You've got to love a conspiracy theory. It comes at you with all the force and nuance of a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer, I remind you, is designed to distribute force in the widest possible area and create as much damage as possible. The word “sledge” comes from the old English slogan, which means to strike violently and is what happens on the sports field when one player insults another during the game to make that person very, very angry.
And that's how people are feeling now that the “Illuminati of Skelmbos” and their musty, secret, not-so-secret rituals have been aired by a brave and traumatised whistle-blower who wrote a 23-page declaration itemising everything he'd had to endure at the hands of the society running the Wilgenhof men’s res in Stellenbosch like a well-oiled Nazi youth boot camp for the past century or two.
It all led to the dramatic opening of the doors. Two doors, to be exact, behind which lay revealed, to the shocked university administrators, a world of dissolute teenage male depravity, carefully catalogued in notebooks, written in high school juvenile script showing how they really “punished” little Koos. More alarmingly, they had a lovely wall of archival pictures of their works and days, proudly documenting their deeds down the ages, lionising the initiation practices of their underground sect forever.
Apparently, these “nagapies”, or whatever they're called, like a bit of nudity, extreme sporting activities (which could kill you if you're a mommy’s boy), black hoods (it goes without saying), graffiti, concoctions to make you lose your shit, and drinking like there was no tomorrow.
They also engaged in forced rounds of a cappella communal singing to “the girls in the girls' res”, which can really do your head and your manhood in. It sounds like very cross CrossFit, with fewer protein shakes and all your carbs in the form of alcohol. Also, it must be said, I've never seen a black pointy hood at CrossFit, neither have I seen singing, for that matter.
Anyone who's read Lord of the Flies is entirely au fait with the practices and rituals of this particular subset of human beings, once left to their own devices. The young male will congregate around a fire and commit to three principles — have fun, keep the fire burning for the smoke signals, and stay alive.
Everything else is fair game. Like Survivor, but the Stellenbosch campus version. Under these circumstances, the rules are that there are no rules except the ones passed down by a Crusader back in 1231 who created the secret handshake, drank from a goat horn, jewel encrusted chalice, and made sweet love to the newly slaughtered head of a pig.
Oops, I'm confusing societies. That one was the Piers Gaveston Society in Oxford, who counted in their members a young David Cameron (and I'm quite certain other prime ministers of Great Britain) who upheld the empire through some light coming-of-age trials, tribulations and testing of mettle necessary to become a bright young leader of the known universe.
Behind those two doors across university campuses the world over, from Yale to Stellenbosch, boys have been initiated into their version of manhood on a recipe of arcane, alcohol-fuelled nonsense
Like in all secret associations of youthful import, you're sworn to secrecy, you go by secret names like “Piggy” and “Catamite”, you have a motto (Piers Gav’s one was “Fane ni memini ne audisse unum alter its dilixisse” or “Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much”).
They require the doing away of polite society's dictums and the skirting along the rougher edges of what correct heterosexual male ideals might entail. In short: they're all about the penis — oh, and some ritual degradation of the member (so small) so that they can build him up into a new male, sworn to secrecy and “omertà” (like Sicilians). Break the code and you swim with the fishes, my friend.
But yes, to the conspiracy theorists among us, I really hate to agree, but this is as good as it gets. All your suspicions are entirely founded. Behind those two doors across university campuses the world over, from Yale to Stellenbosch, boys have been initiated into their version of manhood on a recipe of arcane, alcohol-fuelled nonsense.
And we, the unsuspecting masses, have paid the price of their delinquent fantasies — because they really are the rulers of the universe or at least of some very big supermarket chains. To quote “The Donald”, who seems to me to be the only appropriate commentator on this parlous state of affairs: “Sad”.
