Church in Kloof Street, about a mile and a half from our house, because it was within walking distance. I don’t think my parents had any idea about Congregationalism, but its worship and preaching was barely different from that of the Methodists, and they soon felt at home. My mother later became a leader in the Women’s Association, and my father a deacon. Rozelle and I sang in the junior choir. I even won medals for singing in the Cape Town Eisteddfod, until my voice embarrassingly broke while singing “Who is Sylvia?”. We attended Sunday school of course, and were confirmed in a perfunctory sort of way. Eventually, Rozelle rebelled and left the church, while I, negotiating those awkward years, stayed put.
Sometimes during church services, I read the large plaques on the sanctuary wall. One told me that the first minister of the congregation, when it was founded in 1820, was John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society (LMS) and a leading figure in the anti-slavery movement. Another told me that his wife, Jane, had pioneered schooling for the children of slaves. Their stories intrigued me long before I learnt their significance, or knew that Congregationalism came to South Africa at the end of the eighteenth century through the work of the LMS. Later I also learnt that Johannes van der Kemp, its first missionary, gained notoriety when he married a Khoi woman and opposed slavery on the Eastern Cape border. Basil Brown, our minister, was neither a Philip nor a Van Der Kemp, but he did on occasion speak out against injustice, and later became the general secretary of the Christian Council of South Africa (forerunner to the SACC). I was fortunate to grow up in what was, for those days, a reasonably liberal church environment.
At the age of five I started school at Tamboerskloof Primary, to which I walked every day in the company of Rozelle. At the end of my first year, then named sub-A, it was decided that I should skip sub-B and proceed to standard one (now grade three). This meant that, for the rest of my school and university life, I was a year younger than virtually everyone else in my class. In retrospect, that was not a good thing, but it did mean that I got going on most things in life earlier than the norm. At the end of standard one, I was awarded a copy of Aesop’s Fables for not missing a single day of school. I later learnt that Aesop was a Greek slave whose fables still have much to teach us about ourselves. I never won any more prizes for the rest of my school years; certainly none for academic prowess.
Our age difference was too great for Rozelle and me to be playmates; her role was to look after me, organise birthday parties, and sometimes take me to movies with her friends. On one occasion, we saw The Wizard of Oz; on another we watched Esther Williams and her water nymphs perform endless manoeuvres in a large pool.
My parents came to Scout functions and church concerts, but I don’t recall them watching me play sport or attending a school prize-giving – well, yes, there was no reason for them to do that.
Our family outings included Saturday nights at the cinema, and Sunday drives in the Willys to The Doll’s House in Sea Point for an ice cream. The Green Point lighthouse, painted in red and white stripes, stood nearby. I recall the comforting sound of its horn on misty nights, even from as far away as the city bowl.
We also visited my parents’ (mostly boring) friends, and the wider circle of our family. All my cousins were older than me, though, so I had no one to play with, and had to use my imagination to amuse myself.
At home there was little intellectual stimulation, few books and little encouragement to read or even study hard. But I read the boys’ magazines that arrived from England on the mail ship every Thursday. I collected stamps and developed an interest in photography, and eventually had a darkroom in the cellar.
Though by no means well-off, Rozelle and I never lacked anything, and we were loved. Our mother was always at home, waiting for us after school with food and drink on hand.
The 1936 Willys was a faded blue vehicle with black bumpers and the licence plate CA 6. This indicated that it was registered in Cape Town, but 6 would normally mean that its owner was some civic dignitary, which was not the case. The car, so crude compared to the posh new American cars of our friends, made a grinding noise going up hills, and became an embarrassment to us children. We asked our dad to park some distance from the school when he came to fetch us. On family outings, though, we happily chugged along a narrow De Waal Drive, past the Old Mill and the University campus, down to Muizenberg for a picnic on the beach. Back then there was no Black River Parkway or Blue Route Parkway, let alone Ou Kaapse Weg over the mountain into Noordhoek Valley.
I once rode my bicycle along the coastal road to Hout Bay and then over Chapman’s Peak Drive to Kommetjie. After a few days’ camping, I pedalled back in the rain, but gave up when, drenched, I reached the house of an acquaintance in Bakoven. On that occasion, I was glad when the Willys arrived to fetch me for the final haul over the mountain. When it was finally sold, my dad got far more for the licence plate than he did for the vehicle.
My mother persuaded my father to move me to St. George’s Grammar School for standard two in 1947. From now on my schooling would always take place in a male environment. Situated next to St. George’s Cathedral at that time, the school was an alien environment to me, with daily morning prayer following the Book of Common Prayer.
1947 was memorable, though, because King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and their two princess daughters visited Cape Town. I was one of the many pupils lining the fence of our school along Government Avenue, waving Union Jacks to welcome them. As a Wolf Cub pack leader, I shook hands with Princess Margaret at a Scouting parade, and was struck with awe on a guided tour of the battleship HMS Vanguard. Those were what Richard Rive would’ve called “red-white-and-blue days”. My mother was an ardent royalist, and we were all part of the Empire, whether we lived across town in Rive’s District Six or in Kloof Nek. I was oblivious of the fact that there were Afrikaners who had a very different opinion.
By the end of the year, my father put his foot down. He feared I might become a choir boy if I stayed at St. George’s, so I was moved to SACS Junior at the top of Government Avenue, where Cape Town High School is now located. SACS High was nearby in Orange Street, in the historic buildings that have since become the UCT Hiddingh Hall campus. I walked to school down Hof Street every morning, a distance of three kilometres, carrying a case full of books and sports togs.
At junior school I learnt the basics, did woodworking, played rugby and cricket, flunked boxing and received cuts (corporal punishment) from the headmaster for telling our singing teacher, Miss LaCock, to the raucous amusement of the class, that she had sung a false note. Once a week we watched travelogues provided by various embassies in the city, and I decided that I would one day visit these exotic places around the world. At lunchtime we played marbles or bok-bok makierie on the dusty playground, which left us dishevelled and sweaty for the rest of the day.
I was mad about sport. In standard four I was captain of the under-eleven rugby team, and I have the photograph to prove the fact. Saturday after Saturday, I made the train journey to Newlands Rugby Stadium to watch senior club rugby, sitting with other school boys on the touchline in front of the old Railway Stand. In 1948 I went to the Newlands Cricket Ground to watch the test match between the Springboks and the touring MCC or English side – the first after the War. The next year I was at the Newlands Rugby Stadium, watching the Springboks beat the All Blacks from New Zealand fifteen to eight. Sport has remained an integral part of my life.
Living on the slopes of Table Mountain, I spent much time exploring its terrain. On one occasion a friend and I – probably aged eleven, for we had just become Sea Scouts – climbed too far up the mountain face above the cableway station to turn back, and had to be rescued in the late evening. As the years passed, my friends and I thought little of walking for almost two hours over Kloof Nek on a Sunday afternoon, for the pleasure of swimming in the icy water of the world-famous Clifton beach.
Another boyhood memory was being introduced to Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who regularly passed by our house after his Sunday walks on Table Mountain. One evening, not long after, my
