The Rhodesian academic year consisted of three terms that were separated by school holiday blocks of four weeks which allowed for lengthy periods of annual leave. This was just as well because the nearest “safe” beaches for us were a good two days’ drive away in South Africa.
With the war raging around us South Africa was also one of the few places that would take us. Our neighbours on every other side were hostile.
In the autumn of 1979 we crossed the border into South Africa and made our way to that closest beach, Durban. We had done a jaunt around South Africa a few years previously with our good family friends the Jenkinsons where we’d spent some time on the Garden Route, holidaying a few weeks in George, taking in the Kango Caves and spending Christmas Eve in Port Elizabeth.
This time we went to Annerley, just south of Durban and north of Port Shepstone, a base that was central to my Mum’s extended family in both of those centres.
Being born fifteen years behind the previous sibling meant that I was practically raised as an only child - my two older siblings leaving for national service and nursing college respectively when I was still in nappies.
Going to Shepstone meant that I was in close proximity to my cousins, my first, and really only experience of having family close in age around. Mum’s younger brother Eric had six children, one boy just a few months older than me.
Uncle Eric was a commercial fisherman and my memory of that holiday was of us being inundated with fresh fish and crayfish and of rollicking on Annerley beach with the extended Bowden clan.
One day when we were there a surfer flirted too closely with a rocky buff and was dumped on the barnacles and was bought up onto the beach a bloody mess.
I did make another friend on that holiday. His name escapes me but I do distinctly remember that I spent several days on the beach with a boy my age. This may not seem remarkable except that his skin was black and this was South Africa at the height of apartheid.
South Africa definitely had a different atmosphere between the races than Rhodesia. Though we were in the midst of a pitched civil war in our country, there was a large battalion of black troops known as the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) that were feared and revered by the insurgents.
In Kindergarten the RAR band had come to play at school and had entertained us with renditions of “one banana, two banana” etc and had also called a girl out from our class to “conduct” them which resulted in inevitable chaos and much mirth.
While Rhodesia had echoes of apartheid in its segregated schools and some facilities, there did seem to be an easier relationship between the races than in South Africa where it was very clear that hatred smouldered and the segregation was institutionalised.
To get to Annerley beach we passed the large “Net Nie Blankes” signs that proclaimed it to be a whites’ only beach. So my friend was playing roulette by being there and quite possibly it could have meant trouble for us too.
Not that it would have been the first time we’d usurped the authorities in aid of a black child. When our house-maid had given birth to a son sometime in 1973 she’d had to send him out to family in the townships where he clearly became neglected. So we used to hide him away at our property for extended periods in defiance of the edict that children of the house-help were not to live in the “white” suburbs and nurse him back to full health.
Eventually he was allowed to stay with us and we grew up together as "brothers" and playmates. His name was Weatherley (named after the surname of a policeman colleague of his father). A year ago he passed away. He was walking home one day and simply collapsed in a gutter. In preceeding months he had lost a lot of weight and was in ill-health.
Sadly he had managed to reach the new median age for males in the "new Zimbabwe". He'd lived his alloted lifespan under the Mugabe regime and probably fell victim to the AIDS pandemic.
1979 was a year that saw the ignition of several life-long passions. Obviously writing featured prominently under the controlling hand of Mrs Mcaninch but this joy in written expression was being fed by a voracious reading regime. Sometime in 1979 I crossed the line from Enid Blyton (who my librarian aunt despised) to the wonderful world of the Willard Price Adventure series and Paul White’s iconic Jungle Doctor books.
Bulawayo City Council ran several libraries including a mobile library on a bus. Once a week it would roll up to our closest shopping centre (Retreat on the Matopos Road) and open the doors to a large collection of children’s and adult books.
Our entry into the general school population also meant that we started to participate in the various sporting activities on offer. Our school day would end at 1pm and we’d have lunch at home before we’d go back to school for several afternoons each week for sport.
The Standard One boys were all expected to play soccer and I remember our first training session involved a rigorous regime of sit-ups, press-ups and even as many chin-ups as we could do off the goalposts.
We had our first taste of inter-school competition that probably didn’t amount to much more than a ball, twenty bodies and a cloud of dust. I’d soon found out that I was happiest on the wing. Not right or left wing though. I’d start on the wing closest to the adjoining rugby field and swap over at half time to remain so which enabled me to keep half an eye on the rugby action.
It would be politic of me to not go into the gory details of why one so young was already indoctrinated in the knowledge that soccer is an inferior game to rugby. Suffice to say that Dad and his best mate, Uncle George (who coached the Northlea 1st XV for a few years during their only period of success) were avowed rugby men.
It was fitting then that 1979 saw me take my first pilgrimage to one of my favourite places on earth, the rather grandly titled Hartsfield Rugby Stadium in northern Bulawayo. In actuality it was little more than a few ramshackle grandstands (one covered) on the western edge, some concrete piered steps on the eastern sideline and hills on the northern and southern edge.
However, for me it was a field of dreams and the stadium is still firmly etched in memory. In those first few visits we would sit in the cheaper section of the concrete steps on the eastern terraces, staring directly into the sun and surrounded by a loud crowd that was well oiled by Lion Lager.
Immediately to our left was a fenced section that was reserved seating for the Bulawayo Lions Club. I never saw it used. The southern edge had the scoreboard, a massive structure that had people inside it, watching through holes and manually changing the score.
Opposite us was the “posh” seats in the covered grandstand and across the player’s tunnel was another grandstand that was not covered but generally always full. The northern end was next to a bike racing track underneath huge spreading trees and this was the domain of the vocal schoolboys that were there to support their teams in the curtain-raisers.
Hartsfield’s moment of glory had been in 1949 when it hosted the only victory the Rhodesian side recorded over the All-Blacks. Apparently the 10-8 victory had prompted scenes of pandemonium and when Rhodesia went on to draw the second leg in Salisbury 3-3 they’d managed the impossible, a series win over New Zealand.
The game I distinctly remember from 1979 was a clash between Rhodesia and Griqualand West, visiting from South Africa. It was a game of some portent, my understanding was that the loser would be eliminated from the top-tier of South Africa’s provincial competition - the Currie Cup.
Uncle George’s son, Neville, has just broken into the national team and was playing out of position that day at flanker. The national stalwart, Ian “Buccy” Buchannan would most likely have been captaining the side from scrum-half.
The side that year had also contained other prominent players including Ray Mordt and Dave Smith who would go on to represent the Springboks the following year when they locked horns with the British Lions.
The match was tense for the best part of an hour before the Rhodesians managed to get in front and powered home, probably on account of playing at home in front of a large, boisterous crowd (maybe 4000)!
There was a post-game traffic jam that we managed to avoid on account of the fact that I was riding on the fuel tank of Dad’s rather small motor-bike, though we were later pulled up by police who advised Dad to not let me ride that way in future.
The start of my own rugby career was two years away, and I eventually had the thrill of playing on the hallowed Hartsfield turf, but the competitive instincts were certainly stoked.
In a sport-obsessed school, the athletics program was taken very seriously. We were all assigned to school houses named after the great English sea captains. I was assigned to the emerald green ranks of Raleigh which was fitting as I’d already developed a fetish about the green and white hooped jerseys of the national team. The other teams were Drake (red), Gilbert (blue) and Hawkins (yellow). We were identified by a green square sewn on the front of our red school singlets.
The athletics program was a progression of new wonders. The school ovals were watered by recycled water from the city sewage system and they were always in immaculate condition, the tracks painstakingly marked out in crisp, white starch.
We didn’t have mattresses to land on in the high jump competition. Our landing place was a high bed of sawdust flakes that would get inside our singlets and itch all day long. We were taught the “scissors” jump though some of the seniors were illegally trying out the new-fangled Frisbee-flop.
We had several sandpits all marked out for both the long and triple jump.
I found the before-race anticipation invigorating and loved the thrill of competition. From aged eight we were involved in pitched battle. This was not about competing against one’s own times, or doing one’s best, this was all about winning.
That year we received a lot of rain just before the inter-school athletics competition and the event was moved from the spacious bottom ovals that were waterlogged and onto the top ovals. The rain had compacted the sawdust in the high jump pits and there were several broken arms on the day.
Urged on by the chanting of the various House teams I’d had a good day, jumping a good distance in the long-jump and finishing top-two in the sprint events to make the school team.
From there we went to an intra-school, triangular carnival held at arch-rival Hillside Primary. This was a warm-up for the big day, the Bulawayo and district inter-schools carnival. Henry Low were very strong in the triangular event and we headed to the inter-school carnival confident of a good display.
This was a big step up in class and experience and the oval at the Hugh Beadle School was studded with officials and track-markings that we hadn’t encountered previously. I was involved in the sprints and the long-jump but the big event of the day was the relay.
Mum and I took a lift to the carnival with the daughter of Mum’s boss at Stansfield & Ratcliffe and her son. He was first runner off in the relay and I was to receive the baton from him to run the second leg. And much to Mum’s horror I spent the entire trip exhorting him to run his fastest.
The gun fired and we were off and racing. Perhaps we should have spent the trip talking about tactics rather than motivation. At our change I was quick out of the blocks and it took an eternity. After passing the baton the runner that had finished was required to immediately sit down to mark where the baton change had taken place.
Our baton change had cost us time and we were running third when I passed the baton at the halfway mark. However, our final two runners scorched around the field and Craig Fitzgerald hit the tape marginally in front of Hillside. It had been a battle royale down the home straight.
We went berserk. We’d just won a relay at the inter-schools and this guaranteed that we’d receive our athletics colours, a patch sown onto the sports tracksuit that was a badge of honour that could be paraded around school.
However, unbeknownst to us each baton change needed to take place within a specified distance and the change between first and second runner had overstepped the boundary by a metre. We were cruelly disqualified. So close and yet so far. It still rankles (the curse of a retentive memory).
Not that the day was a complete loss. Henry Low dominated the carnival and we made off with all three cups - boys, girls and obviously overall!
In some respects we were living in a fool’s paradise with our running as we were only competing against the other “white” schools. Within a few years when the races began to mingle the white kids were blown off the park much as we see in the Olympic sprint events today.
But that was yet to come. We enjoyed our glories while we had them.
Uncle Eric was a commercial fisherman and my memory of that holiday was of us being inundated with fresh fish and crayfish and of rollicking on Annerley beach with the extended Bowden clan.
One day when we were there a surfer flirted too closely with a rocky buff and was dumped on the barnacles and was bought up onto the beach a bloody mess.
I did make another friend on that holiday. His name escapes me but I do distinctly remember that I spent several days on the beach with a boy my age. This may not seem remarkable except that his skin was black and this was South Africa at the height of apartheid.
South Africa definitely had a different atmosphere between the races than Rhodesia. Though we were in the midst of a pitched civil war in our country, there was a large battalion of black troops known as the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) that were feared and revered by the insurgents.
In Kindergarten the RAR band had come to play at school and had entertained us with renditions of “one banana, two banana” etc and had also called a girl out from our class to “conduct” them which resulted in inevitable chaos and much mirth.
While Rhodesia had echoes of apartheid in its segregated schools and some facilities, there did seem to be an easier relationship between the races than in South Africa where it was very clear that hatred smouldered and the segregation was institutionalised.
To get to Annerley beach we passed the large “Net Nie Blankes” signs that proclaimed it to be a whites’ only beach. So my friend was playing roulette by being there and quite possibly it could have meant trouble for us too.
Not that it would have been the first time we’d usurped the authorities in aid of a black child. When our house-maid had given birth to a son sometime in 1973 she’d had to send him out to family in the townships where he clearly became neglected. So we used to hide him away at our property for extended periods in defiance of the edict that children of the house-help were not to live in the “white” suburbs and nurse him back to full health.
Eventually he was allowed to stay with us and we grew up together as "brothers" and playmates. His name was Weatherley (named after the surname of a policeman colleague of his father). A year ago he passed away. He was walking home one day and simply collapsed in a gutter. In preceeding months he had lost a lot of weight and was in ill-health.
Sadly he had managed to reach the new median age for males in the "new Zimbabwe". He'd lived his alloted lifespan under the Mugabe regime and probably fell victim to the AIDS pandemic.
1979 was a year that saw the ignition of several life-long passions. Obviously writing featured prominently under the controlling hand of Mrs Mcaninch but this joy in written expression was being fed by a voracious reading regime. Sometime in 1979 I crossed the line from Enid Blyton (who my librarian aunt despised) to the wonderful world of the Willard Price Adventure series and Paul White’s iconic Jungle Doctor books.
Bulawayo City Council ran several libraries including a mobile library on a bus. Once a week it would roll up to our closest shopping centre (Retreat on the Matopos Road) and open the doors to a large collection of children’s and adult books.
Our entry into the general school population also meant that we started to participate in the various sporting activities on offer. Our school day would end at 1pm and we’d have lunch at home before we’d go back to school for several afternoons each week for sport.
The Standard One boys were all expected to play soccer and I remember our first training session involved a rigorous regime of sit-ups, press-ups and even as many chin-ups as we could do off the goalposts.
We had our first taste of inter-school competition that probably didn’t amount to much more than a ball, twenty bodies and a cloud of dust. I’d soon found out that I was happiest on the wing. Not right or left wing though. I’d start on the wing closest to the adjoining rugby field and swap over at half time to remain so which enabled me to keep half an eye on the rugby action.
It would be politic of me to not go into the gory details of why one so young was already indoctrinated in the knowledge that soccer is an inferior game to rugby. Suffice to say that Dad and his best mate, Uncle George (who coached the Northlea 1st XV for a few years during their only period of success) were avowed rugby men.
It was fitting then that 1979 saw me take my first pilgrimage to one of my favourite places on earth, the rather grandly titled Hartsfield Rugby Stadium in northern Bulawayo. In actuality it was little more than a few ramshackle grandstands (one covered) on the western edge, some concrete piered steps on the eastern sideline and hills on the northern and southern edge.
However, for me it was a field of dreams and the stadium is still firmly etched in memory. In those first few visits we would sit in the cheaper section of the concrete steps on the eastern terraces, staring directly into the sun and surrounded by a loud crowd that was well oiled by Lion Lager.
Immediately to our left was a fenced section that was reserved seating for the Bulawayo Lions Club. I never saw it used. The southern edge had the scoreboard, a massive structure that had people inside it, watching through holes and manually changing the score.
Opposite us was the “posh” seats in the covered grandstand and across the player’s tunnel was another grandstand that was not covered but generally always full. The northern end was next to a bike racing track underneath huge spreading trees and this was the domain of the vocal schoolboys that were there to support their teams in the curtain-raisers.
Hartsfield’s moment of glory had been in 1949 when it hosted the only victory the Rhodesian side recorded over the All-Blacks. Apparently the 10-8 victory had prompted scenes of pandemonium and when Rhodesia went on to draw the second leg in Salisbury 3-3 they’d managed the impossible, a series win over New Zealand.
The game I distinctly remember from 1979 was a clash between Rhodesia and Griqualand West, visiting from South Africa. It was a game of some portent, my understanding was that the loser would be eliminated from the top-tier of South Africa’s provincial competition - the Currie Cup.
Uncle George’s son, Neville, has just broken into the national team and was playing out of position that day at flanker. The national stalwart, Ian “Buccy” Buchannan would most likely have been captaining the side from scrum-half.
The side that year had also contained other prominent players including Ray Mordt and Dave Smith who would go on to represent the Springboks the following year when they locked horns with the British Lions.
The match was tense for the best part of an hour before the Rhodesians managed to get in front and powered home, probably on account of playing at home in front of a large, boisterous crowd (maybe 4000)!
There was a post-game traffic jam that we managed to avoid on account of the fact that I was riding on the fuel tank of Dad’s rather small motor-bike, though we were later pulled up by police who advised Dad to not let me ride that way in future.
The start of my own rugby career was two years away, and I eventually had the thrill of playing on the hallowed Hartsfield turf, but the competitive instincts were certainly stoked.
In a sport-obsessed school, the athletics program was taken very seriously. We were all assigned to school houses named after the great English sea captains. I was assigned to the emerald green ranks of Raleigh which was fitting as I’d already developed a fetish about the green and white hooped jerseys of the national team. The other teams were Drake (red), Gilbert (blue) and Hawkins (yellow). We were identified by a green square sewn on the front of our red school singlets.
The athletics program was a progression of new wonders. The school ovals were watered by recycled water from the city sewage system and they were always in immaculate condition, the tracks painstakingly marked out in crisp, white starch.
We didn’t have mattresses to land on in the high jump competition. Our landing place was a high bed of sawdust flakes that would get inside our singlets and itch all day long. We were taught the “scissors” jump though some of the seniors were illegally trying out the new-fangled Frisbee-flop.
We had several sandpits all marked out for both the long and triple jump.
I found the before-race anticipation invigorating and loved the thrill of competition. From aged eight we were involved in pitched battle. This was not about competing against one’s own times, or doing one’s best, this was all about winning.
That year we received a lot of rain just before the inter-school athletics competition and the event was moved from the spacious bottom ovals that were waterlogged and onto the top ovals. The rain had compacted the sawdust in the high jump pits and there were several broken arms on the day.
Urged on by the chanting of the various House teams I’d had a good day, jumping a good distance in the long-jump and finishing top-two in the sprint events to make the school team.
From there we went to an intra-school, triangular carnival held at arch-rival Hillside Primary. This was a warm-up for the big day, the Bulawayo and district inter-schools carnival. Henry Low were very strong in the triangular event and we headed to the inter-school carnival confident of a good display.
This was a big step up in class and experience and the oval at the Hugh Beadle School was studded with officials and track-markings that we hadn’t encountered previously. I was involved in the sprints and the long-jump but the big event of the day was the relay.
Mum and I took a lift to the carnival with the daughter of Mum’s boss at Stansfield & Ratcliffe and her son. He was first runner off in the relay and I was to receive the baton from him to run the second leg. And much to Mum’s horror I spent the entire trip exhorting him to run his fastest.
The gun fired and we were off and racing. Perhaps we should have spent the trip talking about tactics rather than motivation. At our change I was quick out of the blocks and it took an eternity. After passing the baton the runner that had finished was required to immediately sit down to mark where the baton change had taken place.
Our baton change had cost us time and we were running third when I passed the baton at the halfway mark. However, our final two runners scorched around the field and Craig Fitzgerald hit the tape marginally in front of Hillside. It had been a battle royale down the home straight.
We went berserk. We’d just won a relay at the inter-schools and this guaranteed that we’d receive our athletics colours, a patch sown onto the sports tracksuit that was a badge of honour that could be paraded around school.
However, unbeknownst to us each baton change needed to take place within a specified distance and the change between first and second runner had overstepped the boundary by a metre. We were cruelly disqualified. So close and yet so far. It still rankles (the curse of a retentive memory).
Not that the day was a complete loss. Henry Low dominated the carnival and we made off with all three cups - boys, girls and obviously overall!
In some respects we were living in a fool’s paradise with our running as we were only competing against the other “white” schools. Within a few years when the races began to mingle the white kids were blown off the park much as we see in the Olympic sprint events today.
But that was yet to come. We enjoyed our glories while we had them.
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