn’t seem to be any watchdogs patrolling the grounds. (At the time the State President was a ceremonial role, with the Prime Minster being the real head of the government. South Africa no longer has a State President. The head of the government is now called the President.) The property that Peter traversed must no longer be owned by the government because I don’t see anything in that vicinity with a relevant label on Google Maps.)
After a different visit to The Pig with Peter and some others, on the way home we decided to “liberate” some of the street name signs on Lovers Walk, which is close to Driekoppen. Someone – maybe Peter, who was an engineering student – had some spanners in his room. We retrieved those and returned to Lovers Walk. I don’t recall how we reached up to unbolt the signs, but we managed to get at least one, which I still have. (Having a sign saying “Lovers Walk” bolted so loosely on a pole that it is easy for drunk students to remove is just asking for it to be taken.) So, after the petty theft mentioned in “Ancyent blog22 Primary school years, part 3” I had graduated into being a hardened criminal. I hope that after more than 50 years the statute of limitations has run out, otherwise I have just incriminated myself. Do you think I should mail the sign back to the Cape Town City Council?
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| Purloined sign from Lovers Walk, Rondebosch, Cape Town. |
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| The Pig & Whistle. Photo seems to be in several places on the Internet, without attribution. |
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| A Pig & Whistle T-shirt, found somewhere on the Internet. |
I don’t remember who I was with on a particular visit to The Pig in my first week at UCT. On that occasion a few people were having down-down competitions, that is, trying to see who could drink a beer the quickest. Someone decided that drinking one beer at a time was not enough and that they should use a yard glass. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_of_ale. The Pig had yard glasses available, but in order to use one it was necessary to hand over the cost of the yard glass, because of the high risk of it getting broken. There was a whip-around to raise the funds. I don’t remember how many students had a go at drinking the yard of beer. The yard glass was indeed eventually broken.
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| A yard glass. |
Aside on South African beer.
At the time the market was dominated by two beers, Castle Lager and Lion
Lager, both brewed by South African Breweries (SAB). Together their market share was probably over
90%, at least among the White population.
My father drank Castle, though sometimes started with an Amstel. I drank Lion.
As well as Lion Lager, there was also Lion Ale, which I preferred,
though it was much harder to find. Much
later (in 2002), SAB took over the American company Miller Brewing, becoming SABMiller. At that time it was apparently the world’s
second-largest brewing company in terms of revenue. Then in 2016 SABMiller was acquired by
Anheuser-Busch InBev. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Breweries.
One of the first-year students with me in Driekoppen was Norman Adami. He and I were both registered for a BBusSc degree, though with different majors. He was also in my Economics I class. I think Norm must have come from a quite wealthy family. First-year students had to obtain special permission to bring a car to res. Norm arrived with a brand new Alfa Romeo Alfetta, which was green with white (or maybe cream) upholstery. We were acquaintances rather than friends, though he did once give me a ride to an Economics tutorial. Tying this to the aside … after completing his undergraduate degree at UCT, Norm did an MBA at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and then joined SAB in 1979. He rose through the ranks and eventually became CEO of SABMiller Americas. He eventually retired from SABMiller in 2014. https://prabook.com/web/norman_j.adami/339279
Back in early 1973 beer cost 25 South African cents at The Pig. That was about 50 US cents at the exchange rate back then. Not only has there been substantial inflation since then, but the exchange rate has cratered. In 1973 one South African rand could buy about two US dollars. Now it takes more than 17 South African rands to buy a single US dollar, that is, the exchange rate has changed by a factor of about 35.
Students, or at least those in my circle of friends, gradually gravitated away from The Pig. (More later on where I and some of my friends used to go instead.) I don’t recall whether it had already closed down by the time I graduated. Some students became regulars at the Foresters Arms (“Forries”) in Newlands. But that wasn’t within walking distance of Driekoppen. Also, although there were some students, there were also a lot of what later came to be known as yuppies. So it seemed less student-friendly. I think I went to Forries just once. Forries is still going strong – and from the entry on Google Maps is still more of a yuppie than a student hangout as the description there says: “Upmarket restaurant & bar serving draught beers, plus a menu of global dishes and wood-fired pizzas.”
Earlier I mentioned that initiation (hazing) had been banned at UCT a couple of years earlier. But there was one form of initiation that still took place. In the middle of the night we were dragged out of bed and dumped in a cold bath. To make this be something other than initiation, it wasn’t restricted to first-year students – a few older students were also dumped into the cold bath. One might think that it would have been easy to avoid this fate by locking one’s door. Well, first one had to be aware that it was a possibility. Even if one did lock one’s door, one had to be aware that in many rooms it was also possible to get in through the window. Most rooms were in pairs, with their doors next to one another and their windows also close to one another, as can be seen in the image below. As there was no air-conditioning, in the warmer months windows were usually left open at night to allow a cooling breeze (or cooling gale) to enter. There were no bars or anything else to prevent entry through an open window. If one could access one of the rooms in a pair, one could climb out of its window and swing through the window of the room alongside. (Yes, we did that, even for rooms on the top floor.) Being dumped in a cold bath was the only thing even remotely related to initiation. Some first-years managed to avoid that without even being aware of it, for instance if they had locked their doors and happened to be in one of the rooms that wasn’t part of a pair (or if both students in paired rooms had happened to have locked their doors).
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| One of the buildings in Driekoppen, showing that room windows were mostly in pairs. (Image from Google Maps.) |
For all of my time in Driekoppen I was on the first floor of Blue block, that is “Blue first”. As explained in “Ancyent blog27 Universities and residence halls”, in the US that would have been considered the second floor. Below is a list of the room assignments for Blue (and Green) block in 1973. There were three Daves among the 11 of us on Blue first – Dave Clark, Dave Wilson (who I think was in his third year), and me. (I see Peter Hofmeyr’s last name is typed incorrectly as Hofmeyer.)
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| List of room assignments in Blue and Green blocks in Driekoppen in 1973. “S.W.” is for sub-warden and “H.C.” for house committee. One of the rooms on each floor was larger than the others. Sub-wardens and house committee members were usually assigned to these larger rooms. |
On to the start of classes …
I had registered for a BBusSc degree in actuarial science. In that program we were required to take four courses in our first year, three of which were Mathematics I, Economics I, and Industrial Sociology. I am not sure what the fourth one was. I think it was two half courses, Compound Interest & Annuities Certain, and Introduction to Management Accounting. I didn’t keep a copy of the student handbook from that era. The only one I have is from 1985 (when I taught in the BBusSc program). By then the names and timing of some of the courses had changed. Looking at my academic record does not add enlightenment because it shows only completed classes and not those that I started but later dropped. I did end up taking (and finishing) Introduction to Management Accounting in my third year.
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| UCT Faculty of Commerce handbook, cover and the page showing the actuarial science curriculum in 1985. Yellow was the color for the Faculty of Commerce. |
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| HP-35 calculator (from the Wikipedia page mentioned above). |
I have had several other HP calculators since then, all of
which have used RPN. I currently have 4
physical ones – the 3 below are at home and I have another HP-15C (the smaller
calculator at the bottom) at work, which I “inherited” from a colleague who
passed away many years ago. I also have
an HP app on my iPhone, which I think mimics an HP-11C. It looks much like the 15C except that it is
arranged vertically rather than horizontally.
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| HP calculators in my collection, clockwise from top left HP-48G, HP-33S, HP-15C. |
In Applied Math I we had to learn how to program in FORTRAN. (It was still FORTRAN rather than Fortran when I last used it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran.) I think we had just a single session introducing us to the basics and then we were on our own. In those days UCT had either just one or perhaps two computers. If the latter there would have been one for the administration and the other for research and teaching. The one we had to use was operated by people in white lab coats. We couldn’t access the computer directly but instead had to submit our programs and data on punch cards. There was a room with several card punchers that we had to use. For those unfamiliar with punch cards, one card was used for each line of code or data. The combinations of holes punched in the card represented the various letters and numbers, with one column of the card representing a character. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card. After punching our cards, we had to place our deck of cards in a tray. The computer operators would then run them through the card reader, which submitted the information to the computer. The results were printed out on fan-fold paper (also known by other names, such as sprocket-feed paper, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery). The cards and printout were then placed in alphabetized cubby holes for collection by the submitter. Depending on how busy the computer was, it could take quite a while before one’s results were available. We would typically submit a deck of cards before a class and then hope the results were available after the class was over. If one had a typo on any of the cards, the program would fail. One had to throw away the offending card and type the line again on a new card – there was no way to make a correction to the original card. For someone who types as poorly and carelessly as I do, it could take days before even a very short program ran correctly.
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| Computer punch card (unpunched). I still have several of these, though it is many decades since I last had to use any. |
In mathematical classes the instructors used to write notes
on a chalkboard, for us to copy down.
Afterwards I re-wrote the notes more neatly in the same kind of
hard-covered exercise books we had used in high school. This served two purposes – the rewritten
version was easier for me to read than my rough scrawl I managed in the
classroom, and it gave me a chance to try to understand the work a little
better.
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| The books I used to re-write my notes in. These are the ones for Math I. |
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| A closer view of the page of notes above. The backward S is for “Warning”, the D is for “Definition”, and the T for “Theorem”. |
My closest friends in my first two years were Peter Hofmeyr,
who is mentioned above, Dave Clark and Terry Weyer. Peter and Dave were on the same floor in
Driekoppen as I was (Blue first, that is, one floor up from ground level). Terry was in a different block, at least in
our first year. Dave and Terry had been
classmates at Selbourne College in East London (the South African city, not the
eastern side of the little town in the UK).
Terry was studying building science and Dave civil engineering. Peter was from a small town in the middle of
nowhere called Burgersdorp. In high
school he was a boarder at Queens College in Queenstown. He was a year or two ahead of the other three
of us, and was studying civil engineering.
Dave had a girlfriend, Jacqui, who was still in high school during our first year at UCT. That isn’t creepy because they were only about a year apart in age. I remember her coming to visit Dave during a high school vacation. I saw on Facebook that although they each married someone else, they are Facebook friends. (Peter Whitfield, a medical student on our floor in his first year, also had a high school girlfriend, Linda. Peter didn’t return to res the following year. We found out later that his girlfriend had become pregnant and they had to get married. Recently I heard that he did qualify as a doctor, had 4 sons with his first wife, then ran away with his secretary and had another son.)
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| Official photo of residents (those that bothered to show up) in Driekoppen in 1973. I thought I had the actual photo somewhere, with no-one cut off and the names printed below but this is all I could find. The older guy with little hair in the middle in the front row is Prof. Stuart Saunders, who was the warden in my first two years. The strange object two rows above and slightly to the right of Prof. Saunders is P.C. Willy, the Driekoppen mascot. The photo was taken at the cricket pavilion, over the road from Driekoppen. |
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| Close-up of part of the above. I am third from the left in the second-last row (with my head slightly tilted). Fourth and fifth from the left in the same row are Terry Weyer and Dave Clark, |
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| Official photo of residents in Driekoppen in 1974. This was the best I could do in terms of taking a photo of a photo which is in a very wide but not very tall frame. Good luck trying to find me, especially because my name is printed as “D.C. Uper”. The photo was taken at the same location as the one above. |
In our first two years, Dave Clark, Terry Weyer, Peter
Hofmeyr, and I sometimes used to play cricket in the corridor, using a piece of
wood as a bat and a tennis ball. I don’t
recall if the wilder hitters in the group ever broke one of the light fittings in
the ceiling. (I was more careful than
some of the others.)
I think it was for the short first vac in 1973 or 1974 that I had a ride home to Port Elizabeth with Terry and his mother (and Dave), with the latter three continuing on to their homes in East London. Terry’s mother had a Volkswagen Beetle – the old version, not the more modern version that is more comfortable and somewhat more spacious. I don’t know how the four of us managed to fit into the Beetle with all of our luggage and I don’t recall how I returned to UCT at the end of the break. I was surprised by how Terry talked to or in front of his mother. I was used to foul language and used plenty of it myself, but I restricted that to when I was in the company of friends and didn’t use it in front of my parents. Terry, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have what might be called a “parent filter”, including using the f*** word very liberally in his mother’s presence.
In our first year or two Dave played rugby for the UCT under 20 team, playing in the local league against other clubs. One of the other clubs was the police rugby club. There was no love lost between UCT students and the police. I remember Dave coming back to res with bite marks on his body after playing against the police! I think Dave’s games were on Saturday mornings. On many Saturday afternoons Dave, Terry, Peter, and I went to the Newlands rugby stadium to watch the UCT first team and other clubs in local league games or Western Province playing an interprovincial game. Being students, seats were too expensive, so we stood the entire time, watching 2-3 games per afternoon.
In the cooler months I played intra-mural rugby and soccer. As in high school, I played with enthusiasm
but little (very little) ability.
Driekoppen had two soccer teams, an A and a B team. The A team needed a goalie. I agreed to play in that position for the A
team as long as I could also play in the outfield for the B team! With practices and games for the rugby team
and both soccer teams, I was active most days.
I also ran a few miles on days when I wasn’t playing another sport. I don’t recall if it was just in my first
year that I played on those three teams or also in my second year. Our intra-mural rugby team was called the
Pink Panthers. Several of the players
were from what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). They arranged for the Pink Panthers to tour
Rhodesia during the winter vac, playing against various local clubs in between
partying. I had originally planned to be
part of the trip and don’t recall why I later withdrew. That turned out to be a good decision. I failed the mid-year exam in Math and spent
a good part of the vac studying. If I hadn’t
done so I would probably have failed at the end of the year.
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| Pink Panthers rugby jersey. As can be seen, pink was in the name of the team, not a reflection on the color of the uniform. (Photo of the jersey I still have, complete with Driekoppen laundry label.) |
Several activities early in the academic year were
associated with Rag.
What is Rag? According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag_(student_society)):
Rags are student-run charitable
fundraising organisations that are widespread in the United Kingdom and
Ireland. Some are run as student societies whilst others sit with campaigns
within their student unions. Most universities in the UK and Ireland, as well
as some in the Netherlands and the Commonwealth countries of South Africa and
Singapore have a rag.
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the origin of the word "rag" is from “An act of ragging; esp. an extensive display of noisy disorderly conduct, carried on in defiance of authority or discipline”, and provides a citation from 1864, noting that the word was known in Oxford before this date.
UCT now claims that RAG is an acronym for “Remember and Give” (see below). That is a recent interpretation given to the word. Back in the day the meaning and origin of Rag were as in the Wikipedia entry above.
UCT RAG (Remember and Give), is
the student fundraising sector of SHAWCO (Students' Health and Welfare Centres
Organisation). RAG volunteers organise a number of student and corporate
fundraising events each year, with all proceeds going to SHAWCO's many
community programmes. https://www.uct.ac.za/students/student-life-community-service/rag
Even back in the day the funds raised by Rag were all for SHAWCO, https://shawco.org/, which has apparently been in existence since 1943 – not only before my time at UCT but even before I was born.
There were a variety of activities associated with Rag, not all of which had a substantial fundraising component. One group of activities was during Rag Olympics Week. The only two events I can recall are toboggan races on Jammie steps and a pram (baby stroller) race. The toboggan races were relay events. The start was at the bottom of several flights of steps. The first person in the team then ran up the steps with the (very flimsy) wooden toboggan, touched the top step and then dived off onto the toboggan, trying to get enough momentum to be able to slide across a landing between the flights of steps. Cardboard was placed at the bottom to help slow the toboggans. Once the first person in the team reached the bottom the next person grabbed the toboggan and repeated the process. I didn’t take part in the actual races, though I did try going down during practice sessions. I certainly didn’t dive off the top step but started from a position already lying on the toboggan. There were frequent injuries in this event. It was eventually banned when in 2008 a student hit his head a died. Judging by this YouTube video, in more recent years there has been a watered-down version of this race, with students seated on pieces of cardboard rather than lying on toboggans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhxfNqFz0To.
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| Toboggan racer in 1977 (source of image unknown). |
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| More photos of toboggan races on Jammie steps (source unknown). |
The pram race back then was before the invention of jogging
strollers, such as the Baby Jogger. Some
of the “prams” were built by engineering students specifically for the race,
while a few were off-the-shelf pushchairs / strollers. The event was a relay race from downtown Cape
Town to the UCT campus. Teams tried to
recruit the lightest possible “baby”, usually a female student, to ride in the
pram. In the photo below I am just to
the right of the center of the photo, wearing a headband. On the far left is Roger Cameron, who was the
captain of the UCT cross country club and on the far right is Peter Whipp, who
was a star on the UCT rugby team, as well as playing for Western Province and
for the South African national team (Springboks). Not sure what year that was. I have another photo of a Driekoppen team
after the 1975 race that I will add later.
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| Waiting for the start of the pram (relay) race, from downtown Cape Town to UCT. Solly Kamer’s was a chain of liquor stores, bottle stores as they are known in South Africa. At the time even beer and wine could be sold only in bottle stores, not in supermarkets or other stores. (Source of image unknown, as is the person responsible for the misplaced apostrophe in “Olympic’s”.) |
Another Rag activity was selling the Rag magazine called
“Sax Appeal”. It contained a variety of
jokes and articles, with some of the latter being messages of support from
various officials and others being irreverent.
I don’t have a copy of one from back in the day, though one of the items
below is the complete magazine from 1997.
Sometimes items ae a little too irreverent. For instance, in 2009 the Vice-Chancellor,
Dr. Max Price, felt that he had to issue an apology: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2009-03-02-sax-appeal-the-vc-speaks. At least he notes at the end that no action
will be taken against the students involved: “I would like to make clear that
UCT will not discipline the students involved nor will we censor the magazine
in the future. We will ensure that the editorial advisory board play their role
appropriately. And we will ensure that our students understand that with every
right – also that of expressing oneself – comes a responsibility.”
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| Covers of Sax Appeals from the 1970s (source unknown). |
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| Sax Appeal in 1997. The whole of that issue is available here: https://archive.org/details/UCTRAGSAXAppeal1997/mode/2up. |
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| When out trying to sell Sax Appeals we were supposed to wear stickers like those below, as well as giving one to each person who purchased the magazine. (Photo is of a couple that I still have.) |
A Rag Queen and two princesses were crowned. I think this happened at a Rag Ball, which I
definitely never attended. Rag
culminated in the Rag procession down Adderley Street in downtown Cape
Town. Students, some in fancy dress
costumes, walked alongside the procession shaking tins to collect
donations. (In our second year, Terry
Weyer’s “fancy dress” was to open the zipper in his pants and expose his penis
with a ribbon tied around it. If anyone
noticed, they didn’t say anything.) The procession
included a variety of floats, including one for the Rag Queen and her
princesses, and a troop of drum majorettes (“Drummies”). There was also a group of males, which I
thought were called “Bummies” but according to this video are called “Dummies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RXb_yDS7go. Maybe “Dummies” is just a newer, more
politically correct name. I managed to
find two YouTube videos of Rag processions, one from just a few years before my
time and another from much more recently: UCT Rag processions 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8uuelyw5U
and 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV7EkMaSTSg
I mentioned earlier that I decided not to go on the tour of Rhodesia with the Pink Panters rugby team. Instead, I took the train back home. There was also a girls’ (field) hockey team on the train, heading to Port Elizabeth to play in a tournament. I think it was the Western Province team that would be playing in the national interprovincial tournament for high schools. At one stage in the trip I was in my compartment on the train, looking at some computer printout, which is something few people had seen back in those days. One of the girls saw this and we started chatting. Her name was Sandy Besson (I think the “Sandy” was for “Alexandra”) and she was in 12th grade at Rhenish High School in Stellenbosch, which is about 30 miles from Cape Town. Rhenish is apparently the oldest girls’ school in South Africa. I don’t recall where her parents lived, but it couldn’t have been in Stellenbosch because she was a boarder at Rhenish.
I went to watch one of her hockey matches. At some point we must have exchanged addresses because for the next year or so we wrote to one another – actual letters sent through the mail in those ancient pre-email days. After she finished high school, Sandy went to some kind of school, perhaps a secretarial college, close to downtown Cape Town. Whatever it was, I think it must have had a boarding house. That would have been when I was in my second year at UCT. I didn’t have a car and where she was wasn’t easily accessible by public transport, so I didn’t go to see her. However, I invited her to the Driekoppen formal dance that year. I think that the dance was in the second half of the year and that after the winter break I returned to Cape Town in the car that I took over from my mother when she bought a new one. (I know I took over her old car, but don’t remember exactly when it was.) That would explain how I was able to pick Sandy up for the dance. At the dance she didn’t want to dance and asked me to take her home early because she had try-outs for the provincial hockey team the next day. I drove her home, then returned to Driekoppen and got quite drunk. (I hadn’t had anything to drink before taking her back.) I presumed that her asking to go home very early was because she had decided she wasn’t really interested in me. So I didn’t try to contact her again after that. It wasn’t until several years later, after I had become a much more serious runner, that I thought that maybe the hockey try-outs might have been more than just an excuse. I realized that I wouldn’t have wanted to party or stay up late in the evening before a big race. I used to have a couple of photos of Sandy taken at that formal dance but disposed of them decades ago. When one is married it is not appropriate to keep mementoes of previous romantic involvements, no matter how limited and innocent.
At the start of the interlude above I was on my way home for the winter break. As noted earlier, I spent much of the break trying to improve my understanding of the material in the math class that I had failed in the mid-year exam. At the end of the break I must have flown back to Cape Town and thus wasn’t able to take all the luggage I had taken home on the train, especially heavy textbooks. One of my father’s colleagues Nagin Parhboo (see “Ancyent blog11 Parents, part 3”) was heading to Cape Town by car at about the same time and took a large suitcase for me. Unfortunately, the suitcase was stolen out of the trunk of his car. I lost not only textbooks, but also my class notes (and various items of clothing). The textbooks were easy enough to replace. But I had to spend a lot of time copying class notes from classmates. That may have forced me to review the material again and so may have helped my understanding of the material.
There was one unrelated occasion when I copied material from a friend. Dave Clark and I were both doing Math I. Although he was an engineering student, there wasn’t a separate version of Math I for students in different programs. We all had the same syllabus. There were too many students to fit in a single classroom though, so we were what in the US are referred to as different sections, in our case taught by different professors and having different tutorial sections and tutors grading our homework. Dave had completed a particular homework before me and I was short of time, so I borrowed and copied his homework. But I didn’t just copy verbatim, instead trying to understand what I was doing and not necessarily always arriving at the same result as Dave. When our homeworks were returned, Dave obtained a 0, with his grader writing something like “Not worth a positive mark”. Although my score wasn’t exactly outstanding, it was reasonably good. Because I had copied from Dave, I felt rather embarrassed about not having pointed out before we had submitted the homework where I had disagreed with his answers. However, I hadn’t been sure that my answers were better than his.
When I was at home during the winter break in 1973 I started
to donate blood. Over the next few years
I donated several times, either in Port Elizabeth (in the Eastern Province) or
in Cape Town (in the Western Province).
See my blood donation cards for the two provincial blood transfusion
services. Once I began running more
seriously, I stopped donating whole blood.
A number of years later I switched to donating platelets, which has less
effect on one’s running.
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| My blood donation cards, with a record of my donations. |
Those long-ago days were not only before streaming of movies
but before being able to rent movies on videocassettes or DVDs. So there were quite often movies shown on
campus. I think they were usually on
Sunday evenings. The movies had typically
been released a few years earlier. I presume
there was a small entry fee, though don’t recall how much. One of the venues used was the New Science
Lecture Theatre (NSLT). Although I
probably saw several movies in the NSLT, the only one I can recall is Play
Misty for Me, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Misty_for_Me.
I think the NSLT was still quite new back in those days. It remained “New” for another almost 50 years, until it was remodeled as the Chris Hani Lecture Theatre in 2021/2. (Google Maps shows the new name on the map, but if one clicks on that it gives the old name too.) Perhaps the qualifier “new” referred to science rather than the building, that is, being the lecture theatre in which new science was presented. Chris Hani, after whom the old NSLT is now named, was the leader of the South African Communist Party. He was assassinated in 1993, about two months before we returned to South Africa from Seattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hani Particularly interesting in that Wikipedia article is the speech by Nelson Mandela calling for calm. Hani’s assassin was a supporter of the Conservative Party, which was even more right-wing than the ruling National Party (which, after being in power since 1948, lost to Mandela’s African National Congress in the country’s first multi-racial elections the following year.) The pistol that the assassin used had been lent to him by a senior member of parliament (MP) for the Conservative Party. The assassin and the MP were both sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted when the ANC abolished the death penalty.
One Saturday afternoon a group of us took the suburban train to downtown Cape Town to see a movie. Although there was at least one movie theater within walking distance of Driekoppen, it had only one screen, whereas we wanted a wider choice. I think the one we went to had 3 movies showing simultaneously. One of them was a comedy, one a horror movie, and I don’t recall what the third one was. I wanted to see the comedy. Everyone else in the group voted for the horror movie. I should have just gone my own way, but I decided to stick with the rest of the group. Bad mistake. The movie was The Legend of Hell House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Hell_House. I have no idea whether it is regarded as a good or a bad example of the genre, but I certainly did not enjoy it. I haven’t seen another horror movie since.
In the Apartheid era South Africa banned some movies and censored parts of many others. The censorship was not only of inter-racial love scenes, but sex scenes in general and nudity, including just a woman’s breasts. Violence was not censored to anywhere near the same extent. See: https://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Censorship_in_South_Africa#Film_censorship_in_South_Africa.
Final examinations were written in large halls or lecture theaters, with the exams for multiple courses being held in the same location simultaneously. On entering the venue one was given a card with a randomly assigned seating position. Further, invigilators wandered around between the tables while the exams were in progress. These measures were supposed to be to prevent cheating, such as referring to a cheat sheet or copying from someone else writing the same exam. Maybe some students managed to cheat but I wasn’t aware of any. We were issued special examination books in which to write our answers.
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| A UCT examination book. I also have one with a yellow cover. There may have been blue ones too. |
At the end of my first year I managed first class passes
(75+) for the two mathematical courses and just scraped through the other two,
with third class passes (50-59, the lowest passing grade). I don’t know how I passed Industrial
Sociology, especially because I had been too shy to ask to be assigned to a new
tutorial session after finding mine clashed with the lecture time for Applied
Math. Industrial Sociology was the kind
of class a conservative student may have regarded as being liberal propaganda,
with topics including the trade union movement.
For economics, what helped me was being able to understand graphs. Some of the less mathematically inclined
students had to memorize the words describing what was in a graph whereas I
needed just to remember what the graph looked like.
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| My results at the end of my first year. |
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| Explanation of symbols in results. |
After I finished my exams at the end
of 1973 my mother and her sister-in-law,
my Aunt Isabel, drove to Cape Town to fetch me.
Shortly before that, in October, the Organization of Arab Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OAPEC) implemented an oil embargo against countries that
had supported Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In November the embargo was extended to
include South Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis.
South Africa had minimal reserves of
oil. To conserve supplies, various
measures were implemented. If I recall
correctly these included limiting the hours that petrol (gasoline) was allowed
to be sold. Just before we left to drive
back to Port Elizabeth, I heard that one of the measures was to lower the
maximum speed limit from 120 km/hr (75 mph) to 80 km/hr (50 mph). I told my mother this and she stuck to the
new limit all the way home. It wasn’t
until after we reached home that we found that, although the announcement had
been made, the date of its implementation was still a few days in the future.
South Africa didn’t have any natural reserves of oil. However, they had plenty of coal, albeit of rather poor quality. Many years prior to the oil embargo, the government set up a company, now called Sasol, to produce oil from coal. Sasol was originally called the South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation, with Sasol originally being an acronym for the Afrikaans version of that name “Suid-Afrikaanse Steenkool-, Olie- en Gas Maatskappy”. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasol. The following article claims incorrectly that Sasol was created in response to the oil embargo. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-10/subsidies-south-africa-coal-liquid-fuel.pdf. “Driven by sanctions against South Africa during the 1970s oil embargo, the apartheid regime created Sasol to produce CTL [coal-to-liquid] fuels domestically and, thereby, increase the fuel security of South Africa.” Production may have increased, and additional plants constructed, but Sasol predates the oil embargo.
There are several things that definitely happened in 1974, when I was in my second year.
I mentioned running a couple of track races in the Fresher sports events in my first week at UCT. Those were the only races I ran in 1973. I think I ran just one race in 1974 and it is the only one of the many hundreds of races that I am ashamed of.
The 1973 winner of the Comrades (ultra-)Marathon, the most prestigious race in the country, was a UCT student, Dave Levick. (This was a couple of years before women were allowed to run the race officially. Two female UCT students, Isavel Roche-Kelly and Lindsay Weight later each won the race twice, in 1980-81, and 1983-84. More on Isavel once I get to writing about 1980-81. Both passed away many years ago, Isavel in a cycling accident and Lindsay from a suspected heart attack.)
I don’t recall why, but early in 1974 Dave Levick and Edward “Tiffy” King wanted to run a 3,000m race. A track was marked out on one of the rugby fields on the main UCT campus – on the part just south of the of the word “Coffee” in the label “Coffee House” in the image below. The race was held one evening, after the sun had set. There were lights close to the part of the field nearest the word “Coffee”. The other side, on the southern end of the fields in the image, was quite dark. I was one of several students who started the event. I wasn’t much of a runner yet and was immediately way off the pace. There were a few spectators from one of the nearby dorms. I thought they were mocking me, both for being slow and for the purple singlet I was wearing. So, I slunk off the track at the darkest part. I had thought I was last at that stage but later realized that someone else from Driekoppen, Francis Thackeray, had been behind me. I am ashamed of myself for dropping out for no better reason than because I thought I was being mocked. (I have dropped out of a number of other races since then, mostly because of injuries but occasionally because of exhaustion.) BTW, the only mentions of Tiffy King I have found online are related to a bursary in his name at the University of the Free State (previously the University of the Orange Free State) and to the acknowledgements section of Tim Noakes’ book “Lore of Running”.
As previously mentioned in “Ancyent blog18 Prehistoric Running, Part 2”, remembering that race led to me tracking down Francis. He went on to have a distinguished career as a paleontologist. https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2019/2019-10/new-research-supports-hypothesis-that-asteroid-contributed-to-mass-extinction.html Although he remembered a race on a track marked out on the rugby field, he doesn’t recall any more details than I do. Several years later when I had moved to Pretoria I sometimes ran with his brother Mike, who was a much more talented runner than Francis. Mike has also had a very distinguished career, particularly in the field of development of lithium batteries, initially in South Africa and later in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_M._Thackeray]
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| UCT rugby fields on the main campus – to the right of the wording “University of Cape Town”. Image from Google Maps, |
I don’t think I completed a race in 1974. That 3,000m may have been the only one I
started. I signed up for another one,
but didn’t even make it to the starting line. What follows is mostly a repeat of something
from “Ancyent blog18 Prehistoric Running, Part 2”. My first fairly regular training partner was
a fellow Driekoppen resident, Steve Harle.
We ran together quite often in 1973 and 1974. In 1974 I signed up for the Two Oceans
(ultra) Marathon (35 miles / 56 km), which is traditionally held on the
Saturday of the Easter weekend. That was
more than a little crazy because by that stage I had probably never run as far
as 10 miles. (A year or two later the
race introduced a qualifying standard – one had to run a (standard) marathon in
under 4:15 in order to be allowed to sign up for the Two Oceans. The race web site doesn’t mention when the
qualifying time was introduced, though it does say it was relaxed to 4:30 in
1998 and then to the current 5:00 in 2001.)
Considering my lack of long-distance training, it is probably fortunate
that I developed an injury and was unable to start. Steve asked if he could use my number and I
agreed. We were such novices in terms of
running that we didn’t know that that was a no-no. Steve hadn’t done much more training than I
had but managed to get to 20 miles before dropping out. Considering that he was running as me, it is
probably good that he did not finish. I
was eventually able to run Two Oceans, in 1979, 1983, and 1984. It is the longest race I have run and is
probably my all-time favorite event.
I think Steve moved out of Driekoppen after 1974. He continued to run, including finishing the two Oceans 4 times (1975-1978). Then in 1978 he and his wife were tragically murdered by an escaped convict when they were on a hiking trip. As 1978 is well before the Internet era, Google doesn’t currently turn up anything related to their murder. A while back a search did find a mention in a book, Ghosts of South Africa by Pat Hopkins. From the book:
In November 1978, three schoolboys were exploring the shell when they
came across the body of a woman and her dog.
Six kilometres away, a group of hikers came across a campsite, in the
middle of which was the body of a man. 'Boland detectives are still
"completely in the dark" today about the motive for this gruesome
double murder of Mr and Mrs Steve Harle in Bain's Kloof and the whereabouts of
the killers,' reported the Argus.
"We're as puzzled as you are," said Colonel Izak van der
Vyver, Divisional Criminal Investigations chief in the Boland.
'The bodies of Mr Harle and his wife Jane, both twenty-four, were found in the Happy Valley section of Bain's Kloof on Saturday morning - more than six kilometres apart. Mr Harle, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Cape Town, was found by mountaineers a few metres away from the small red tent the couple had pitched near Junction Pool in the Witte River. He wore a T-shirt and shorts and had been stabbed several times. Blood smears and a bent aluminium tent pole inside the tent were evidence of a violent struggle on the two sleeping bags. Schoolboys found Mrs Harle's body in a corner of the desolate Spookhuis [ghost house]. She was on her back, her legs drawn up and had been stabbed twice in the left side of her chest. Beside her was the couple's small dog Otto. It had been stabbed between the shoulder blades.'
A few days later, an escaped convict, John Smith, was arrested and charged with the murders. He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. Since the tragedy, hikers have reported seeing the ghost of a fleeing woman and her dog near what remains of the Spookhuis.
One of the routes I ran with Steve and/or other people went from the cricket oval, through a pedestrian tunnel. In the image above about the race on the rugby fields, the tunnel is under the highway with Google’s green indicator of traffic flowing smoothly. From there we went, roughly south next to that highway to Rhodes Memorial Street, past the Groote Schuur Zoo, and then along that to the memorial itself and back the same way. Why isn’t the Groote Schuur Zoo marked on the map? Because it has long since gone the way of the dodo. It used to be just before where we turned to go up Rhodes Memorial Street. I can’t remember exactly when it closed and even Wikipedia isn’t sure, other than that it was after 1974 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groote_Schuur_Zoo. As noted n that article, in 1974 a drunk student was attacked by a lion. Although I ran past the zoo on many occasions, I didn’t ever visit it when it was still in operation. After its closure the old zoo parking lot remained a popular meeting place for runners, who still referred to it as the zoo parking lot. YouTube video about the zoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=CkCDnhCzn9w&feature=emb_logo.
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| Rhodes Memorial (photo from somewhere on the Internet). |
There may have been another race that I started in 1974 (I
don’t recall whether it was in 1974 or 1975).
It was my first attempt at running a marathon, or at least the first
time I made it to the starting line. In
this case dropping out was not only justified, but unavoidable. When I started the race one of my Achilles
tendons felt very tight. Initially I ran
with a few friends. But to try to get
the tendon loosened up I pulled ahead of them.
I was feeling reasonably good when at what was probably close to 10
miles I stepped on the edge of a pothole and tore the tight tendon. In the space of one stride I went from
running quite comfortably to not being able to walk. I don’t think I sought out medical treatment
for the tendon at the time. After a few
weeks it must have healed enough that I could resume running. (I continued to struggle with tightness in
that tendon until I had surgery on it about a decade later, towards the end of
1984.)
I think it was also in 1974 that Tim Noakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Noakes used to hold a running injury clinic one evening each week. He would have been a final-year medical student at the time and so may have been able to give advice but not formally diagnose or treat injuries. There was so little known about running and running injuries back then that a medical student with an interest in running could know as much as anyone about running injuries. I went to see him about a knee injury. Perhaps it was what had prevented me from starting the Two Oceans Marathon. Tim wasn’t able to do anything for my injury, but gave me a (sealed) letter to take to another doctor, probably at the student health service. Part of what makes me think that this was in 1974 is that he gave me a referral to someone else rather than being able to treat me. I didn’t go to see the student health doctor and some time later decided to look at what Tim had written. It is the one piece of memorabilia that I would most like to have kept. In it he described me as being “totally unathletic”. That was rather harsh, considering I had been running with some regularity for a few years by then. On the other hand, another factor that makes me think this was in 1974 was that I hadn’t yet lost the flab that had earned the primary school nickname “Fatty Couper” and so didn’t look much like what most runners looked like back then, before the running boom brought a wider range of body types into the sport.
The first election in which I was eligible to vote was the 1974 general election for the House of Assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_South_African_general_election. In the US elections are always on the first Tuesday in November. In the old South Africa (and currently still in the United Kingdom and Australia), elections had to be held at least every 5 years. The Prime Minister could call an election at any time within the 5 years. The date was usually chosen strategically, when the ruling party thought it had the best chance of a good result. Also, the Prime Minister was chosen by the majority party and could be changed between elections. (This happens often in the United Kingdom.) I don’t know what the minimum notice time was between the calling of the election and the election date. It may have been as short as several weeks. In early February 1974 the Prime Minster, John Vorster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vorster, called the election to be held on April 24.
Prior to the election the National Party had 118 seats in the House of Assembly, the United Party had 47, and the Progressive Party had 1, the indomitable Helen Suzman who had been the party’s only Member of Parliament for 13 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Suzman. Among the white population (the only people eligible to vote during the Apartheid era) Afrikaners outnumbered Englis speakers. The split was probably about 60:40, with small numbers of Greek, Portuguese, and other speakers. About 90% of Afrikaners supported the National Party. The United Party was essentially a somewhat more benign, mostly English-speaking version of the National Party, with its policies perhaps akin to Apartheid-lite. More than half of the English-speaking population supported the United Party, but some supported the Nats. The Progressive Party had liberals from both language groups, with relatively strong support from the Jewish community. In 1982 a UCT student wrote a Master of Arts thesis on the decline of the United Party over the period 1970-1977, that is, the years before and after the 1974 election https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/891eb886-3984-4d84-8d7f-d0e2e52bb06e/content. Reasons for the decline that he mentions include in-fighting in the party and also that most English-language newspapers switching their support to the Progressive Party.
South Africa also had a Senate, with 44 seats. The elections for those are held soon after the general election, by an electoral college comprised mostly of members of the House of Assembly. After the 1974 election the National Party had 32 seats in the Senate, the United Party 12, and the Progressive Party 0.
I have mentioned that Driekoppen had an annual formal dance. At some point before the 1974 election a UCT professor of sociology, Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert gave a talk in Driekoppen. I don’t remember if there was an annual formal dinner with a guest speaker or whether this was as part of his political campaign. He was a candidate for the Progressive Party in the Rondebosch constituency, in which UCT fell and would soon become much more widely known https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_van_Zyl_Slabbert.
In the election the National Party maintained their dominance, increasing their number of Members of Parliament (MPs) by 4, with 56.14% of the overall vote. The number of United Party MPs decreased by 6 (winning 31.96% of the vote) and that of the Progressive Party increased by 5 (6.37% of the vote). Other parties and independents managed 5.52% of the vote but did not win any seats. The Progressive Party won another seat in a by-election a short while later. Van Zyl Slabbert was one of the new Progressive Party MPs. (In a series of mergers and re-alignments, the Progressive Party morphed into the Progressive Reform Party in 1975 and then into the Progressive Federal Party in 1977. The latter eventually became the official opposition, with Van Zyl Slabbert being its leader from 1979 to 1986.)
While hunting down the above statistics, I discovered that although I remembered the big picture accurately, there is one detail about which I have been mistaken for many years. I don’t recall if I voted in the Rondebosch constituency, where I was a student, or in the Newton Park constituency in Port Elizabeth where our family lived. The fault in my memory is that for decades I believed that, regardless of where it was, I had voted for the Progressive Party and that it had won the seat. That is, I had been “remembering” that the Progressive Party won both Rondebosch and Newton Park. It was actually the United Party that won Newton Park and the Progressive Party may not even have had a candidate there (they contested a rather limited number of seats). The person who I had “remembered” as winning Newton Park, Alex Boraine, had won in the Pinelands constituency in Cape Town.
A couple of politically-related incidents that I think were also in 1974: Many of us felt that UCT’s Student Representative Council (SRC) was too concerned with national politics and political protesting rather than issues that affected us as students. A group of candidates in the SRC elections promised to concentrate more on internal affairs and most of them managed to get elected instead of the more extreme left-wing students who had previously dominated the SRC. I don’t think those we voted in would have been regarded as conservative, just more locally focused. However, in hindsight I think I should have voted for the more left-wing bunch. My friend Peter Hofmeyr was certainly more conservative politically than I was. He proposed writing a letter to the Prime Minister supporting what Peter regarded as some signs of loosening of Apartheid restrictions. My parents were horrified that I might even have considered being one of those signing Peter’s letter. (I don’t recall whether he actually wrote the letter.) Far from any lifting of restrictions, the 1970s saw even stronger crackdowns. For instance, in 1976 there was a very brutal crackdown on the Soweto uprising, with many high school students being killed. The uprising was in response to the government making Afrikaans the medium of instruction in Black schools, Afrikaans being considered by many Black people as the language of the oppressor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising .
While on the subject of politics I will include something from 1975. Most of us in Driekoppen were not politically active, even if we cared about what was happening in our country. There were a few of our fellow students who were more outspoken. One of them was a law student, Peter Leon, who in 1976 served on the Driekoppen House Committee. In 1975 Peter wrote an article in Driekoppen’s 4 Thwart magazine about the lack of political interest in the residence. In the second paragraph he mentions some anti-Semitism. Those were presumably isolated incidents – I hadn’t been aware of those or any other anti-Semitism in the residence.
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| Peter Leon decrying the lack of political involvement of fellow Driekoppen students. |
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| Peter Leon decrying the lack of political involvement of fellow Driekoppen students (continued). |
Political aside:
In South Africa more generally there was a fair amount of anti-Semitism in the Afrikaner community. A sizable number of Afrikaners had wanted South Africa to enter World War II on the side of Germany. For instance, some members of the anti-British Ossewabrandwag (OB; literal translation ox-wagon guard or sentry) carried out acts of sabotage during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossewabrandwag.
Christopher Hope wrote a poem about a fictitious member of the OB, with it later being put to music and sung by David Kramer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEj1_S3XkNg&list=RDUEj1_S3XkNg&start_radio=1. The lyrics are copied below from the link: https://groups.google.com/g/soc.culture.south-africa.afrikaans/c/G5O-8BhpetE?pli=1.
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| Kobus Le Grange Marais lyrics. |
The lyrics cover a lot of political and cultural
ground. The “Way back in ’48” refers to
the National Party coming to power n 1948.
“Die koelie uit die land” refers to wanting to expel Indians, similar to
what Idi Amin later actually did in Uganda.
(A former colleague was a child when her family was expelled from
Uganda.) “En die kaffir op sy plek”
means putting Black people in their place (that is, subjugating them). Aside within the aside: “Kaffir” is the South
African equivalent of the N-word in the US.
The original meaning of kaffer/kaffir/kafir, which is still used outside
South Africa is “unbeliever”. When we
lived in Seattle, as a South African I was taken aback when I heard a (Black)
Muslim refer to a White person as a “kafir”.
When the National Party came to power in 1948 they made a point of
employing many Afrikaners in the civil service and state-run
organizations. For instance, I would
guess that more than 90% of employees of the South African Railways were
Afrikaners. That is represented in “The
poor white wants his share” and “I was all my life a railway man”. “I fought in the OB till I was caught and I
sweated my guts in the camp for the bombs I threw and the bridges I blew”
refers directly to acts of sabotage by the Ossewabrandwag, with the “camp”
meaning a concentration camp after being caught. “Dop and dam” is Afrikaans slang for a tot
(of alcohol) with water. “Jewish money”
is a reference to anti-Semitism and a Boereseun is an Afrikaner boy or
man. Back then most bars were restricted
to men, with only bars that were classified as ladies’ bars allowing women. “Moffies and piepiejollers” are derogatory,
crude terms for gays and adolescent boys.
“Now the meddling ghost of Reverend Phillip” – I think he was a
nineteenth century (slavery) abolitionist, or at least someone arguing for the
rights of Black people. “From
Slagtersnek to Sonderwater” – Slagtersnek or Slachter’s Nek was the site of an
Afrikaner uprising against the British early in the 1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slachter%27s_Nek_Rebellion
and Sonderwater or Zonderwater was apparently the largest Allied concentration
/ detention camp in Word War II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonderwater_POW_camp. “God is still a rooinek God” means that God
is still an English God. The literal
translation of “rooinek” is “red neck” and it is used by Afrikaners to refer to
people of British descent https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rooinek. “Kommandant op Koffiefontein” – “Kommandant”
is a commander and Koffiefontein is a town where a battle was fought in the
Anglo-Boer War, as well as being the site of an internment camp for Italians
and anti-British Afrikaners in World War II.
“In which case, ons gaan kak da' bo” means they will have a hard time
(crap time) when they go up to heaven. “Oudstryders
like me” refers to veterans of the Anglo-Boer War. A “vlei” is a small, shallow, often marshy,
lake and “volk” means the Afrikaner people.
“There'll be weeping at Weenen once again, no keeping the impis at bay”
refers to a site where (Zulu) impis massacred (Afrikaner) Voortrekkers in 1838 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weenen_massacre. “From the stony eyes of Oom Paul in Pretoria
Square” refers to the statue of Paul Kruger on Church Square in Pretoria. “Oom” means “uncle” but is often used by
Afrikaners to address an older person even if not a relative. Paul Kruger was an Afrikaner leader,
including being President of the independent South African Republic, later the
Transvaal province in what became the Union of South Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kruger.
In the first short vac in 1974 I went home to Port Elizabeth. That may have been when I had a ride with Terry Weyer and his mother. I think that was how I continued past Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown (now Makhanda), which is on the national road from Port Elizabeth to Terry’s home in East London. I wanted to go to Grahamstown to see Sandy, who had briefly been my girlfriend in 1970 (see “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”). In 1974 she was a first-year student at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. I did manage to see her very briefly, but she was otherwise occupied, probably not in small part because it was their university’s rag weekend. I don’t recall where I spent the night. Perhaps it was in the room of my old friend from Port Elizabeth, Phil Williams.
The next morning I needed to get back home to Port Elizabeth, about 80 miles away. The only way I knew was to hitch-hike, which I had done quite often in Cape Town but never between cities. I stood next to the road for several hours trying to get a ride. No-one wanted to stop for an unkempt, long-haired young man. Eventually two Black guys in a truck stopped and gave me a ride. They had a drum of petrol in the middle of the cab, and I had to sit with my legs up on the drum. The cab reeked of petrol. I spent the whole journey hoping one of them wouldn’t decide to light a cigarette. The two men had minimal English (or Afrikaans), so communication was essentially impossible. But I was grateful that they were willing to stop for me and help me get home (or at least to the outskirts of Port Elizabeth).
In 1974 the British Lions rugby team toured South Africa. (Since 2001 they have been called the British & Irish Lions. In most competitions, such as the Rugby World Cup, England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have separate teams. A combined Lions team tours southern hemisphere countries every 4 years, rotating between South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.) The 1974 tour was much longer than recent ones, with the first game on May 15 and the last on July 27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_British_Lions_tour_to_South_Africa
The 1974 Lions team was one of the strongest ever. They played 4 “Tests” against South Africa, winning 3 and drawing the last one. At that stage of the Apartheid era the government had not yet allowed people of different races to play on the same team. The Lions also played 18 other games, mostly against provincial teams, but also a few others, such as the SA Federation (a team of “Coloured” players), the SA Africans (a team of Black players), a Southern Universities team, and Rhodesia (which for cricket and rugby played in the South African provincial leagues). The Lions won all 18 of these games.
Back then rugby or, more properly, rugby union, was an amateur sport. (There is another fairly closely related sport, called rugby league, which had been professional since about the time it split off from rugby union more than 100 years ago.) The game was also much tougher back then. There are many more rules about dangerous play now than there used to be. Also, back in those days at most two substitutions were allowed. As noted in the following article “a player may be replaced only when, in the opinion of a medical practitioner, the player is so injured that he should not continue playing in the match, [and] a player who has been replaced must not resume playing in the match” https://worldrugbymuseum.com/from-the-vaults/evolution-of-rugby/the-impact-of-substitutes-over-the-years. So, in those days a doctor had to be available to certify that a player was too badly injured to continue. Now up to eight players may be substituted and most of these are usually tactical substitutions rather than because of injury. I’m certainly not claiming that the game was better back then. The newer rules about dangerous play are definitely an improvement, but I am not in favor of allowing so many (tactical) substitutions.
But this is rugby, so it more
complicated than that. Players can be
replaced temporarily to have a Head Injury Assessment and can come back on if
they pass the test but are off permanently if they fail it. They can also be replaced temporarily for a
blood injury, for up to 15 minutes, or if they have been injured as a result of
foul play. https://www.rugbyworld.com/takingpart/rugby-basics/how-many-replacements-in-rugby-union-135125
I mentioned earlier that Dave Clark, Terry Weyer, Peter Hofmeyr and I often used to go to watch rugby. We went to the game the Lions played against Western Province on June 1 and the First Test, on June 4, both at Newlands in Cape Town. The Third Test was in Port Elizabeth on July 13, during UCT’s winter break. Peter Hofmeyr came down to watch that. At some point while he was visiting, we were walking along a road near my parents’ house. A car stopped beside us so that the occupants could ask us for directions to somewhere (this being in the prehistoric era before cell phones with map apps). Before I could respond, Peter confidently rattled off directions, despite not knowing the area at all. After the car had driven off, I worked out that Peter’s directions would bring them back to where we had been standing!
In 1974 I again hedged my bets between the Business Science
requirements and regular science classes.
I continued with economics, math and applied math, and added
physics. Applied Math II had 4 modules,
two taken in the first semester and the other two in the second semester. Unlike for any of my other full-year classes,
the two modules in the first semester had their final exams at the end of that
semester rather than at the end of the year.
I did well in the first two modules (and one of the other two). At least until I was in graduate school in
the US in my thirties, I was usually very good at taking exams, with my results
generally being better than I deserved relative to my knowledge about a
subject. When I didn’t do very well it
was because of a lack of knowledge or preparation, rather than poor exam
technique or being stressed out. I could
sometimes even solve problems that I would have struggled with if they had been
set in a homework. I might even have
been able to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem if it had been sprung on me in an
exam. 😊 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem The one notable exception was the exam for
the fourth module of Applied Math II.
That module was on things such as cylinders rolling down inclined
planes. I needed just a passing grade
for that module to get a first class pass for Applied Math II. But I couldn’t do any of the problems. I bombed out so badly that my overall grade
for the 4 modules was just a lower second class pass (2–; 60-69%). That was the only math or science class for
which I failed to get a first class pass.
On the other hand, although I got the same grade for Economics II, that
was better than the third class pass I had managed to Economics I.
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| My results at the end of 1974. |
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