Middleburg: Going to School in Apartheid South Africa

1980 seems like a long time ago now but at the time I was ten years old and in my fourth year at Parkhurst Primary. Parkhurst Primary is a state school situated in the centre of a small industrial town called Middleburg. As a town Middleburg really lives up to its name, in that its white population are typically lower middle class, its ideals and aspirations are middle of the road and it is situated right in the middle of nowhere. In fact Middleburg is typical of many small towns in South Africa in that it possessed absolutely nothing of interest and was ideally suited to feeling depressed. Parkhurst was a modern school that boasted a great sense of tradition. But in all of my years at this nasty little piece of hell-on-earth, the only “great sense of tradition” that I ever saw was a concerted effort to propagate fear, ignorance and stupidity. For some reason many people still insist that your school days are the best days of your life. But for me school was nothing more than a catalogue of misery and misfortune. Those so called “best days of my life” still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

My very first recollection of 1980 takes me back to a Monday morning assembly in which the principal Mr Lynch was addressing the school. Although assembly was a complete waste of time this ritualized gathering would take place every Monday morning in the school hall. Mr Lynch was a thin wiry man who always wore the same crumpled up suit and a worn out pair of shoes. Although the top of his head was now completely bald he insisted on combing the hair from the left side of his head to cover the top. The result was a greasy looking thatch of black strands covering a sweaty orb of Brill cream. He was from a generation of men who could get away with such acts of incredulous stupidity. After all he was the principal of a primary school and in a town where everyone was renowned for being nothing – he was something. As he stood behind the podium which was placed to one side of the stage, he spoke to us earnestly about the dawn of a new decade that was now upon us.

“The 1980’s”, he said “is the beginning of a new era that will change your lives here in South Africa!”

We diligently sat on the floor in front of him in complete silence and listened with a sense of ignorance and apprehension. For me the beginning of the 1980’s was marked by a deep sense of concern and anguish that I would be destined to spend yet another year in a classroom with a teacher who was mentally unstable. For days, weeks, months I would be compelled to endure the torments of a sexually frustrated Afrikaner woman whose only emotional outlet would be the physical chastisement of young boys. But apart from that I did not regard the 1980’s with any real sense of interest or optimism. As long as the 1980’s didn’t prove to be any worse than the hell I had already endured I didn’t really care what happened, and after all, I was only ten years old. For me life consisted of going to school in a town called Middleburg and the 1980’s probably wouldn’t happen for at least another twenty years.