2007. Christchurch NZ, Schooling and Settling In, 1995

< 1995. Esslemont Brothers near Castle Rock, NZ.


NZ had few special-schools for special-needs and behaviour-needs pupils. NZ pupils were called students. Parents with difficult kids mostly enrolled their kids in ordinary schools, resulting in cerebral-palsied students, blind students, retarded students, physically abused students, and special-needs and behaviour-needs students being placed in mainstream classes, with overworked teachers (untrained to cope with special-needs) being forced to teach them. No win situation. Teachers and students sometimes rejected special-needs students. Some schools refused to have them. Other schools accepted more than their fair share.

Teacher-aides assisted teachers with special-needs and behaviour- needs students. Teacher -aides were paid low wages for contracted hours in classrooms. They weren't paid for holidays, nor for overtime, including travel, lesson prep, meetings, written reports, (all of which Leah later did as a teacher-aide).

We found schools in different areas, or even in the same area, like Sumner, had different standards. Christchurch was oversupplied with teachers and their average age was over forty. Teacher quality, training, attitudes and values varied. Teacher trainers trained new teachers, but few graduates found jobs in Christchurch, and sought work elsewhere.

Schools were graded decile 1 to decile 10: decile 1 being a poor socio-economic area. A school Board of Trustees (BOT) served as school employer and consisted mainly of parents. BOTs varied in influencing resources and staffing. In 1995, Kiwi classrooms we saw were better equipped than SA classrooms. Kiwi schools we saw had Aussie adventure-equipment erected in wood-chipped play areas. Jake and Luke enjoyed similar Aussie play-equipment in parks. Classrooms had playground equipment for use during breaks: sets of cricket equipment, balls, hoops, bats.

In June 1995, when we settled in Sumner, the SA death penalty was abolished.

The plastic casing of one of my Starkey hearing-aids cracked. I posted the hearing-aid to Australia for repairs. For the first time in twelve years, I accepted I was permanently deaf.

Jake and Luke got asthma, as we were used to sleeping with house windows open in SA. Initially we were unaware of Christchurch's asthma causing mice and birch pollen, and smoke-pollution from vehicles and home fires. We bought inhalers for our boys, and slept with closed windows.

Locals parked secondhand "For Sale" cars on roadsides. Had we known about that and car auctions, we'd've saved money on car purchase. We looked for bargains at garage sales and school / church fetes. Our belongings arrived from Port Elizabeth. Jake and Luke enjoyed unpacking their toys.

We weren't a financial burden on the NZ state, as we were forbidden to apply for the dole during our first residence year. Later the regulation changed to two years' residence. Initially we were unaware of the state Family Assistance benefit. When we applied, we received several months' back pay. To survive, Leah and I either had to find paid work, or live off our SA earned, exchange-rate reduced, settling -in funds. We paid our way, and no Kiwi refused our foreign earned money.

In SA, crime and killing continued. Kiwi tourists were mugged. Democracy, the new constitution, new bill of rights, Mandela-magic and winning the 1995 rugby World Cup was supposed to solve all SA's ills. Naidoo's Reconstruction (Perestroika) and Development fizzled out. De Klerk left the Government of National Unity, and the exchange rate worsened for emigrants.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. Christchurch NZ Settler, 1995

1995. Luke Esslemont at Waitangi, NZ


After a jetlag reducing Singapore stopover, we flew southeast over Australia, crossing the Tasman Sea, and on 16/05/1995 we arrived in Auckland, built on old volcanoes. Durban friends, who'd emigrated, met us at the airport. Their North Shore home was smaller, cramped and flimsier than SA houses. Its construction was concrete-slab base, wood-frame, weather-board walls, low iron roof: earthquake proof. We found older-house bathrooms were cold, with few towel-rails and soap dishes. Auckland firewood houses were overpriced, to filch funds from immigrants.

We stayed at Vincent Street YMCA, and while Leah took our boys to the aquarium and stuffed elephant at the War Memorial Museum, I arranged finances and bought a secondhand, 1600cc Toyota Corolla, which would be the most enduring car I ever had. Secondhand cars were roadworthy due to six-monthly Warrant of Fitness (WOF) tests. When I told the salesman we'd settle south-east in Christchurch, as houses were cheaper, he said, "Souf Island is cold."

Some Jap exporters improved profits by turning back odometers before exporting cars to NZ. Metal panels in NZ cars were better rust -proofed than SA cars. There were more old cars and vintage cars on NZ roads than in SA. With the bad Rand / NZ dollar exchange-rate, we threw away 60% of our money. Before we left Auckland, Aucklanders lined Queen Street, watching a parade celebrating Black Magic yacht winning the American Cup.

We over-nighted at Ruawai with an old Edgewood friend, then visited Waitangi where protesting Maori had spat on the anachronistic Governor-General at a Waitangi Day bash. As most Pakeha were of British working-class origin, links with Britain remained, like Commonwealth membership and Privy Council appeals. (WH Oliver, BR Williams, Editors, The Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Wellington, 1981). From 1870 to 1975, thousands of Brits had immigrated in NZ government assisted schemes, and we would meet many "ten pound Poms." (Megan Hutching, Long Journey for Sevenpence, Victoria University, Wellington, 1999).
Only in 2003 did NZ Labour government pass the Supreme Court Bill which stopped Privy Council appeals.

Trekking south past Bombay Hills, past living and dead volcanoes, our boys liked Rotorua's rotten-eggs smell, Huka Falls, and hissing fumeroles and boiling mud at Craters of the Moon.

InterIslander ferry, Cook Strait crossing: choppy seas and grey sky. Kumara-faced men wandered about as skinheads, or cannabis-goofed patriarchs, with ponytails, earrings and goatee beards. Fat women with small boobs, big hips, tatoos, feijoa-faces waddled about: from Tokoloshe to Taniwha. Sailing calmer Marlborough Sounds we saw jade Mainland, Waka of the Gods. (Barry Brailsford, The Tatooed Land, AH & AW Reed, Auckland, 1997).

We passed drizzly Kaikoura, passed misty Hurunui Hills, to foggy Christchurch: junk-mail city on the Avon River, of small plots, small houses, small plastic baths, small toilet-seats, small sinks, small car-trailers, small working-class minds, below a dead volcano. I didn't see Port Hills for a week, as fog was thick and CBD one-way roads disorientated me.

We'd trekked south-east from wild animals, wild people, tame mountains, to tame animals, tame people, wild mountains. Local trampers and climbers sometimes got lost or killed in the Southern Alps, with media reports about lost people not being safety-conscious enough. Jake and Luke would grow up in flat Christchurch, and Leah would do professional work few Kiwis knew or did.

For a start, we used Cathedral Square Post Office as our post-restante address. We visited Leahs' cousin Rob, who was born Kiwi. Rob's wife Brenda, British immigrant, and their two adult sons welcomed us, and another immigrant family, which had left East London with us.

1995. Esslemont Brothers with Esslemonts' Toyota Corolla on Lindis Pass, NZ.

Trekking, we slept a night at a SA immigrant's Oamaru home, and our boys enjoyed jumping on their trampoline. Leah had written to him before we'd left SA. Dunedin's weather was worse than Christchurch's, so I drove to Lake Hawea, where we visited our East London neighbour's cousin, retired farmer, who was polite but unwelcoming, although we'd written to him from SA. We left during a snowy night, and slithered to Wanaka campsite. We didn't see Aoraki Mount Cook, Maori God, as a snowstorm obscured our view.

In Christchurch, we rented a two-bedroom house at Denman Street, Sumner, seaside suburb in a warm, north-facing Port Hills valley. A Pom immigrant described Sumner to me as, "the place where beautiful people live, scooping dog poo in plastic bags."

We enrolled Jake in what we felt was the best of Sumner primary schools. Jake had missed two months schooling, and as Kiwi kids started school a year younger than SA kids, Jake jumped from year four to year five, being placed in a combined year 5-6 class. The first school letter we received was addressed to, "Dear Caregiver..." Parents weren't mentioned.



1995. Esslemonts at the Albatross Colony near Dunedin, NZ








Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

Post Apartheid, N2 Freeway Exit and Durban Roundup, 1995

1995. 'Mackintosh' Girls: Leah, her sisters & mom, 294 Freemantle Road, Durban, days before Esslemonts emigrated to NZ.


Whenever Fraser had escaped from Town Hill, cops or his curator returned him. Once, Fraser stayed a week at Athlone Hotel near N2 freeway, and when his money ran out he phoned Town Hill and his curator to take him back. Fraser never told me how he "absconded" beyond a concrete, palisade wall around Town Hill, which Zulu watchmen guarded day and night. Town Hill punished Fraser by detaining him for months in Impala Ward with hard-cases. Sometimes Fraser was detained alone in a seclusion -room with bare walls and plastic potty: spied on by staff behind a one-way mirror-window, like Fraser was a criminal. After my complaints, Town Hill superintendent refused his doctors writing letters to me. (He said I was, "wasting doctors' time.") Thereafter, Town Hill superintendent didn't reply to my letters. For years, Fraser felt punished by Addington's psychiatrist, for exiling him from Durban, and certifying him to Town Hill.

During Fraser's "holidays," I had to sign forms indemnifying Town Hill in Fraser's absence. (Town Hill supplied packets of neuroleptics). Every Christmas holiday, Fraser and I'd visited his old friends, haunts, game -parks, Transkei, Drakensberg, QwaQwa, Bloem, Kimberley, to backspoor his memory. In Kruger Park, I'd stopped my Golf, while a herd of elephants charged across veld fire stubble before and behind us. We felt small, and drove about singing, "O hallelujah. O hallelujah. Daar's plek op die donkie wa..."

We visited Elandspruit, where aunty Esme's grandson farmed near New Hanover. Fraser remembered egg-sized hailstones hitting the iron roof, leaving Elandspruit whiter than white. The old tractor and wooden wagon remained in the shed. Forty Easters had passed since we'd played on the old wagon. The farmhouse was bordered by a high electric fence, as farmers were being murdered. I said, "Goodbye" at Town Hill, and wondered whether I'd ever see Fraser again.

At Entabeni Hospital. I consulted the first ENT quack I'd seen in Durban twelve years before. "Can you cure my deafness?" I asked.

"No," he said, steepling his hands, gazing into a crystal ball on his desk. I paid him and left. A sangoma throwing bones would've given better value.

At a Mackintosh goodbye party, (none of my friends nor Fraser were invited) Leah chatted to relatives and friends. Leah's old Northdene headmistress was there. Her husband lectured at Umlazi Technikon, and sometimes avoided work, due to township violence. (Eight years later, their twenty year old daughter would die in a car collision with a minibus taxi).

We knew we'd never see some of Leah's Mackintosh family again. Octogenarian Gillie, who'd fought in North Africa and Italy during WW2 said, "Good riddance! When I was a Jo'burg miner, kaffirs working for me had no brains and no emotions. I punched one in a cage and killed him. In Abysinnia I fought kaffirs..."

"Voertsek!" I said.

We chatted to friends and family, emigrating the same time as us. They would prosper in Auckland. On the way to say, "Goodbye," another family had stopped at Westville Pavilion Pick 'n Pay, and in the carpark their son screamed, "They're shooting us!" while tsotsis sprayed the carpark with AK-47s.

Leah's family said tearful, "Goodbye" at Louis Botha Airport. We boarded a Singapore Airlines jumbo jet and flew over Durban, population about four million, about the same as NZ's population. I looked through the porthole, viewing Valley-of-a-Thousand Hills, Inanda, mud huts, Berea, sepia Umgeni, Blue Lagoon far below and said, "Anyway Azania, I reckon over the last eleven years, we've chongololo-trekked over 300 000 kays. Next Stop Makouvlei. Other trekkers will follow us southeast."

"Do we know the enormity of what we're doing?" asked Leah.

"NZ? Dunno. Since our return from London thirteen years ago, I do know the enormity of what we did. All our SA lives, we've endured black and white nationalisms and militarisations, caught between the claws of northern communism and southern fascism and racism. You taught in six schools in Natal and Cape. You led three play-groups in Vrystaat and Cape, and taught extra-maths in the Cape. You birthed our sons in the Cape on Buffels / Buffalo Rivers, and survived a destructive Vrystaat whirlwind."

"We rebuilt your parents' basement flat in Durban, used by your brother Al, and your sister Jay's family, and us. We bought and sold two plots in Pringle Bay. We bought and sold two houses in Durban and one in East London. We made maningi-money, which we're using in emigration costs. Sixty percent of the remainder we're chucking away with bad exchange rates."

"During Azania's sweet-thorn revolution from apartheid to democracy, I rolled two cars and survived a company-car blow-out at 140 kays per hour. I went deaf while working in seven teaching and personnel jobs. Since leaving Durban in 1984, we trekked many times from Kleinzee, QwaQwa, Koffiefontein and East London back to Durban, to see your Mackintosh family. Only once did your dad object to us arriving at 294 Freemantle Road after midnight. My response: 'I've come to see brain-damaged Fraser. If I was ever in the same position, I hope someone would do the same for me.' Your dad silenced out."

"Woza Moya - Come Spirit. My ancestor Hendrik Jacobus Hendrikz eloped with his contessa Caroline Antoinette De Sanderes to SA after the French Revolution, now we're trekking to NZ after the SA Revolution."

"Kiss Africa quick-quick! Ja, hamba kahle."

Coda: Unrest 2008. 42 African refugees killed, mainly Zimbabwians, thousands displaced throughout SA in xenophobic unrest, where SA blacks felt 3000 000 Zimbabwean refugees from Mugabe's tyranny were taking scarce SA jobs from them. Lights of SA went out when Eskom failed, and after ANC's Zulu Zuma had defeated disconnected Xhosa Mbeki at the ANC's 2007 Polokwane presidential conference, with new ANC president Zuma and his groundlings victoriously singing, "Letha umshini Wam!..." - "Bring me my machine gun!..." (Mark Gevisser, A Legacy of Liberation, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009).

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

Post Apartheid, Testimonials and East London Roundup, 1995

1995. Esslemonts' 5 Sandhurst Road, East London home sold.

When I'd asked Mr. Gunn for a testimonial, he'd refused. Later, I shamed him to co-sign a testimonial I'd asked Midlane to write for me.

Old friends, NED Inspectors, had testified for my NZ residence application. Barry had written: "Mark is an independent, inner -directed and enthusiastic person, who sees the challenge rather than the problem... possesses an empathetic nature and a keen sense of humour... a balanced individual with an alert mind and positive nature."

Hugh wrote: "I was impressed with Mark's hard work, dedication and vigour... He makes a strong commitment to any task in which he becomes involved... honest, trustworthy, and a loyal, good friend, a man of integrity and a man of his word... At times he can be thought to be blunt, as he doesn't suffer fools gladly." Over the years, Hugh had written several job testimonials for me, and Hugh's drama lecturing legacy would flourish in KwaZulu-Natal schools for decades after apartheid died.

We unravelled our lives and said, "Goodbye" to friends. The elderly knew we'd never see them again, and said so. We cashed in our life -insurances and stopped our annuities. We sold our house and two Pringle Bay plots. We steam-cleaned our garden implements in readiness for MAF inspectors in NZ. We disposed of our belongings, giving Snap and Gerry beds, carpets, crockery, cutlery, other goodies. We put remains on a verge with our black rubbish bags, which Xhosa street-kids scavenged. By liquidating our assets, which went back to mom's inheritance, we became nomads again. Snap wailed, and ululated our wake sentiments: "Bye dronkie Luke Lulululululululululu..."

We paid Pickfords a fortune to pack, store then ship our belongings to Lyttelton NZ. We didn't know then, that our wealth would evaporate, and our living standard would deteriorate in NZ, and would stay low for many years.

I'd paid a Worm City audiologist R7000 for two new in-the-ear analogue hearing-aids, as I would need them for NZ job interviews. One Starkey hearing-aid didn't work. The other caused pain in my ear when I twiddled volume-control. I waited two months for the hearing -aids to be repaired in Germany, and received them days before we left SA. Both clogged up with sweat and wax.

We gave Lucky and Koffie to a farmer, as we couldn't afford NZ quarantine fees. I gave our myrtle braai-wood to self-employed friends, and we stayed in their home during the Easter holidays. After we'd emigrated, they emigrated to Canada, as they had young kids. They'd become tired of Xhosa strikers toyi-toying on their shop computers.

We stayed in a caravan at Gonubi campsite, while sorting out our affairs. We bought a teeth-brace for Jake. Leah threw away her glasses, and had a keratotomy operation on her short-sighted eyes. We bought four new, double sleeping-bags, which would be our duvets in NZ. We cut our belongings to four full suitcases, and bought our one-way tickets from Aloe Travel.

We paid our last bills. First National (Barclays) Bank, which I'd banked with for over 25 years, delayed our settling in bank-draft. The white foreign-exchange lady threatened us with obscure Reserve Bank rulings, and harried us about our annuities. She gave us half our funds, making us fax her after our arrival in NZ, so she could telex us our money. Our settling-in funds were far less than the maximum allowed out of SA. She treated us like deserters.

We walked Gonubie board-walk, fished green Gonubie River, paddled in surf, and tanned in autumn sunshine. Jake had his ninth birthday. More Azanians were killed in SA during Jake's nine years than Rhodesians were killed during and after their Bush War. A circus came to Gonubie, and we fed apples to elephants.

My Border years were Mandela years of blood-letting, while Mandela was freed from prison, then led SA to democracy, to become our first black president. I'd never coached cadets at Selborne College, and my greatest subversion over 12 years' high school teaching was avoiding cadets coaching over 11 years, despite pressures from white staff, and Botha's militarization of SA. Selborne academic standards would drop, and Selborne would erect more razor-wire fencing. Neighbouring buildings would become slummy and condemned. Worms in cosy diapause, Mr. Gunn, Norman, Midlane, Bands, Forword and Paxton would do cadets and rugby for many years, and some black teachers would be employed.

Overall, I was a successful teacher in Natal, Vrystaat and the Cape. I got on well with most pupils, parents and staff. As for the few spiteful pupils, parents, staff and inspectors who belittled, patronised and mocked me, they were sluggish, weak, and were threatened by my confidence, focus and professionalism. As for Selborne College biology teaching facilities, I had better facilities as a student teacher at Beachwood Boys High, Durban North, than I ever had two decades later as a Selborne teacher.

Although headmaster Mr. Gordon often slugged teachers and boys with the British Army motto, "Be the betht," Mr. Gordon and his successors were simply not the best, as they didn't provide the best teaching and learning environments for biology and general-science teachers and boys.

My experience of Natal biology and general-science teaching was that senior teachers gave subject notes, baton-passing to junior teachers, to send them along the way. Those subject notes were baton-passed to pupils, so good sets of subject notes maintained subject teaching standards and learning standards for years.

At Durban Virginia Primary (1972-75), a retiring VP gave me his geography notes, which helped my geography teaching, as I'd never studied geography teaching. At Durban Northlands BH (1977), teachers gave me general-science and biology notes. At Durban Hillcrest HS (1978-1980), Herr Flokker gave me biology notes, and I inherited a box full of OHP transparencies from a departing biology teacher. With the 1980 advent of merit-scavenging salary increments, by the time I was teaching at Durban Glenwood HS (1982-1984), few subject notes were forthcoming from other biology teachers. On my arrival, general -science notes were non existent. As unpaid general-science "HOD", I gave general-science notes to several merit-scavenging teachers and hundreds of boys. After leaving Durban for Kleinzee (1984-1986), I left general-science notes and a box full of OHP transparencies for merit-scavengers at Glenwood HS.

At East London Selborne College (1989-1995), few subject notes were forthcoming from merit-scavenging biology and general-science teachers. As I was pressed into junior history teaching, merit- scavenging history teachers grudgingly gave me history notes. I obtained a full set of standards 8, 9, 10 biology and some general -science notes from a Durban DHS biology HOD friend. When I left Selborne, I gave those notes and a box full of OHP transparencies to biology / rugby HOD and cadet coach Midlane, embarrassing him, as he'd been snoeps about note-giving, despite receiving biology HOD merit-pay for years.

Of the several Durban and East London biology HODs I worked with, Midlane was the weakest. All my Durban biology HODs were promoted to senior management or lecturer posts, above HOD level. By 2008 Midlane was one of three VPs at Selborne. Five years younger than me, Midlane died in mid 2009, after 25 years' Selborne College teaching. Piderit, science HOD, loud bully, rugby and cadet coach, was incapable of baton-passing, yet Piderit was promoted principal at Port Rex after apartheid.

Coda: Post apartheid by 2008, 13 years after I'd left Selborne College, I realized that most white male management staff that I knew were already in leadership roles at Selborne in 1993 - Mr Gordon's corrupt legacy. By mid 1993, the new white male principal and white male deputy principal were already playing those roles. The 3 white male VPs and the 2 white male department heads of 2008 were already in Selborne leadership roles in 1993. The 2008 Public Relations white male was the only management staff not teaching at Selborne while I taught there. Of the 12 white senior teachers in 2008 at Selborne, 8 were already teaching at Selborne while I taught there, including one white woman. After I left, 3 white male senior teachers and 1 black female senior teacher had evolved by 2008.

Of the rest of the 22 teaching staff at Selborne College in 2008, I had only taught with 5 of them in 1993 (4 white females, 1 white male). The remaining new teaching staff, unknown to me in 2008, were 6 white males, 1 black male, 1 coloured male, 9 white females. The white male teacher counsellor hadn't changed since my Selborne years. To me the counsellor was a "friendly" snitch who encouraged boys to snitch on staff and processed snitching and backstabbing. He wasn't the only Selborne teacher to do so. When boys once let off a stinkbomb in my class, I told boys to close the door and windows and kept them in for ten minutes to enjoy their stink. When the media teacher heard of my discipline she snitched me to the principal.

By 2008, there was some white and black turnover of hostel staff. All 7 white female admin staff and 2 white tuckshop ladies and 1 black tuckshop lady had changed since my Selborne years. Bursar Cheryl van Zyl had left Selborne, as she'd stolen R567 883 over 4 years to waste at the casino. That's over R200 000 more than I earned as a teacher for 6 years at Selborne. She claimed to be addicted to gambling, (I was addicted to teaching), was sentenced to 5 years jail, serving 10 months, the rest under correctional supervision. (Dispatch online 30/01/2008). I wondered what checks BCom accountancy teachers did? And management checks? At least Selborne boys would learn about breaches of trust and corruption. Curator staff had expanded to 2 white males. I recognized some of the 10 black groundsmen. The rest were new. In 15 years, Ambrose Nene had advanced from reprography machine operator to driver.

Thus, post apartheid in 2008, 13 years after I'd left Selborne College, although there had been some attrition amongst junior staff, all senior white male management staff (except PR) were already teaching at Selborne by mid 1993, during apartheid. In 2008, of the 43 management and teaching staff, there were 39 white males and white females; 1 black female; 1 black male; 1 coloured male. So much for black affirmative-action in the Xhosa Border region. (Selborne College website 2008).

Border witchfinders and sangomas would have much work to do. I wondered whether ubuntu would ever embrace bushy river valleys, where ghosts of bushmen, khoikhoi, Xhosa guerillas, trekboers, British soldiers and settlers haunted? We'd thrown our bones, and drunk our champagne, finished and klaar.

We trekked along N2 freeway, over silted rivers, through degraded, mud-hutted Transkei. Cattle blocked the freeway and black pigs trotted across. Plastic bags fluttered on barbed wire fences...

In Durbs, I gave my .22 pistol to Leah's sister Bebs. Leah gave our TV to her parents, and we holidayed with them. I sold our Golf to an ex security-cop. The Golf had carried us safely for eight bloody years.

Coda: Mr. Gunn retired at the end of 2014, after being Selborne College principal for 21 years.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

Post Apartheid, East London, Selborne College Roundup, 1995

Xmas 1994. Jake & mates, Esslemonts' back yard, 5 Sandhurst Road, East London.











We trekked the N2 freeway to Durbs by the sea. On New Year's day, I took Jake to North Beach, where broken glass littered grassy banks and Beach Baths carpark: freedom. Along the road, at South Beach a Zulu mob rioted: freedom. Over the years on public holidays, former white beaches were messed by thousands of blacks: freedom. In Worm City, on public holidays, a black amoeba spread from Osner Hotel along the Esplanade into Eastern Beach surf. Jake and I stood on North Beach Pier, feeling north wind blasts from Aids infested KwaZulu-Natal, overcrowded with 8000 000 souls.

London's NZ embassy informed us of our residence-visa success, an anti-climax, as it was two years since our emigration decision. Our trekking around SA had prepared us for emigration. Luke thought we were going on a long holiday. Jake was concerned about losing friends.

I gave Mr. Gunn a term's notice, then sat on the bench under the red flamboyant tree by Selborne College tuckshop, overlooking the hockey field. I felt sad, as I sensed I'd never teach again. In the staffroom Mr. Gunn squeaked to staff, "Mark won't be replaced until affirmative-action quotas for blacks begin."

"You can all cheer," I said: silent staff. Although Model C schools had functioned for four years, Selborne clung to apartheid status quo, having no black, coloured, nor Indian teachers. A white teacher taught Xhosa to Xhosa speaking black pupils.

Luke began his first and last term at a Jewish pre-primary. Jews had already emigrated, and Jewish enrolment at Selborne had decreased over the years. We heard when Jews began hearing anti-Semitic comments it was time to leave.

I'd joined Selborne-Vincent Neighbourhood Watch. Late at night, male residents car-patrolled suburbs, reporting suspicious characters, incidents, robberies-in-progress to SAP. We patrolled unharmed, shining torches on Xhosa bush-dwellers sitting around their campfires. We scrutinized suspicious-looking Xhosa wandering roads, and dossing on school premises and at Guild Theatre.

The nearest I came to being a klipgooi victim was when I checked inside Selborne's swimming-pool filtration plant. The room was dark, and when the Xhosa pool-attendant saw me enter, he picked up a half -brick and followed me inside. On recognizing me, he dropped the brick. I wondered how many Mdantsane tsotsis he'd hit with bricks? Was violent crime an excuse for revenge-attacks on whites by ex revolutionaries? A Xhosa thief was shot dead a block from our home. A white painted outline of his body stayed on the pavement. SA had many white, tarry figures.

"You're a racist!" said Forword before staff.

"As newly promoted VP, you represent institutionalized racism," I said. "You're galled I suggested a door should be installed in Selborne's grandstand, stopping Xhosa vagrants using it as a urinal and doss-house. Razor-wire fencing hasn't deterred them."

"You're running away to the land of milk and honey eh? We know we must never employ another PR person again. You've given us lots of shit since you've been here."

"The mouse swims the cream to butter and avoids the cats. PR is very different from IR, where I worked as a personnel officer for De Beers, which you resent." Forword winced. Playing Pig Dog, I barked so other worms would wriggle: "You manage Selborne finances, yet you and your cronies have never reviewed my salary nor merit-increments. Over the last six years, if you, Selborne management and inspectors had any integrity you would've increased my merits and advised me to apply for a board for my deafness, to secure my family's financial future. Neither you nor any staff have offered me accommodation nor help, while I'm packing up. Midlane sent a goodbye card, only because I gave him my biology notes. Most lessons he wastes lab time writing chalk notes on his green-board." Forword and Midlane squirmed.

"My career includes ten happy teaching years, but also eight outcast years working without labs in three boys high schools, under spiteful management like you. Midlane and I achieved the only two biology A results in the last matric exam. Midlane had a lab. I hadn't. Management never praised my A result. As for my sports coaching achievements, I've survived a hit cricket ball striking my face, and a hit hockey ball striking my balls. Being born to a teacher, married to a teacher, and having taught for 72 terms, it'll be decades before I purge teaching from my system."

"Counting my intellectual, emotional, social and health costs, you and other management rookies benefitted from my Natal, Vrystaat and Cape expertise gained before my hideous Selborne experience. After six years at Selborne, 10 biology / science teachers and HODs benefitted from my expertise, at great cost to myself, as I was never allocated a lab. Many other teacher and pupil play directors and backstage workers at Selborne and Clarendon benefitted from my drama expertise at great cost to myself. Never mind the thousands of Selborne boys I taught who benefitted from my sciences professionalism."

My last fifth form class said, "Goodbye" by lining up and shaking my hand: my best, "Goodbye." I slipped notes in Forword's and Mr. Gunn's pigeon-holes stating: "I won't be at Selborne on the last day of term in protest against six years of lab discrimination. Other teachers can complete my reports."

On 07/04/1995, I left Selborne with few regrets. I couldn't abide a measly goodbye gift and hypocritical speeches by management, who'd betrayed my trust in them to provide teacher equality with my own lab.

My high school biology / general-science reckoning: East London 6 years: 24 terms no lab = 100% Kak! Durban 6 years: 7 terms no lab + 17 terms own lab = 70% OK.

In Natal and Cape schools, I'd worked with at least 2 SADF, CF majors, several captains, and gangs of brainwashed officers: all swaggering around, coaching cadets, and sniffing out intelligence for SADF.

I gave my old bicycle to Ambrose, reprography machine-operator, as Ambrose had done more for me than any white staff, by copying notes, tests and exam-papers for me. The white typist had complained about my handwriting, and had made me wait for my typed exam-papers. Forword had pandered to her rude excesses. My white colleagues had been selfish and indifferent to my discrimination hassles, and Mr. Gordon's corruption had slimed dirty Selborne for years.

I encountered Xhosa pupils in town. One said: "You never said 'Goodbye' to us seh, Why're you leaving SA seh?"

"Your leaders govern now. They must stop the killings. I reckon hell is a silent, cold place. I've breached the sound barrier by teaching you and your Selborne pals for years without hearing-aids. As a former pupil, student and teacher, I've been 35 years in schools. While teaching over 18 years in 7 schools in Natal, Cape and QwaQwa, I've coached 8 soccer teams, 5 rugby teams, 7 hockey teams and 15 cricket teams. I've also coached swimming, athletics, PT, yachting, cadets and wildlife. I've directed plays in all schools I've taught at, and I've had enough. I'll never teach teenagers again."


Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

Post Apartheid, Bloemfontein Trek, NZ Residence Visa, 1994

When I asked why I'd been given third and fourth hockey teams to coach instead of one team, Mr. Gunn squeaked, "You had a good NZ holiday. You'll be fresh." Besides teacher sports-coaches, Selborne College used non-teacher coaches: a teacher's wife; the caretaker's brother, an old-boy; and for Norman, a professional first-team coach, who played England county-cricket, and every six months followed the sun to Selborne, where Selborne housed him in a Selborne flat and paid him a wage. He later married a Clarendon HS old-girl, became an unqualified Selborne teacher (slipped standards), then briefly Pakistan's cricket coach.

Although Norman and Mr. Gunn knew I was deaf, besides my biology teaching, Norman stupidly / maliciously timetabled me standard eight English. I couldn't hear English orals, so I graded oral tests by watching class appreciation. My teaching days were numbered. During staff-meetings, I felt like the mouse swimming around in the cats' cream-bowl. I tongue-lashed deserving Selborne boys, and spoke loudly to my family. Leah didn't deserve it. Jake and Luke sometimes did. Deafness stole my professional life, and others' spoken words were splinters.

The seven ENT specialists I'd consulted all confirmed my deafness gains, and recommended hearing-aids. No one offered counselling, or how to cope with deafness. They took my money, giving no cure.

A weekend sports excursion to Greys College, Bloemfontein, about 500 kays away, was planned. It would be nice to farewell my Koffiefontein friends before we emigrated, so I suggested to Bands, in charge of the Grey's trip, that I drive to Koffiefontein, then be at Greys timeously for my hockey matches. "Asked Mr. Gunn," said Bands.

Mr. Gunn stopped my car-trek, but his family accompanied him on the train-trek to Bloemfontein. After my teams had played, I strolled to Reitz Straat, near Greys, where mom, Fraser and I had holidayed. Aunt Dorothy had sold her Bloem property, retired to Worm City and died. Townhouses had been built on her Bloem land. A suspicious tannie, leashed to her white bull-terrier, emerged from her townhouse. She demanded to know why I was sniffing around, but softened when I told her I reminisced. I wandered into the CBD, polluted with plastic bags, cans and packets: freedom. An equestrian statue of Boer War general Christiaan de Wet glared at Bloem's lost pride and piss-in-straat piccanins.

Back in East London, I heard from London that our NZ residence-visa application was being processed. My deafness was accepted, but The Hague medical consultants needed information about Leah's old sarcoidosis, which she'd got when pregnant with Jake. NZ wanted wealthy, well qualified and work-experienced immigrants, but was scared immigrants would sponge off NZ health system. Never mind paying immigrants like us bringing family, tertiary education, skills, work-experience, money and goods to NZ, all derived from other countries. And after their arrival, immigrants stimulated NZ's economy.

We drove 600 kays return-trek to PE, where Leah consulted an Afrikaner specialist. A reply from The Hague then wanted a prognosis. We trekked 1400 kays return through Transkei to Durban, where Leah consulted an English specialist, who confirmed the Afrikaner's opinion, and gave a prognosis.

After many months, our general-category NZ residence-visa application was accepted, but because we didn't have enough points (on an arbitrary scale regularly changed by NZ Immigration Service), our application was pooled with other applicants. My age, qualifications, and chattels-valuation provided our residence-visa points. As I wasn't teaching drama full-time, my honours degree gave no points, so we needed more points before our pooled application expired, forcing us to dearly reapply for residence. Network Migration Services cheated us, when we paid and sent Network Leahs' Scottish ancestor info to get us Scottish sponsorship points. Network did nothing.

NZ / UK sponsorship organizations promised to assist British ancestry immigrants to settle in NZ, after taking immigrants' money and giving "sponsorship" for sponsorship points. We faxed sponsorship info to a NZ friend, who got us sponsorship from an Auckland Scottish society. (In 1991, NZIS points system for resident-visas began. In 1995, shortly after our emigration, sponsorship for residence-visa points was stopped by NZIS). We sent our sponsorship document to London, and sponsorship points got us out of the pool. It would've been less farcical, if NZIS gave me points for my honours degree, but less lucrative for our Scottish "sponsor" and Network, who we never heard from again.

Unrest: November 1994. The Land Rights Restitution Act promised land to dispossessed blacks, who were forcibly moved before and during apartheid. (Lets Go South Africa, Including Lesotho and Swaziland, Macmillan, 1999).

Note: Messrs Gunn & Bands are composite characters.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

South Africa's 1994 Freedom Election

27-29/04/1994: Smiling Azanians queued quietly at polling places. Unrest lessened during freedom election days. On a balmy autumn afternoon, I voted DP for the last time in my life. ANC was voted into seven of the nine new provinces. Inkatha took KwaZulu-Natal, and Nationalists retained Western Cape, despite apartheid oppression of coloureds. The sweet-thorn revolution was over: sweet for some, thorny for others.

Post-apartheid, eleven official languages would reflect tribal diversity, including English and Afrikaans apartheid official languages. A new flag was waved, containing ANC colours and Boer republic colours. The old flag slowly disappeared. Sontonga's Nkosi Sikeleli Africa and Langenhoven's Die Stem became national anthems: "...We shall live. We shall die - We for you South Africa." Nigger-balls became rainbow balls. Kaffirbooms became coral trees. Khayas became granny-flats or backpacker rooms.

SA had universal suffrage and freedom from apartheid. Equality, fraternity, and freedom from racism and poverty would need years to evolve. Would SA go the same totalitarian way as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Zaire?... SA had a Government of National Unity, which would rule for five years, but apartheid's legacy would fester for years: bad education, greed, jealousy, corruption, theft, murder, rape, Aids.

In May, at Pretoria Union Building president Mandela was inaugurated, flanked by his daughter Zenani who wore a big, black hat. New vice-president Mbeki and old president De Klerk, also a vice-president, stood nearby. TV showed Prince Philip, Arafat, Castro, Bolger and other guests. President Mandela's praise-singer sung Madiba's praise song. Kastrils chanted, "Fidel! Fidel!..." And overdressed "Mother-of-the-Nation" Winnie Mandela self-promoted before TV cameras. Representatives of the old apartheid state, new Government of National Unity, SANP, SANDF, clerics and a rabbi attended.

When SANDF helicopters flew over the rejoicing crowd, with the new SA flag fluttering below helicopters, I felt foreboding and loss, like I was witnessing a funeral for future Aids deaths. I wondered when new politicians would blame colonialism and apartheid and emigrating citizens for their own failures? I wondered when TV would show ANC politicians sleeping in parliament? I wondered when SAA flying perks for politicians and their families would be abused? I wondered when corrupt politicians would open Swiss bank accounts? Those sorts of abuses had often happened in post-colonial Africa.

I reckoned Afrikaners had to forget Volk and Vaderland ideology and accept new disorder. Mandela's African nationalist refrain, "our people" was like De Klerk's, Treunicht's and Terblanche's Afrikaner nationalist, "ons volk" refrains. Why was Xhosa Mbeki (exiled overseas for years) chosen by the ANC to succeed Mandela after five years, instead of union negotiator Ramaphosa, a Venda who'd negotiated Codesa, or Buthelezi, who governed Zulus (biggest ethnic group) in KwaZulu while resisting apartheid and being slagged by ANC as a, "Sellout?"

How would Xhosa Mhlaba (Maoist and former Robben Island inmate) new premier of our new Eastern Cape sort out his Comrades, cadres and former activists; former Transkei and former Ciskei bureaucracies; former apartheid armies, police forces, civil servants, education systems, health systems; water, electricity, sanitation systems; buildings and road services? How would Mhlaba sort out his proletariat; bourgeoise; Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Moslem, black animist religious beliefs; formal and informal markets; Indian and Chinese citizens; Taiwanese businessmen and families attracted to pineapple-aloe Eastern Cape as former honorary-whites to exploit Xhosa in subsidized homeland businesses? How would Mhlaba sort out attitudes regarding years of black school and white business boycotts and black electricity and rent boycotts?

How would Mhlaba encourage a non-racist, non sexist democracy in a paternalistic Xhosa province? How would Mhlaba stop emigration which had accelerated for years? Would the Afrikaner volk and their beloved Afrikaans survive? Similar questions applied to the premiers of the other eight provinces as well.

Mhlaba wouldn't last long: neither would De Klerk, nor Viljoen. Freedom over the following decades meant huge increases in crime, corruption and pullulating Aids, with weak policing and massive emigration (replaced by illegal immigration from black states like Zimbabwe), with former white bureaucrats briefly retaining their jobs, grateful for ANC Slovo's, "Sunset Clause." Xhosa Mandela and Xhosa Mbeki would oversee overwhelming ANC incompetance, mismanagement, bribery, corruption and theft in the Eastern Cape where they were both born.
(RW Johnson, South Africa's Brave New World, The beloved Country Since The End Of Apartheid, Allen Lane, London, 2009).

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.