A Permanent Hallmark
The medium of tuition at Rondebosch has always been English and from its early days the school attracted a number of Afrikaans-speaking boys from rural areas including Darling, Malmesbury, Worcester, Caledon, Elgin, De Dooms and Beaufort West. When Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts opened the War Memorial Library in 1927 to honour the Old Boys who had died in action in the First World War, he spoke of 'a tradition of joint service' built up by English- and Dutch-speaking boys, working together for the good of their school.
Twenty years later the same Jan Smuts, who had become Prime Minister of the post-Second World War government, wrote a foreword to History of Rondebosch Boys in which he commented: 'Fifty years of sound teaching, wedded to proud tradition, form a continuity which must be of significance in shaping the character of a young national. I do not hesitate to say that, in this sense, Rondebosch has played an important part in the building of our nation.'
When Mr Mason formally retired in early 1928, South Africa lost an educator whose personality had left a permanent hallmark on the course of progress not only of Rondebosch Boys' High but, in terms of his contribution to his school, of the educational process in South Africa. In a letter to the school committee in November 1927, the acting Superintendent-General of Education commented that when Mr Mason became headmaster, Rondebosch had 180 pupils, including 12 boarders, on its registers; on Mason's retirement he handed over an institution in which the enrolment had trebled.
Mr Mason's successor, Professor William E Grant, left the school after two years to take up the chair of education at the University of Cape Town, but not before he had overseen continued improvements to the school facilities and the important creation of a playing-fields development fund.
Walter GA Mears, who came to Rondebosch from Germiston Boys' High in 1930, became the fourth headmaster of the school, and was to a distinguished presence there for 21 years, during which time the school underwent a marked and permanent transformation from the old to the new. Mr Mears's name lives on in the Mears Centre, comprising a large indoor sports centre and an honours room in which the school's historical records are kept, and Mears's Meadow, a part of the school playing fields.
Era of Academics
In the pre-war days of 1936, Rondebosch High School was pressed for increased facilities for its growing numbers. Plans for a new high school on the Canigou site began to take shape in 1940 and were finally approved in 1945. In 1949, the foundation for the new school hall was laid, and it was opened in 1951.
Through the 'fifties, under headmaster William 'Alec' Clarke, further improvements were made to the school facilities, including the building of a new swimming pool and the inauguration of the Diamond Jubilee Overseas Scholarship Fund set up by the Old Boys' Union for extended studies for notable Old Boys.
Later, through the years of the principalships of headmasters Cecil Clement and Michael Douglas Reeler, the school experienced an era in which greater emphasis was placed on academic achievement than at any time in the past. Extensions to the school buildings and expansions to the sports fields and facilities brought the school to its current shape and size.
Awareness for Change
The school's first Old Boy headmaster was the incumbent Christopher B Murison, whose address to the boys on his arrival in 1986 contained a prophetic message of the awareness for change. Visits by the boys to black residential areas should become the norm rather than the exception, he said.
Three years later, when Rondebosch High School was formally opened to all races, Mr Murison commented: 'I believe that in embarking on an open school policy we must now live up to what was quoted as a reason for doing it - that our sons' education will be enriched by the participation in it of all our peoples.'
The school had seen many changes in its near-century of existence and no doubt there are many more to come, but there are few at Rondebosch Boys' High today - pupils, teachers, parents and supporters - who would not agree with the thoughts expressed by previous headmaster Christopher Murison who, in his year of appointment to the school, 1986, said: 'It is an exciting time to be in education, to be at Rondebosch Boys' High School. The school must change in order to grow. It must grow in order to remain the leader it has been.'