But then it was not just Spitz’s remarkable if unintentional timing, it was the supreme irony that such advice should have been given so soon after Patrick van Rensburg’s death. It is possible if not probable that Spitz, as with a great many others, will not have heard of van Rensburg.
The past is rapidly forgotten, especially if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable, and the emphasis now is very much on today and tomorrow. Van who, you may ask? Just another Boer, presumably, who came here with all the familiar attitudes? Quite so. But how extraordinary it was that someone should have emerged from that warped society to try and up-end the conventional education system that prevailed here in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Since his passing, a great deal has been written and published about him. There is no need, to duplicate these tributes. But there is a need, however, to come to grips with the simple fact that he tried to transform education here and failed. As far as I know, no one has yet attempted to chronicle and analyse the multiple facts involved in the spectacular rise and subsequent collapse of this quite extraordinary attempt.
