THOMAS HUGHES, TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS ‘ANYTHING YOU can do I can do just as well’ was the spirit in which Oscar Pistorius started out his life, aged fourteen, at Pretoria Boys High School. Soon he would be put to the test. The new boys were packed off for three days to a remote farm owned by the school. It was early in the year, high summer, parched and hot in the South African Highveld, ideal conditions to test their mettle with a mile-high climb up a rugged, stony hill. There was a military quality to the culture at Pretoria Boys. As one former head boy put it, they strove to break you down when you arrived and then rebuild you in the school’s image of itself as a breeder of champions. It was all about discipline, solidarity, tribal mystique. Among the school’s alumni were a number of illustrious judges, politicians and entrepreneurs and, most valued of all, sporting legends who had represented South Africa in international competition, notably in rugby, the sport that best represented the school’s manly virtues.
