ABSTRACT
The love of, and ability to excel at, rugby became synonymous with manhood. Conversely, those who had other inclinations were despised. As the future couturier Victor Stiebel, a pupil at DRS and Michaelhouse described it: 'South Africa in the early nineteen hundreds had little use for the Arts and to be born with an interest in any of them was to be born with a stigma as unattractive as a club-foot. This contempt for the imagination was one of the factors that encouraged me early in my life to plan one day to leave the country of my birth.' And there was punishment for those who did not fit the mould. Natal was 'fanatical in its enthusiasm' for rugby - 'this enthusiasm was shared by every man, woman and child - white, beige or black - dog, cat, bird, lion, zebra, antelope, giraffe, impala, buck, cheetah, wart-hog, wildebeeste, crocodile, elephant, hippo and rhinoceros'. One was obliged at school to share this enthusiasm by watching the first-team rugby game. 'It was the duty of every non-player to demonstrate his loyalty to his school by bellowing from the bottom of his lungs. If a covey of prefects considered that our applause was unsatisfactory, after the visiting team had bathed and changed, been given tea and departed, we would be ordered to parade once more on the rugger field where, toeing the touch line on the empty pitch, we would scream and yell until our superiors were satisfied.'42
