[Image: Michaelhouse / Facebook]
Those of you who have just returned to these shores after a month of Dionysian orgies in the Greek Isles must be exhausted. You will also have missed the latest sensation in the local media concerning a letter written to the parents of Hilton College schoolboys by the headmaster, urging them to tone down their picnics at the next iteration of the semiannual rugby match with their rivals, Michaelhouse.
While you were away, a stream of hyperbolic tripe concerning this letter appeared on two radio stations that hadn’t researched their onions, and on social media via a clown who appears to have found a way to earn a crust by regurgitating banal jokes that someone else has thought of.
The cognoscenti on the matter will understand that the Hilton Michaelhouse has involved one-upmanship since God was a boy. At least, ever since boys from Joburg began attending these schools. Because, at its heart, Joburg is a mining town, filled with the arriviste, where my ingot is bigger than yours has evolved to my car, my house, my muscles, my mortgage and my tender.
I attended Hilton Michaelhouse games in the early ‘80s, within months of the Rubicon speech, when smoked salmon and caviar funded by COEs in tweed jackets was served by waiters on silver platters alongside Rolls-Royces with flutes of bubbly smuggled in from the champagne region. This year’s gazeboes and sushi bars are just a tacky evolution. I am hoping that no one served sushi off a naked model. She would have died of cold.
This practice of car park picnics has evolved from snobs in the Gin Valley and the wider Last Outpost and their practice of harking back to Pax Britannica by emulating braying Sloan rangers in Barbour jackets hosting picnics from the boots of their Range Rovers in the Twickenham car park after an England match.
No one really cares about the showoffs at the Hilton Michaelhouse. In fact, half the reason why people go to the match is to colour their dull provincial lives with some scandal about the latest sort of depravity the rich are addicted to.
The model certainly worked for the local students. As soon as the glitterati vacated gilded picnic tables to watch the first team match, marauding students would sit down to scavenge on the fillet and the crayfish, while enjoying some decent claret out of a bottle for a change rather than a papsak.
What the misinformed social commentators don’t understand is that most parents at the match will be lunching on homemade sandwiches and sipping beer from a cool box strapped to the back of a bakkie. Because they can’t afford any more than this after paying the latest tranche of school fees.
Although I doff my tweed cap at the Hilton Headmaster for having the cojones to send this letter. It is a brave man who castigates his own customers. I particularly applaud the approach of lecturing both parents and pupils simultaneously on the civilised way to behave.
It is a cunning, bottom-up approach. An educated reverse takeover of manners, first through the boys and then into the parents. Because if specific parents repeat their one-upmanship at the next match, there is a real risk that little Johnny’s or Siphiso’s chances of making the first XV, the play, the A class or becoming a prefect will be compromised. I can’t think of a better stick to keep these powerful parents in line.
Because if there is anything an avaricious parent likes talking about more than lucre, lavish holidays or material possessions, it is their successful progeny.
There is no denying that a private school education can constitute materialism in the wrong hands and provide your child with a smug response for the inevitable “What school did you go to?”
But at least there is a positive outcome for the child, because, despite the criticism by people who don’t know any better, these schools are run by fine teachers and set up to produce good humans who are likely to turn out far better than if their upbringing had been left to their parents. Let’s not forget that both these institutions adopted nonracial admission policies in the ’80s in the face of fascists in the Apartheid Government’s Department of Education.
There is a suggestion that some of the worst offenders in one-upmanship aren’t connected to the school at all. And that this match has become a society event for some, curated as a platform to display their perceived opulence in the same way as the July Handicap. This should be discouraged at all costs.
Firstly, the bottom-up civilisation approach that the headmaster has adopted will not work. Secondly, the whole perception of sophistication will be ruined if Khubuluse Zuma turns up dressed in his gold suit again, looking like a giant Ferrero Roche.
The schools could also adopt the Rondebosch Bishops’ approach of banning boozing before the game has ended. Although in a juxtaposition, as an occasion, Bishbosch is bland compared to the Hilton Michaelhouse. This would be a killjoy.
Perhaps Bishbosh have learned from bitter experience, but I feel that extending these draconian abolitionist methods into KZN would ruin the fabric of that society. Besides, booze is a vital necessity in KZN – to quell the horrific nightmares of the riots.
Ramping things up into the Paarl Derby is another alternative. This orgiastic rivalry lasts a week with the crescendo ending in a battle to the death in the Faure Street Stadium that makes Gladiator look like a Cambridge tidily winks contest. I doubt it would work – the rugby players at Hilton or Michaelhouse aren’t good enough to make it about the rugby.
Controversially, there is a whisper that most of the criticism of the Hilton parents’ one-upmanship culture comes from Michaelhouse parents, among whom, of course, no such thing takes place. This is not my personal experience. After all, many Michaelhouse parents also come from Joburg.
Perhaps the Rector could match the bravery of his Hilton counterpart by sending a similar letter to his parents. It wouldn’t be cricket if red and white were allowed to show off while black and white sulked in stoic modesty. Perhaps the Rector could also add a paragraph about sour grapes in his letter. They don’t make fine wine.
It’s also time that Hilton intentionally stopped being the most expensive school in the country. Because those who habitually order the most expensive bottle on the menu usually know little about wine.
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Seth would like to make it clear that he was recently hosted at the Michaelhouse Derby and thoroughly enjoyed it, so any ex-Hilton / Michaelhouse hack is welcome to respond, without using ChatGPT, of course.
