Vorige Dirkie Uysers

THE TIGER’S EYE COMES HOME

As I sat in the waiting room of your high school, I glanced through a “A Century of Teaching at Moorreesburg, 1876-1976”. Although from Canada and having no understanding of Afrikaans, I stopped abruptly at page 14 and I knew I had reached my destination. Here in the centre of the photo of the first graduating class in 1924, 86 years ago, a blond girl smiled out at me and she, I knew, was my Aunt Anna. But there was more: a photo of her father, Mr. M.M. Walters, headmaster of the school, from 1890 to 1901 and later Mayor of Moorreesburg, gazed proudly at me from page 7.

Sitting there, I asked myself what better evidence could there be of how your school has influenced your country and reached out across the world than this booklet and the memories it evokes?

My Aunt Anna went on from the school to teaching college at Wellington, authored a mathematics handbook and became an inspector and teachers’ instructress for kindergarten schools in Natal. She met my Uncle in England while on a teacher exchange program in the 1930s. Then began a lifelong relationship, interrupted by the War, but renewed soon after, and becoming even stronger when my Aunt returned to England in 1953 having been invited for the Coronation of the present Queen.

Committed to their careers, their countries and to their immediate families, my Aunt Anna and Uncle Bob (after whom I am named) would travel to either South Africa or England year after year to meet. I recall waiting at London Airport in the 1950s for my Uncle to land, propellers whirling, after one of these frequent visits. Through photos and my Uncle’s paintings, the family members in both countries came to learn more and more about one another with a growing sense that we were gradually becoming one extended family, though far apart.

I recall the visits, almost every month, of Aunt Anna’s relatives and friends from South Africa to my Uncle’s flat in London. In time we began to meet and know immediate family members and the awareness of Moorreesburg and your School became even sharper.

Your school has so many pupils of whom it can be proud. Biffie (Elizabeth) te Water Naudé, who brought me to Moorreesburg, is Anna’s niece and Mr. Walter’s granddaughter. She matriculated from Dirkie Uys (Century of Teaching, page 36, 1961, end of 3^rd row, right) and graduated from Stellenbosch University. She became a teacher and, later, trained teachers at Paarl College of Education.

Her brother, Marinus te Water Naudé (Century of Teaching, page 32, 1956, bottom row, fourth from left) was head boy of Dirkie Uys and arrived in London in 1965 to take up his first diplomatic assignment at the South African Embassy. My fiancée and I, soon to be married, dined at my Uncle’s with Marinus and his bride of a few months. After representing your country in Iran, Israel and Germany, Marinus retired having been your country’s Ambassador to Belgium.

Mr. Walters and his brother, Roelof, lived a short walk from the school. Together they built a highly successful store on the Main Street after the Anglo-Boer War. Roelof’s son, Theunis, (Century of Teaching, page 26, 1941, 2^nd from left on 2^nd row) studied in England where, of course, he was entertained by my Uncle. He became a teacher and school inspector and ultimately retired from teaching at Stellenbosch University where he was also instrumental in organizing major nation-wide celebrations, including the 1979 300^th Anniversary of the foundation of Stellenbosch and the 1988 300th Anniversary of the arrival of the Huguenots. Theunis’ brother, Charles, also a Dirkie Uys High School pupil continued his studies at the South Africa Naval Academy in Gordon’s Bay and became the admiral and head of the South African Navy.

Meanwhile the romance between my Uncle and Aunt blossomed and both families were thrilled when, in 1968 at the age of 61, Anna Walters became Anna Thomas at a small ceremony in Claremont where the garden of her home looked out onto Table Mountain. My Aunt moved to London, bringing with her the Volvo car in which she had traveled from school to school on inspection and instructing assignments in Natal. My wife and I, then living in Jamaica, visited the newly-weds at the home in which they lived briefly and which was once owned by Mrs. Simpson for whom Edward VIII abdicated the throne. They then moved to “Lions Roar”, within hearing distance of the jungle animals of London Zoo and, after a few years, to the Island of Guernsey.

There international traffic at the airport in Guernsey escalated as it became the destination for a continuous stream of devoted relatives and close friends from South Africa and England, the welcome guests of this happy couple.

My Uncle passed away in Guernsey in 1992. Marinus (then Ambassador) and I (a banker) became guardians for our Aunt as the pressures of living alone fast became overwhelming for her. We knew she yearned for her beloved South Africa and we soon arranged for her to return to Cape Town where, a little more than a year later, she passed away.

Uncle Bob and Aunt Anna may not have had the internet like us, but they were truly a couple ahead of their time, successful in balancing career, love, large extended families to whom they were devoted and a multinational lifestyle in countries where they are present, still, in the hearts of those whose lives they touched.

As I sat in your school waiting room and I looked at the tiger’s eye ring on my finger, given by my Aunt to my Uncle at their wedding and now my wedding ring, I was glad to have brought it home for a visit to Moorreesburg, where your school and the town have had an influence far greater than you might imagine.