110. The Returning Migration
Last night I endured the lengthy trek from Milton Keynes to a London pub to attend a drinks evening hosted by the Michaelhouse Old Boys in the UK.
Michaelhouse was the school in KwaZulu Natal where I spent my high school years. It was founded in 1906 by an English clergyman, Canon James Cameron Todd, and was run on the old English public-school lines. I’ve written extensively about it before but last night gave me another perspective on a curious phenomenon that became clearer to me as I spoke to fellow Old Boys (or OMs, as we are known). When I say “fellow,” I must point out that at eighty-five I was by far the oldest person there. My son Jason, who came with me, at fifty-four was the second oldest.
There is a charming tradition at Michaelhouse OM functions, especially the Old Boys Day at the school itself. The oldest OM there is given the Zulu title of iKehla (pronounced keshla). The vowel i before the noun denotes a group concept. In Zulu culture the old men in the tribe or clan are given the title of headman. They then wear a head ring made of fiber, resin and beeswax which was traditionally worked into the hair, but these days is replaced by a rubber ring. Zulu culture is extremely rich in traditions that honor their elders as well as some fascinating concepts such as ubuntu which is difficult to define clearly in English. It has a broad spectrum of nuances but the primary sense in a word is “respect.” This extends to respect for one’s elders, to one’s peer group and even to children. It also embraces respect for all of humankind – a concept that our troubled planet would do well to consider.
I currently have a movie screenplay entitled “UBUNTU: The Last Warrior,” which is an exciting story about a chase to find two teenagers lost in the African wilds in the present. They are befriended by a mysterious Zulu “warrior” who thinks he is back in the days of the great warrior King Shaka in the 1800s. It has excited interest in both the US and UK. I have two possible sources of funding for it, which hopefully will happen later in the year. Underlying the breathless chase to find the kids is an important message that reveals how Zulu culture is being lost, along with many other traditional cultures. Young Zulus are flocking to the cities to enmesh themselves in the allure of today’s electronic Western activities.
OK, so I digress. I get very emotional over the wonderful history of the Zulu nation (along with others) that is fast disappearing. At Michaelhouse in my time there, the proud Zulu staff in the kitchens and those attending to the grounds, etc., refused to speak English, forcing us to learn at least some basic Zulu. Today, of course, post-Apartheid, there is perhaps one-third of the students who are Zulu or Africans of other nations at the school. Unthinkable in my day.
I was therefore surprised and quite honestly secretly pleased to have the treasurer of the UK OMs ask if he could take a photo of me as the Kehla of the get-together. He got Jason to join me in the pic.
Before I deal with the OMs that we met, I’d like to set the scene of our venue for the drinks evening. We occupied most of the mezzanine in a bustling London pub called “The Old Bank.” When we arrived at the pub in Fleet Street, I was intrigued to see on the signage that it was in fact the old Bank of England building. Some of you may know that the Bank of England fulfils a similar role to that of the Federal Reserve in the US. Contrary to public beliefs, it was not a government-controlled bank but privately owned. Established in 1694, it has gone through many incarnations but has always played a major role in the fortunes of British banking and the UK economy.
In 1868, Alfred de Rothschild became a director of the Bank of England, a position he held for 20 years. The global influence of Rothschild bankers in the UK and other European countries undoubtedly influenced the Bank of England’s activities from that time. The Fleet Street building was built in 1886 by Sir Arthur Blomfield in the grand Italianate style and has been carefully maintained to this day. It was not the central branch of the bank but was known as the Law Court’s branch and housed a fortune in gold bullion in its vaults. This branch of the bank closed in 1975 and the building was refurbished as a pub in 1994.
I was quite amused by the name of the Old Bank pub. When I first arrived back in Britain in 2013, I had to find work urgently and was offered a job as a cleaner, waiter and dishwasher in East Grinstead’s Casablanca Café, situated in the Old Bank Building in the High Street. Circumstances have certainly changed since then.
Jason and I expected that most of the OMs that would arrive for drinks would be a younger generation than either of us. This proved to be so, but they were a fascinating mix of young men from a wide variety of backgrounds in southern Africa and now following an equally wide variety of occupations in Britain.
We were the first to arrive, having been unsure of the timing of the trains and tubes that transported us to the pub. Next to arrive was a chap called Giles (I’ll only give first names). He had travelled from Winchester which is even further away from London than Milton Keynes. He had a lovely sense of humor and told us he was now working with the English wine industry. Laughing, he told us that some of the English wines were not actually poisonous (as regarded by many of the wine-drinking public) but, in fact, they were beginning to produce some good wines. I was interested in his background in South Africa and established that he had been a liquor broker, mainly dealing with brandies. South Africa produces some very good brandies along with world-class wines, such as KWV and brandies of French origin such as Remy Martin and Martell (presumably produced in South Africa under license). However, there are some other brandies such as Klipdrift that are less sophisticated but are nevertheless fine brandies. A popular drink in South Africa is Brandy & Coke. It works better with the rougher brandies such as Klipdrift. The Coke clashes with the more sophisticated brands. I confess to sometimes enjoying a Brandy & Coke and managed to find a supply of Klipdrift in the South African shop called “Blerrie Lekker” (bloody good in English), which supplies all kinds of South African goods not normally available in Britain. With over 500,000 South Africans now living in Britain, it’s not surprising that South African stores have sprung up all over the place here. The most popular products are biltong (strips of dried meat, once called pemmican in North America) and boerewors (farmer’s sausage) which are uniquely South African products.
I was also delighted to discover that Giles grew up in the very area where my Willjohn Trilogy of novels have been set, near the Magaliesberg Mountains about sixty miles from Johannesburg. Needless to say, we had plenty to talk about.
As the place filled up, we got to chat to many of the other OMs. A number came from Zimbabwe, both White and Black. They went to school at Michaelhouse which is regarded as the Eton or Harrow of South Africa. Students travel from all over southern Africa to go to school there. In my day, we had boys from the island of Mauritius and, from memory, one boy from Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon).
There were also a few Zulu OMs, either studying in the UK or some having established a career here. The youngest OM was an Indian lad from Botswana, who is studying aerospace engineering in Manchester. The majority of OMs, however, tend to be in banking, accounting and investments. I was asked to speak to another Chris who was described as a hotshot corporate lawyer carving a name for himself in Britain. It turned out he was at school with my youngest son, Gregori. He told me that he was friendly with both Greg and his best friend Bruce who came from Malawi. The three of them had a passion for punk rock and would spend their spare time at school listening to this (for me) bizarre form of music.
The chairman of the UK branch, who had invited me to be there, could not make it as there was an outbreak of Covid in his family. It was therefore the treasurer, Scott, who offered Sean’s apologies and who nominated me as the Kehla. Not that I had any competition in that area!
It turned out that Scott, despite his first name (and surname, for that matter) has Greek Cypriot grandparents who come from Paphos, which is very close to the village of Phyti, where my wife Hero’s grandfather Costantino Charalambus Phitidis was born. So, we had another link in common.
It was a remarkably enjoyable evening. Both Jason and I were really quite surprised in a way because neither of us could be considered as typical Michaelhouse Old Boys. Jason has had a lifetime in the television industry and is currently a senior production manager for Sky TV Outside Broadcasts, mostly sport. My background (as you all well know by now) has been in films and writing. I was delighted therefore to find people like Giles who was not the typical leader-of-industry type that one expects from so many OMs.
The other thing that fascinated me is the growing concept of what I would call “reverse migration.” Because of the many difficulties in South Africa today, more and more South Africans, not only Whites, are seeking their fortunes back in the old countries of Europe and also in North America.
Will the launch of ExoBrain affect this flow? I really don’t know; but what I do know is that with the soon-to-be availability of the first ExoBrain products, its users will be able to base themselves virtually anywhere they would wish to live, knowing that they can maintain strong encrypted links around the world. They will enter a new world of hyper-communication that will bring humanity closer together than ever (ubuntu), revealing truths rather than false news, facts rather than spurious fiction, and will become part of what will be the new ExoCommunity!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.