Smelling the roses, or at least the dry winter grass :o)

My last blog update was a bit of a downer, truth be told, but it came from my attempts to deal with difficult thoughts and experiences. For many of us, all over the world, the outlook for 2016 still is not particularly rosy (possibly even less so in light of the turmoil being caused by the recent Brexit vote). However, on a personal level, I have had much to enjoy and cherish in this year, as Helen’s pregnancy has gone well (our second child, also a boy, is due by mid-July) and Calvin continues to grow and develop into a cute, friendly, kind little boy (who clearly takes after his mother in temperament and innate goodness).

I spent a few months earlier this year working on a possible business idea to provide consultancy to schools, but after some very interesting and frank interviews with various people in senior positions at schools around Johannesburg, I realised that our schools like the way they operate, it is by design, not by accident. And hence, there will always be a place in our traditional schools (nay, several places) for jocks who teach even though they may not be particularly good at spelling or grammar, but who are more than willing to coach several sports and give up their weekends and holidays for sports fixtures and tours.

Since then I have also been doing a fair bit of research into the possibilities of pursuing tertiary education - both in terms of studying further and also of teaching in a university or college setting. I still feel rather daunted by the possibility of studying a 4-6 year PhD - remembering that a Masters Thesis over 3 months nearly drove me to gouge out my own eyes, but it appears to be a necessity, even a prerequisite for becoming a lecturer or university faculty member. Before I launch into such an avenue fully, with all the commitments this would be likely to entail, I am hoping to gain some experience of lecturing first, to see if it is something I enjoy more or less than my current role as a high school teacher. On one hand, university students are in attendance by choice, and many of the weaker school students have already been culled, but on the other, there is much less connection between teacher and students (which is both good and bad, given the burdens of pastoral care and sports coaching expected of teachers) and academia is generally acknowledged to be intensely competitive as well as very political. In South Africa, that political element appears to be particularly prevalent and it seems that my chances of being able to join the faculty of a reputable university, as a white male, are exceedingly slim.

Meanwhile, I am also looking to re-position myself to teach in the English department in my school next year, so I can avoid the unending frustration of dealing with my overly-controlling head of History. In addition, I will no longer be coaching 1^st team basketball and hope that a move to coaching a lower age group and increased delegation of responsibility for all basketball matters to the Basketball Co-ordinator who was appointed at the beginning of this year, will allow me to spend more time with my family in the summer. I will certainly be going to fewer basketball tournaments, and it is a natural break-point for me because I will part company with the group of boys I have been coaching since February 2015 when I ended up in the hot seat as the 1^st team coach - a really fine group of young men, and they have certainly left big shoes for the teams that follow them to fill.

While I have enjoyed coaching sports, it has never been a career path for me and I would rather specialise in education, which has also made me consider whether in the long term I should be looking to teach in an International School. This would make sense given my experience of the International Baccalaureate and also the tendency of these schools to hire teachers for their academic commitment rather than as all-rounders who also coach sports. But that is likely to involve considering spending at least some time abroad to gain the necessary experience, not a decision to be taken lightly given that I have a soon to be larger family with two quite short people in the mix.

One of the great perks of being in a school environment is having school holidays. I do spend fair chunks of these working on my teaching materials and curricula for the following term, but I also get to spend some valuable time with my family. In April we took our nanny with us and spent 10 days down at St Francis Bay on the Eastern Cape coast. The weather was not always as warm as we’d have liked, with some days of exceptionally cold sea water, but Calvin had a fabulous time playing on the beach, and having the nanny there with us meant that Helen and I could sometimes go out for lunch together or simply go for a walk or to the beach without taking Calvin with us. It is definitely the right way to do a holiday with small people, to take along someone who can babysit!

 

I have enjoyed my rugby refereeing again this season, having made a conscious decision to withdraw from the politics of the society and leave others to solve the chaos that has arisen. I have been fortunate to have some good games, and some important games. During the Easter Weekend I was fortunate (mostly due to withdrawals by others) to be asked to referee at the prestigious St Stithians Rugby Festival on the Thursday morning - refereeing a great game between Bishops (Diocesan College) and Durban High School (http://www.durbanhighschool.co.za/oldboys/?p=2264) Then on the Easter Monday I was appointed to the St John’s College Festival, for what was a much more difficult game between two of the tournament’s struggling sides, neither of whom had won a game in the previous two matches of the tournament, so it was a game of desperation rather than discipline, always tricky for a referee - and I learned a lot from a game that I should have managed better (http://www.sarugbymag.co.za/blog/details/easter-schools-festivals-results-day-3). During our holiday down in the Eastern Cape I was also fortunate enough to referee Pearson vs Volkskool Graaff-Reinet, and a hard-fought and well-played game between Humansdorp’s Nico Malan against Landbouskool Marlow. In club rugby back in Gauteng I have had the privilege of refereeing my first two regular season fixtures between 1^st teams in the Pirates Grand Challenge, which is our top division clubs tournament. I first had University of Potchefstroom (Pukke) vs Police (Bobbies) - with the result a 69-10 victory to a Pukke team apparently almost wholly made up of the Leopards region U21 provincial team. Not long ago I then refereed Pirates, one of Johannesburg’s oldest clubs, and currently top among the open teams in the league, against Union, who unfortunately are struggling this year so the result was rather lopsided at 106-6 to the hosts Pirates (you can see the theme here, somewhat less experienced or less senior referees like me get given the runaway 1^st team games, or tightly contested top 2^nd teams games!) I have enjoyed my rugby this season (having already taken part either as referee or assistant referee in over 50 matches so far). It is likely that I’ll have to cut back quite a bit in my commitments to refereeing once we have a new baby in the house, at least for a while, so I’m making the most of things while I can. Being involved in so much rugby in the Highveld winters when the sky is blue and as the sun sets the air turns crisp, is certainly one of the great things about being in Johannesburg.

But all is not entirely well in South Africa. Since the beginning of this year, race and racism seem to have risen to the forefront of our national consciousness once again. Even in my own school I seem to observe that many of the senior boys still appear to form friendship groups along colour lines, or find myself being drawn into debates the boys have had around statements like ‘black people can’t be racist’ (the argument here being that racism is about power structures and privilege, so only those with structural power can be racist). Even in Helen’s world of advertising, usually a relatively poorly paid and overworked sector which has therefore held less appeal for transformation, new codes have been agreed under which by 2018 middle management is meant to be 75% black and 50% female - which seems quite a big leap given that Helen is at one of the most diverse firms and yet there really aren’t very many people with her decade or more of experience who are the ‘right’ colour for these targets. Being the cynic I am, I can’t help but notice that this issue seems to have risen in prominence just as the dominant ruling party of South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s ANC, has come under serious pressure in the global economic slow-down, and yet steadfastly refuses to consider any replacement for our current president, despite our top legal body, the constitutional court, finding him guilty of inappropriately benefitting from public funds, along with a host of other obfuscations of justice thereafter. We are at a crucial juncture in the democratic development of our country. In August this year, municipal elections are due to be held across the nation, and it appears that for the first time, the ANC may be at risk of losing its dominance in a number of major cities. On one hand, the prospect of having real political competition seems an appealing one, as it should prompt greater accountability to the electorate and hopefully a return to governance and delivery of basic government services rather than simply politicians being in a most unseemly rush to put their snouts in the trough of corrupt dealings and ‘tenderpreneurship’. However, the last few weeks have also seen some appalling scenes of wanton destruction and violent protest - merely at the ANC’s decision to nominate a less popular candidate for the mayoral elections in the Pretoria region. Many have been left to wonder what may happen if, in fact, a place like Pretoria or my hometown of Port Elizabeth is won by the largest opposition party. Will power be relinquished peacefully?

Thinking longer-term, Helen and I have begun to have some tricky conversations about whether South Africa is the right place for us to be going forward. The issue has hit home for me - wondering whether my own sons may find their opportunities in the future being limited by skin colour. Singing the national anthem at the Springbok rugby game against Ireland at the stadium here in Johannesburg, I was hit by a wave of sadness, wondering whether I will do so again, whether my sons will grow up with a very different identity. It is a very hard choice to face. I came back to South Africa for many good reasons: the climate, the beauty of the country, rugby, our complicated but exciting and compelling peoples and cultures, the vibrancy and sense of opportunity, a sense of home. We also have Helen's parents and siblings here in Joburg, and family is a huge support with children, and we have many very good friends here.

So we feel quite torn. And have decided not to be rushed in our decision. We are going to see happens over the next year or so. We’ve also said that we need to decide if there are any lines that should not be crossed - events which for us would be a watershed as far as our future prospects are concerned. As a History teacher, I can’t help but wonder how each family of Jews in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s tried to make sense of what was happening around them. They were people who knew themselves to be German, had even lived there for generations, and the optimists among them were still there in 1935 when they suddenly lost all basic rights and began to be persecuted in earnest - but by then it was too late for most of them to escape.

Of course one of the difficulties is trying to figure out where to go. The prospect of folding up all of one’s life and attempting to begin anew is not only daunting, but these days, an incredibly wide-ranging decision. Living in the UK with children would be quite different to being young and free in London. New Zealand seems awfully far away and still a bit damp and cold, while Canada sniggers at the New Zealand idea of cold. I no longer know how easily we could live elsewhere in the EU with British passports. Latin America, appealing as a temporary adventure, seems too much of a linguistic and cultural bridge to ever be a permanent home. In many other parts of the world, particularly the Middle East and Asia, English-speaking life is based around an expatriate population which seems to bring with it a transience that suggests some significant challenges to building lasting and meaningful relationships with others - again therefore perhaps good as an experience, but not a permanent solution. The USA has much that I can identify with and understand, and even some places that seem a reasonable compromise between stinkingly hot summers and arctic winters, but culturally it is by no means an easy transition - speaking English is not a shared understanding in itself.

When I look around the world though, it seems that South Africa is not the only place in the grip of some rather discomfiting events. Who would have predicted the many effects already being felt in the UK in politics and the economy, since the Brexit vote. Suddenly, the ascendance of Donald Trump (vs Hilary’s corporate machine) in the US presidential elections doesn’t seem so far-fetched. China, for so long the engine of the world’s economic growth, seems likely to encounter a tricky balancing act between individual freedoms and state control now that growth there is slowing. India, for some the next rising prospect, still seems too regulated and insular to take China’s place. The last time we saw such potential for isolationism and navel-gazing like this in America it was coupled with increasing aggression in Asia and apathy in Europe that eventually ended the Great Depression by means of a World War.

For now I suppose the answer is to consider and to shape what possible opportunities I have before me: professionally, in my sports and activities, and with my lovely family. With apologies to John Maynard Keynes, “In the long run we are all dead”, so I’ll do what I can while the clock is ticking and try to take a moment to enjoy the view every once in a while, as life rushes by.