Travel

Keeping the school spirit alive

I ’ve always loved the isiZulu saying immortalised during the 1956 Women’s March on the Union Buildings “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo” (You strike a woman, you strike a rock).

What happens though, when you kick a rock? The chances are that a KES (King Edward VII High School) old boy will come scuttling out from underneath.

A lot has happened in my travels of the past months to remind me of this popular contention.

Most recently, it was the sad news that Tintswalo Safari Lodge manager Emily Leuner was fighting for her life after being shot, allegedly by a disgruntled ex-employee.

I was sitting at dinner at the lodge about two years ago – on my own as is often the case when I’m roadtripping – when two couples of a similar age invited me to join them.

It transpired in conversation that the two men were brothers who had been through the King Edward Preparatory School system.

One went on to Jeppe High School and the other went to KES, matriculating some years before I did.

We told this improbable story to Emily’s husband Alistair, who also serves on Tintswalo’s management team. “So did I,” he said.

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A brotherhood in unexpected places

A fortnight ago, at Longhill Nature Reserve outside Addo in the Eastern Cape, my partner and I were assigned field guide and wannabe marine biologist Marco de Nobrega.

When asked about his background, he said he was from Johannesburg where he’d been educated at King Edward VII.

I promptly recited the opening words of the school war cry and a camaraderie was established.

The same words were the icebreaker when I was introduced to Rugby World Cup winner Bryan Habana during a Land Rover Defender trip to the Cederberg.

What followed was a frank discussion over dinner about the role the school had played in shaping his rugby career.

I’ve admired him as a player since he debuted for the Boks in 2004 but he soared in my estimation as a person that evening.

A few days after meeting De Nobrega at Longhill, I was with my friend, historian and raconteur Alan Weyer, in the Albany Club in Makanda (Grahamstown).

I was courteously greeted by the barlady, Erin, but got no time to talk to her before she went off-shift.

I discovered later that she is the daughter of former KES classmate Farrel Boon who recently retired to Kenton-on-Sea.

What makes this more remarkable was that my previous visit to the Albany was in the company of former news cameraman Peter Voigt.

The barlady was a daughter of the late Anton Hammerl, a photographer I knew from The Star newspaper.

She was astounded to hear that Voigt was in Libya when her father – yes, a KES old boy – went missing there in 2011.

But my greatest “kick a rock” moment happened in a little fishing village called Zahara de los Atunes in Andalusia in 2009.

I was part of a large multinational team behind the Webtel. mobi Intercontinental Challenge, an attempt by Swiss airline pilotcum-daredevil Yves Rossy to cross the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa to Europe in a jet-wing.

The crew came together in southern Spain and, on the first night, six of the South Africans – none of whom knew one another – gathered in the hotel bar. We discovered that three of us were from KES.