Small Town Trouble

Late one night, the rugby posts at Vredendal High School uprooted themselves and moved nearly half a kilometre. Evan Naudé explains the reason behind this mysterious phenomenon.

- Nicolene Louw

One morning, near the end of my first year in high school, I was surprised by what I found at school: toilet paper hung from trees, posters pasted on doors and graffiti on the windows. When the matrics arrived, things got even more strange: The boys wore dresses and ribbons in their hair, and the girls wore grey school shorts and boys’ socks pulled up to their knees. This was my first introduction to Forty Days.

It’s a tradition in some places – a hangover from SADF conscription when soldiers in the 1970s and ’80s were desperate to be done with their national service. The name comes from a Cliff Richard song: “Forty Days (To Come Back Home)”.

Five years later, I was in matric myself and my final 40 days of school were fast approaching. A few days beforehand, the principal – Mr Von Zeuner – called the matrics in and asked us to behave ourselves.

“Stay out of trouble and don’t let me down,” he said.

“Yes Sir, we understand Sir,” we all promised.

But what Von Zeuner didn’t know was that we were already planning something more daring than toilet paper and graffiti…

On the night before Forty Days, we would remove the posts from the rugby field and plant them on the lawn in front of the staff room – in the quad where all the pupils gather in the mornings. The following day, all the pupils and teachers would find an unforgettable monument to the matric class of 2004.