Cheesecutters and Gymslips: South Africans at Boarding School

The South African boarding school experience was not, it would seem, generally a happy one whether spent at a convent, the hallowed stone halls of an English-style ‘public school’, a mission school, or an Afrikaans ‘Normal’ school.

From the poshest to the poorest, boarders from Grahamstown to Polokwane were united in common misfortune by insufficient and substandard food, while most who attended catholic schools emerged with an abiding dislike not only of nuns but the Church itself.

These brief essays, some penned by obscure authors and featuring unknown [and in many cases defunct] schools make excellent reading: the book won’t take pride of place in many of the libraries of the institutions mentioned, but the accounts are show more fascinatingly compulsive – this work is a keeper. show less