Sporting Greats
In sport, St John's has not produced as many internationals as most of its rivals - King Edward VII School, and Jeppe, Parktown and Pretoria Boys' high schools, as well as the brother schools of the Diocesan College in Cape Town, St Andrew's College in Grahamstown and Michaelhouse in Natal.
Among the Old Johannian 'greats' are Malcolm Spence, one of the country's greatest 400 m runners; hockey captain Jackie James; 1992 Olympic swimmer Craig Jackson; Bruce Dalling, who in 1968 steered his yacht Voortrekker to second place overall in the Cape to Rio race, and came second in the first single-handed Atlantic yacht race; and Springbok cricketer Bruce Mitchell, a great batsman, useful spin-bowler and good slip fielder.
The school has produced no Springbok rugby players, but its list of six international cricketers is headed by JW Zulch. Clive Rice led the Transvaal 'mean machine' and Nottinghamshire to all-time highs, as well as captaining South Africa through most of its period of international isolation.
Even so, he won international acclaim, most notably by becoming the three-times winner of the world all-rounder competition (1984, '85 and '87) against the likes of Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Richard Hadlee. His international swansong was a most fitting one, leading the South Africans out of official isolation on their first tour, to India in 1992.
Academic Greats
While St John's never set out to train top sportsmen, when it comes to matters of the mind its schooling has always been striving for excellence. A case in point is the McCarthy twins, Andrew and David, who matriculated in 1991. Apart from the eight distinctions with which each of the twins passed matric, in their last three years at St John's they won or were placed in just about every college and national schools academic competition, including maths and science olympiads, with a second and first place respectively in the matriculation exams.
Since 1925 the college has produced 17 Rhodes Scholars, including John Kane-Berman of the South African Institute of Race Relations, and ex-Wits mathematician Dr Derek Henderson, principal and vice chancellor of Rhodes University. Old Johannian Professor Robert Charlton was principal of Wits University, while another Old Johannian Wits mathematician is Professor Paul Fatti, president of the Mountain Club of South Africa and one of the world's outstanding expedition leaders, having notched up major climbs on every continent (including South Georgia in the Antarctic Circle and Baffin Island in the Arctic zone).
Old Johannians who have shone in the field of learning are many, including the once headmaster Walter Macfarlane, while men of letters include historian Eric Rosenthal, Professor Rodney Davenport and the poet William Plomer.
Industry Greats
In the fields of commerce and industry, especially, Old Johannians have made a mark on South African society. The list of corporate luminaries includes Chris Ball, former managing director of First National Bank; Barry Davidson of Rustenburg Platinum; Gordon Dunningham, formerly of Barlow-Randa, Peter Entwistle of Lloyds Bank in London; Dru Gnodde, formerly of Goldfields; Philippe le Roux of the Triumph and Harley Davidson Company; Selwyn MacFarlane of South African Breweries; Michael O'Dowd, Michael King and Michael Spicer of the Anglo American Corporation; Graham Odgers of British McAlpine; Michael Rademeyer of Caltex; and Pat Retief of JCI.
A man who was too young to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1958 is Sir Alastair Morton, a descendant of the Van der Byl dynasty on his mother's side, and the son of a Scottish oil worker. Morton was always top of his class at school, and in 1954, a mere few weeks after his 16th birthday, he enrolled at Wits University. At 19 he narrowly missed a Rhodes Scholarship but went to Oxford nevertheless, on the first-awarded De Beers Scholarship.
Morton began his business career with Anglo American, but his abhorrence of racism at home drove him first to Rhodesia, then to the United States, and finally to England. After a stint with the World Bank in West Africa, he became an executive of Britain's Reorganisation Corporation, helping to create British Leyland and GEC. Soon afterwards he headed the British National Oil Corporation, and as the group chief executive of the Anglo-French Eurotunnel or 'chunnel' - the world's most complex road and rail project to date - for which he received his knighthood in 1991.