Two Bits

A tour of Namibia and the Richtersveld cannot be more different from where we live. Here we are lulled by lush green on the one side and glistening blue on the other, with soothing sea breezes, while the Richtersveldt offers an unrelenting harsh, dry landscape where survival for everything – man, plant and beast – is a grinding struggle every single day.  And yet, is hauntingly beautiful and immensely rewarding because of that struggle.
By day the sun is remorseless and rain almost non-existent, yet there is life in every nook and cranny if you take the time to look. By night the sky is a cathedral, a huge vault of stars, and the desert becomes alive with animals going about their business after sheltering from the sun. Here the hoot of an owl, there the bark of a jackal. And even closer at hand, the weeping and gnashing of teeth of a tourist who has lost yet another tyre to the razor-sharp rocks of this backside of the moon.
There was even a local connection. Earlier this year Nigel and Val Slevin and Mike and Avis Taylor visited the area and, calling in at the tiny village of Ecksteenfontein, discovered a dedicated group of women sewing and crocheting to raise extra cash. With very few resources, sharing needles and scrimping and saving for materials only available from Springbok, a couple of hundred kilometres away, they were still managing to produce lovely work.
Our North Coasters saw this and vowed to help, so one of the parcels in our car was a pink bag filled with needles, threads and materials. When we called in with this gift from the Slevins and Taylors, the ladies were overwhelmed with joy.
It was interesting to be completely cut off from the outside world – no cellphone, radio or TV. We returned to find that our daughter Lesley had written a couple of lovely columns in my absence, that the ANC is still at war with itself and still in denial, talking about such important subjects as flavoured condoms, and that the subject of racism which everyone hoped would die with the elections is with us as strong as ever.
There is an inordinate fuss being made over the hair policy in our schools, stemming from the Afro incident at a Pretoria school. Reader Thrivin Naidoo wrote in to say that his generation had had to conform to strict disciplines of behaviour and dress codes at school, and thought they were better off for it.
You don’t have to tell anybody over the age of 40 or so about school discipline, except maybe those who attended a handful of private schools. I know it was a long time ago, but we were thrashed if our hair touched our collars or if we wore our bashers at a jaunty angle. But it has got me thinking – be-cause it was so in our day, does it always have to be that way? How much place should tradition have in a society that we are trying to refashion from the ground up?
The Westminster style of schooling with its military-style codes and long lists of rules was devised in Europe for Europeans. Does that mean it is good for the South Africa of today? An experienced school principal friend tells me hair policy is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the clash between African codes and the Eurocentric school system.
At my 25th matric anniversary dinner, the headmaster who transformed our Westminster-style school into a forward-looking establishment long after I left, told us that the old National Christian education system had prepared us to be employees, not entrepreneurs. We had been trained to be followers, not thinkers.
If I understand my friend correctly, the chasm has come about partly because, in line with preparing children for the modern world, educators today are encouraging pupils to think, to bring their voices into the arena and stand up for themselves. This has a particularly profound effect on black pupils, because still prevailing in many homes in that culture, children are meant to be seen and not heard. Sound familiar, children of the Sixties, Fifties and earlier?
Today’s world is computers, the Internet and social media. Teaching methods are being overhauled to cope with the new technology (no more ‘chalk and talk’), so why not overhaul the rules of conduct as well? Allowing Afros or cellphones or long hair doesn’t mean that all discipline should be thrown to the wind, for fear of charges of racism. It just means that we as a society need to take another look at what is really important and what is being perpetuated in the name of tradition.

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The bride was escorted down the aisle.
When she reached the altar, the groom was standing there with his golf bag and clubs at his side.
She said: “What are your golf clubs doing here?”
He looked her right in the eye and said, “This isn’t going to take all day, is it?”