RAG

March Madness

RAG was always doomed from the start. The weeks building up to it were days of chaos, a collective madness. The whole overexcited student body drank itself into a drooling lather; Union toilets were kicked in by some enterprising soul; the stoners smoked themselves into the bejesus belt; and the irascible lesbians mounted pitched street battles outside the Mr and Ms Fresher competition.

 

Walking Wounded

Come RAG morning, the students would struggle awake, shuffle off from whatever bush or rock they’d slept under on the night before, and join the broken parade, like a meandering column of British walking wounded fleeing the battle of Majuba. The RAG march was a deplorable sight, more a rolling shipwreck than a parade. I’ve seen TV footage of caravans of fleeing Congo refugees that step livelier and look more spruce.

Rhodes RAG Parade 1992. Somewhere on High Street.

Sausage Roll

The good folk of Grahamstown weren’t spared either. My friend Sausage awoke in a New Street gutter, clad only in his y-fronts, wrapped in a Zimbabwe flag, tight as a spring roll. Pinned tight, unable to get up, he slithered onto the road and began to roll towards campus. An old biddy in a Morris Minor appeared at the bottom of the street, tottering up the road, slow as a snail carrying heavy shopping. Sausage rolled into her side of the road. She tried to drive round him, but he rolled in front of her path, hollering obscenities that’s make a coloured snoek fisherman blush. After some back and forth rolling, the granny made her escape, doubtless off home to write an outraged letter to Grocotts Mail.

RAG was banned after that year.