Those were the days, my friend

At Your Wits End

Those were the days, my friend…

Kate Turkington

When I was a student and dinosaurs ruled the earth, if you went to university and got a degree at the end of your three or four years, well, that was considered a bonus. You went to university mainly to have a good time and if you picked up a qualification along the way, all to the good. Mind you, mine was the first generation of UK students who went to university on merit, not breeding or money.

Only 1% of UK’s population went to university in those far-off days of the 50s and most of us were from working-class homes on State Scholarships. The government gave us just enough money to see us through a term at a time and have the odd beer, but if we failed even one exam, we were booted out never to return. Amazingly, the pass rate was nearly always 100%. Harold (‘Winds of Change sweeping through Africa’) Macmillan told us all in Britain that we’d ‘Never Had it So Good’. And we believed him. It was pretty true anyway. We went to parties and balls, debated superficial and frivolous issues in our great debating halls, and worried over who would win the Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race. The government didn’t give us enough money to last through the vacations, so we all became barmaids, potato pickers, chambermaids, bus conductors or washeruppers during the vacs. Good training for life and a great incentive to pass those exams.

I started teaching at Wits at the beginning of the 70s and was housed in a prefab hut down near the swimming pool. There were faint rumblings of dissent and mutters about The Struggle, but students still had a good time and would sit in the sun leaning against my flimsy wooden walls making profound statements like, “In the ends are the best beginnings.” There was one common room for staff ruled over by Prof Alf Stadler from the Economics Dept and Hilary Semple of the English Dept, where we all drank coffee together and chatted about work, students and the university authorities. (Mind you, the late, great Professor Bozzoli was then VC, so there was very little to complain about.) I joined Wits just before Barry Ronge, but we quickly bonded and gazed in awe at other academics who seemed to be much older and cleverer than we were. (An illusion, as we quickly found out.) Everybody knew everybody else and there was a sense of belonging.

In those heady days, students didn’t go on strike at exam time like today; in fact they didn’t go on strike at all, because they were allowed to repeat if they failed. I had a legendary character in my lectures who had repeated English 1 eight times. (He went on to become a legendary multi-millionaire entrepreneur.)

I was delighted that hundreds of students attended my first year lectures on D H Lawrence. Even medical, law and engineering students. I suspected I was a pretty good lecturer but hell, not that good. Then I found out the reason. To illustrate teaching points in Sons and Lovers I would quote liberally and extensively from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I had just arrived from the UK and had no idea it was banned in SA.

If strikes were non-existent, the occasional rally took place. Randy Newman, an American who taught in some obscure department or other, would organise moritoriums (I know it’s moritaria but that’s what Randy called them) on Vietnam. A small scattering of not very enthusiastic students and staff would stand on the steps facing the library lawns and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’. Then they all went off to Pop’s Corner for a beer.

My office moved to the Central Block and then to the Gate House, where a smelly American Professor set up home in the office next door and never washed. Cooking smells would drift along the corridors but nobody other than me seemed to notice. As my office accommodation began to improve, so did the teaching venues. We went from dim, damp, rooms in the Old Convent (where it was rumoured that nuns were walled up) to rather clinical-looking rooms in Senate House. The Administration moved up to the lofty heights of the 11 th Floor in Senate House, rarely to be seen again, except when sipping warm sherry with flushed parents on Graduation Nights.

Looking back, it all seems like a cross between a Fellini movie, Alice in Wonderland and Tin Tin in Africa.

But beneath all that apparent apathy there was plenty going on. Secret battles were being waged with the government and future leaders were being born. It may not seem so important today, but we were the first university in South Africa to teach African Literature where white students for the first time were introduced to Chinua Achebe, Es’kia Mphalele and Sol Plaatjie. And we had one of the best teaching hospitals, mining, engineering and medical schools in the world.

We’ve come a long way…