Recently I read in the newspaper about a reunion of schoolmates who went to school 45 years ago. Remarkable, by any stretch of the imagination.

But the reunions I would most welcome in our society, especially in the Cape Flats where the crime rate and use of drugs is so high, are those between childhood friends. I want to reunite with that lad who used to fight with me and I’d go crying to my late big brother. And I heard that lad I used to fight with is a happily married man with three lovely boys, living in Lady Frere, a small dusty town in the Eastern Cape.

I’d like to reunite with Vusumzi Qunta, who is now a taxi driver in Nyanga. I used to play games with him at KwaMatyetye Game Shop the whole Saturday and I would come back home in the evening, dirty and hungry. I would get punished and the following day I would not be allowed to go to the Game Shop.

I’d like to reunite with the dude I used to kick a football with on the street as a six year-old. He is now a qualified civil engineer and he resides in the Karoo.

I’d like to reunite with that boy who used to steal money from under his mother’s mattress and we’d go over the bridge or railway line to Heniz Park and buy fish and chips. I heard from his cousin that he is a Maths teacher in his home town.

I’d like to reunite with the late Siyanda “Yari” Bathathu, if it were possible, whose father used to take us to the beach in his old 1990s Toyota bakkie.

I’d like to reunite with Abongile Sixishe, whose brother was my classmate in Siyazakha Primary School in the early 2000s. And his brother was a good story-teller or a good gossiper, always talking enthusiastically about other people’s news. He resides in the Northern Cape now.

I’d like to reunite with Bonga Cebu and talk about the good old days. I want us all to have a braai and talk about life because he is a pastor now. Just reminisce and see life through the eyes of a child again.

I just feel that as we grow older we forget about those we grew up with and those we lost through the years. What if some of them are suffering so much that they struggle to put food on the table for their families? Let’s reconnect. Let’s keep in touch.

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Tell us: If you had a reunion, who would you invite?