17 August 2018 & 18 August 2018
The Class of 2008 held its 10 year on reunion over the weekend of 17 and 18 August 2018. Around 120 Old Boys got together over the course of the weekend, participating in the various activities that had been arranged. We were lucky to have Old Boys attending from outside the borders of Gauteng, including KwaZulu-Natal, the Western and Eastern Capes, Mpumalanga and Limpopo, and even some travelling from overseas (Botswana, Malawi, the UAE and the UK).
The weekend started with about 90 of us attending Friday assembly at the School, followed by tea in the new Bill Schroder Centre. It was a true privilege to be able to attend Friday assembly again and to have the opportunity to have a look around the new School Hall and Bill Schroder Centre, which are both truly world class facilities in their own rights. It was great to see how many Old Boys still had their hymn books, which they brought with them to assembly (although some lacked covers and other lacked pages, reminding us all of the lengths to which we went to save our friends from getting lates). It was even better that many of them did not need their hymn books for the singing of hymn number 7, I Vow to Thee My Country, the clear favourite of our class and a hymn which most of us could still recite from memory even after 10 years.
After our visit to the School we made our way to Silver Lakes Golf Estate for a little bit of golf and a lot of ball searching. All who participated had a great afternoon. We ended our Friday festivities in traditional fashion at the Old Boys Club, reminiscing about our days at the School on the Hill over a boerie and a beer. Some of us ended up enjoying a few more lemonades than anticipated, and resulted in us receiving an additional, last-minute apology for the dinner the next day due to “ill health”.
A few of us gathered at the Old Boys Club again on Saturday afternoon for a friendly game of soccer, before making our way to the School for the reunion dinner, our main event of the weekend. We were honoured to have a few special Masters with us at the dinner, namely Mr Reeler, Mr Illsley, Mr Schroder, Mr McBride, Mr Mansfield, Mr Smuts, Mr Keeton, Dr van der Watt and Mr Ewart-Phipps.
Warwick Stone, our Master of Ceremonies, conducted the evening and Tiwonge Tembo said Grace. Simphiwe Petros, Shaylin Bhana, Juan Jardim and Jason Webber made toasts to South Africa, Absent Friends, the Masters and the School respectively. Mr Tony Reeler responded with an update on the School, and Mr Schroder, who was Headmaster while we were at the School, was encouraged to give an impromptu speech, which delighted us all enormously. The dinner ended with the singing of Forty Years On and a number of boarders complaining about how the food in the dining hall was never that good when they were at School. We then made our way back to the Old Boys Club for a few more lemonades before saying our good byes and promising one another that it cannot be another 10 years before we reconvene.
A special word of thanks to the School for hosting us for such an enjoyable weekend, to Mrs Inge Paulsen-Liddle from the Old Boys Association for her invaluable assistance with all of the reunion arrangements, and to the Organising Committee who helped to put the weekend together and to get the Old Boys out in their numbers. Here’s to the next 10!
Jason Webber
CONVENOR
