An aerial photograph of SP and its immediate surroundings taken in 1950 would look very different to one taken today.
Where Musgrave Park in Old Kendal Road is today, there were houses of similar design and size to the ones still in Azalea and Klaproos Road before they were flattened by the bulldozers of Apartheid in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Then for a long time there was just a lone tree guarding a bleak landscape, watching the ghosts of children playing.
On the north side of the school, where the AG de Villiers Field and Constantiaberg Hospital (commissioned in 1989) are today, was once just a wasteland of sand and, in the winter, vast pools of water. We did not have to travel to stage our own cross-country competition! Occasionally, in late October or early November, matrics would bide the time between their final English Paper 1, written in the morning, and Paper 2, written in the afternoon, sitting along the banks of the Diep River behind the Three Arts.
The physical shape and size of SP have changed drastically since 1950 to cope with the increasing school population – from less than 500 in the early days to the current 1020 – and the ever-changing needs of a dynamic learning institution. The original building consisted of the classrooms – all prefabricated and single storey – bordering the quad, including what were then the Needlework room, the ‘Theatre’ and the ‘Lab’, the Woodwork and Domestic Science rooms, and the admin block, incorporating the Principal’s office, a kitchen, a library where the Bursars’ office and the Sick Bay are currently, a very small staff room, the Music Room, sharing the space with the book room, and the only brick classrooms – the double storey block where the present day Computer rooms and Library are on the northern side, and the Dance Studio (originally two big classrooms with a dividing door in between, which could be opened up for assemblies, film shows, variety shows or music concerts) on the southern side. The latter was of course the original Hall.
As the decades rolled by, we saw the addition of mobile classrooms in the mid ‘80s (at this stage SP was still under constant threat of being moved under the Group Areas Act), the levelling of and the planting of grass on the AG de Villiers Field, and eventually, and perhaps the first reassuring sign of SP’s permanence, the completion of the second floor above the office and the building of the new staff room. This section, the James Dreyer wing, named after the long-serving member of the School Committee and Chairman of the Governing Body, was officially opened on 25 July 2001 by the then Western Cape MEC for Education, Ms Helen Zille.
The next significant development, one which was to change the face of SP forever and to add a whole new dimension to the life of all SP students, was the building of the beautiful new Hall. This was opened in 2004 by Mr Yusuf Gabru, who had replaced Ms Zille when the province changed political hands. This development necessitated the moving of the mobile classrooms to their position alongside the AG de Villiers Field. The original ‘Hall’ (for a long time the Std 9A and B classrooms with wooden dividing doors) was now transformed into a Dance Studio.
Thereafter, after years of demanding the replacement of the prefab classrooms with brick buildings, that development finally took place in 2008, with the building of the Drama and second Music rooms above the Dance Studio, and the replacement of the classrooms on the west side of the quad. This development incorporated the establishment of the TRAC (Physical Science) Lab.
And finally (for now?), towards the end of 2016, the mobile rooms alongside the AG de Villiers Field, as well as the last remaining prefabs on the north side of the quad (including the old needlework room) and the east (including the old Woodwork and Domestic Science/ Home Economics rooms and tuck shop), succumbed to the might of the bulldozers to make way for the new, state of the art classrooms, including a new dance studio and Consumer Studies room and tuck shop.
Now for the swimming pool and tartan track …
Having started from very humble beginnings, SP has grown in so many ways. Its buildings have seen one century, and indeed one millennium, change into another, political systems crumble and thousands of students pass through its walls. It has survived through dark days, and will continue to grow and thrive.
South Peninsula for aye! South Peninsula!