2009/04/21
A RETIRED high court judge and his 22-year- old granddaughter made history over the weekend when they both graduated with history degrees at Rhodes University. Former acting judge president Colin White , 79, obtained his masters while Erika van der Merwe was awarded an honours degree.
“I have still got some catching up to do, but at least he has a 58-year head start on me,” Erika joked. Instead of whiling away his golden years in a rocking chair Judge White – who retired in 2003 – has hit the books hard, writing an MA thesis on the four-year rule of Bantustan dictator Brigadier Oupa Gqozo and penning a book called The Law and its Humour. “My wife says I have gone senile and that it is time to slow down and take it easy. Perhaps she is correct, but having been active all my life, I find it difficult to do so,” he admits. And, there is no resting on his academic laurels for Judge White after he revealed this week he had enrolled at the University of Fort Hare to do a thesis on Johannes Bock and the little known Kei Mouth diamond rush.
Agreeing wholeheartedly “with a Yank who said: ‘You’ve got to have something other than your bladder to get you up in the morning’,” Judge White said age was “irrelevant” if one was blessed with good health and humour.
Quoting an amusing anecdote from his soon to be published book about an advocate asking an accused how a dead bull could have landed 30 metres from his car if he was only driving at 30 kilometres an hour, Judge White became animated.
“The accused replied: ‘You see when I struck the bull, it shifted onto the bonnet and travelled 30 metres before it slipped off’.” “The advocate said: ‘Oh, I see you’re a bullshifter too’,” White chuckled.
Erika said university friends looked at her “in awe” when she told them she was graduating along with her grandfather for history at the same university during the same year.
“They think he is a bit crazy to still be studying … I think it is very sweet we are graduating together.”
Accompanied by his wife of 52 years, Erika, and other family, Judge White said he preferred playing golf and burning the midnight oil at his Gonubie home – while his wife pottered around the garden. Explaining how her husband rose from humble beginnings after leaving school without a matric – aged 16 – Mrs White said she was still inspired by how he studied part time and got his law degree. - BY DAVID MACGREGOR, Port Alfred Bureau
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