The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  Journalist Audrey Ryan has an interesting memory of the lighter side of William’s life as a student at Rhodes University in the early 1960s:

  ‘I do remember one occasion when he was a student. I was asked to organise and compere a fashion show for Child Welfare in a local theatre using the Rhodes Rag Queen and her Princesses as models. I had a great idea. The cherry on the top was lingerie, the final item. William – now a great, strapping student – would be my model. It was a dark secret. Only Margaret Smith was in the know. Between us we managed to find a beautiful (size WXX) nightgown and slippers to fit and a lovely scarf for his head. His make-up was perfect, and I taught him to walk and move like [a] model. The script was a big build up to this, the final item, the music was sexy and sweet and then … in swept William, smiling and twirling as to the manner born. It was a triumph. The audience howled and clapped. I was watching JLB who had been persuaded by Margaret to come. After a moment of complete astonishment he opened his mouth and roared with laughter, an unusual and heart warming sight.’

  William left Rhodes at the end of 1962 and completed his MSc in Chemistry in seven months at the present-day University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg in 1963. Although he registered for a PhD at this university, he realised that, unlike his parents, his interest lay in business, not in academics. He initially joined the giant chemical company African Explosives & Chemical Industries (AECI) (which had previously supplied his father with explosives to catch fishes) in their Work Study Group in Modderfontein. Here he developed several unique concepts, including a patented safety fuse that is still used worldwide. He then joined Afrox (African Oxygen Ltd) for two years, becoming Technical Manager at the age of 29 years; but the teaching bug kept biting and he moved into the supplementary education arena.

  Over the next 38 years (1968 to 2006) William was to become a household name in South Africa. He started by developing a ‘Pre-University School’ that prepared students for their first year and, despite some initial opposition, within five years the concept was adopted by all the major universities in South Africa. He was first to introduce the use of closed-circuit television in education in South Africa in 1968. Through the ‘Star Schools’ programme (which included the printed media) he developed supplementary tuition to high-school learners in Mathematics, English and Physical Science. In 1970 he ran the first multiracial school, despite problems with the authorities. This service was expanded to include winter and spring holiday programmes, pre-exam classes, matric revision sessions and ‘Saturday Schools’ covering the syllabuses of all the different examining bodies, in all the major centres, using some of the country’s top teachers on a part-time basis.

  Margaret and JLB Smith at William’s MSc graduation in 1963.

  Although William’s educational radio and television broadcasts were enormously successful, he really excelled in face-to-face teaching in the classroom. His demonstrative personality coupled with carefully crafted lessons led to his becoming an extremely popular and successful teacher, with over 12,000 students passing through his hands each year.

  Because of the success of his educational programmes, William was forced in 1980 to develop big-group teaching methods, and eight-hour sessions with suitable breaks were implemented. His ability to succeed in this format evoked disbelief among educationists until they saw for themselves that it worked. In October 1980 he offered his ‘Science Revision Weekend’ in the Wits University Great Hall. An hour before the event over 1,500 students had packed the venue and, by starting time, over 3,000 had to be turned away.

  In 1981 the pressure to reach still more students prompted William to develop the ‘One-Person TV Production Studio’, in which the presenter controlled the whole production himself. This system produced many hours of high quality and very effective educational material for television at a fraction of the normal cost. The studio attracted worldwide interest and he was invited to address educational and television broadcast suppliers in Japan (Sony Corporation), the USA and Europe, and hosted visits from educationists from Australia, Canada and elsewhere. Sponsorship from the Barlow Foundation resulted in the construction in 1990 of the first television studio that could broadcast quality educational programmes live; this led directly to the development of the ‘Learning Channel’, a South African TV channel dedicated to primary and secondary education.

  In 1990, backed by Hylton Appelbaum, then Executive Director of the Liberty Life Foundation, William introduced the world’s first interactive television educational broadcasts in which viewers were able to phone in live and have their problems solved on air, while they watched their television screens. His TV channel was not only cost-effective but also very user-friendly as it allowed any good teacher to become a presenter. Sponsorship from Liberty Life, Barlows and the Argus group of newspapers meant that this service could be provided free by the SABC.

  By 1992, 13 hours a week of William’s syllabus teaching material was being broadcast on SABC TV, and printed support material was appearing weekly in newspapers with a combined readership of 1.7 million. By 1995 over 1,000 schools had purchased educational programmes on tape for use in the classroom, and William led the world in phone-in educational programmes. By 1997, 600 hours of interactive live educational broadcast developed by William and his team was being broadcast on SABC 2 and 3, and over 2,000 schools were receiving their educational video tapes. In 1998 he was voted one of the top three television presenters in South Africa and, between 2000 and 2002, he pioneered educational broadcasts to 28 African countries, reaching over 100 million people through regional radio stations. In the midst of all this, he was also a co-presenter, with Jeremy Mansfield, of the popular television quiz show, ‘A Word or 2’.

  William Smith doing what he does best, teaching.

  William wrote several study guides on physical science and developed ‘The Island System’ method of teaching physics, which was widely hailed as one of the most exciting advances in the field for years. He also created several mathematics teaching programmes, and in 1984 his ‘Basics Mathematics’ video was rated in the United Kingdom as the world’s best educational programme on video. Through his highly successful ‘Let’s Speak Afrikaans’ radio programme, which had the highest listenership of all SABC English Service programmes at the time, he also taught thousands of South Africans how to speak this language. He soon became known as ‘South Africa’s favourite schoolmaster’ (McGregor, 2010).

  He received the ‘Impumelelo Gold Award for Innovation’ in 2005, the ‘Golden Plumes’ award from the SABC and recognition from the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992. He also won South Africa’s highest professional teacher award, the Technotron/Barlow Rand/University of Pretoria ‘Teacher of the Year’ award on 17th May 1991. This award, for the ‘most innovative and inspiring science teacher in the country’ is the highest professional award given to a teacher in South Africa and was worth R50,000. In 2003 Johnnic Communications bought The Learning Channel and William’s specialised studios were moved to the SABC headquarters in Auckland Park. William retired from educational broadcasts in 2006.

  William and his second wife, Jenny.

  William has two children, David and Lee-Anne, with his first wife, Jenny, from whom he was divorced in 1976. He and his second wife, also Jenny, have three daughters, Helen, Jessica and Bronwyn, who all live in Perth, Australia. William and his second wife, Jenny became very well-known for their development of the 150-hectare Featherbed Nature Reserve on the Western Heads at Knysna. ‘The Heads’ are two enormous sandstone cliffs that stand like sentries on either side of the entrance to the Knysna Lagoon from the sea. In addition to the cliffs, which offer spectacular views out to sea, the Western Head also has extensive milkwood forests and large caves. JLB Smith had bought the Western Head in the 1950s using profits from his book, Old Fourlegs, primarily to protect access to his favourite fishing spot, Duiker Rock (later known as ‘JLB’s Rock’), in the Narrows. He later also acquired Featherbed Bay, a
nd William inherited and extended these properties. The Western Head and Featherbed Bay received South African Heritage status in 1987.

  Radio journalist, Audrey Ryan (1997), who worked briefly with the Smiths, has an interesting memory of the Knysna Heads:

  ‘My final memory is a gentle one. I was on a visit to Margaret in Knysna some years after her husband’s death. William was there and the two of us went fishing on the Heads across the lagoon belonging to the Smiths. It was a great day. I don’t think we caught much, but I do remember in late afternoon saying to William that I had had a strong sense of his father’s presence as we moved around, and he turned to me and said that he too had felt the same thing. Not surprisingly really, for JLB was a great fisherman, long before he became a great Ichthyologist.’

  By retaining the Western Head in a near-pristine state, so that it could provide habitat for rare animals such as the Knysna loerie, blue duiker and black oystercatcher, William developed a reputation as a committed conservationist. He spent most of his free time in the 1980s and 1990s building up the facilities and services on this stunning natural site, pioneering ‘ecotourism’ long before it became fashionable. Together with the John Benn luxury floating restaurant (named after a famous Knysna port captain), two ferries (Spirit of Knysna and Three Legs) and a custom-built paddleboat, Paddle Cruiser, Featherbed Nature Reserve became one of the major tourist attractions along the famed Garden Route. The ferries took visitors back-and-forth to the nature reserve as well as on cruises on the lagoon and past sight-seeing attractions such as The Heads and ‘JLB’s Rock’. In 2008, after 25 years managing and developing this unique but demanding enterprise, William and Jenny sold the Featherbed Nature Reserve, together with the tourism business, restaurants and five boats to the mining magnate, Kobus Smit, who is continuing the Smith legacy.

  CHAPTER 11

  Room to breathe

  The difficult war years, and a new beginning

  IN 1942 JLB and Margaret Smith started a long battle to improve JLB’s ailing health.

  ‘For many years the aftermath of the East Africa campaign led to continued ill-health, the precise origin of which baffled those I consulted. In succession they took away my teeth, my tonsils, and my appendix; but I have no harsh feelings towards those who assisted at my partial dismemberment, and am rather grateful that they did not focus their attention on any other organs as well’ (Smith, 1956)’.

  Samantha Weinberg (1999) commented:

  ‘But he was determined not to give in to death, and so he didn’t. Instead he developed a proactive method of fighting his illnesses. He walked for long distances every day. … He also changed his diet. Using his knowledge of chemistry, he analysed how the stomach worked, what got digested and where, and came up with one of the first food-combining diets. He refused to mix proteins and carbohydrates: he never ate meat with vegetables, or bread with butter or cheese. People thought he was crazy. His sandwiches, remembers Jean Pote, used to consist of two pieces of cheese with some apple wedged between them.’

  According to Margaret, ‘They paid great attention to diet and exercise, not eating “dead” [processed] food and walking every day’. Margaret would claim, somewhat hyperbolically, that in the last 25 years of his life, JLB had walked the equivalent of twice around the world! Smith would regularly walk 8 kilometres before breakfast and then, with the whole family, 40 kilometres on a Sunday, always at a fast pace. Walking became a fetish with him but it probably saved his life and turned him into a very fit man. He even went for the occasional jog, as in Durban on the morning of 26th December 1952 – ‘At dawn I went for a quick run along the beach’ (Smith, 1956) – during the anguished wait for an airplane to fetch the second coelacanth.

  About 20 years later (1961) Smith wrote to Carl Hubbs at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California: ‘Incidentally I have a body on which the 1914–1918 war left its marks. It is something like an ancient car held together in unorthodox fashion and capable of running only on the highest grade of super-octane fuel. This makes my tropical expeditions rather hard going, but they go’ (Hubbs, 1968). Hubbs also recounts the following incident at a 1958 conference in the USA: ‘As a group of us was walking out to lunch, anticipating some of the food for which New Orleans is acclaimed, Jack Randall in the lead suddenly said, “Hey, you guys, let’s go over that way”, whereupon our South African guest spiritedly retorted, “What do you mean by calling me ‘a guy’; I shall not walk with you any farther.” But he relented and we all partook of a delicious seafood lunch. Though he had already told us repeatedly of his rigorously limited diet, he overindulged so prodigiously that he promptly suffered an attack of acute indigestion, and called, almost to the point of insistence, for an abrupt change in the hourly schedule of the whole conference to fit into his own condition!’

  JLB Smith (second from right) with (from left) Gilbert Whitley, LP Schultz and Carl Hubbs.

  JLB regained his health to such an extent that he and Margaret were able to withstand the hardships of the arduous fish-collecting expeditions that they organised up the East African coast and to the Western Indian Ocean islands in the late 1940s and 1950s. At the age of 70, shortly before he committed suicide, he was still working long hours and walking an average of 50 kilometres per week (MM Smith, 1969) and was more agile and younger-looking than men many years his junior.

  John Wallace, ex-Director of the Port Elizabeth Museum and an expert on sharks and rays, who worked briefly with the Smiths in Grahamstown, commented:

  ‘JLB and Margaret went for a “constitutional” walk each day at about 5 pm. I accompanied them. After some days I got used to JLB concentrating on keeping fit, walking at a pace that as a young man I struggled to maintain and which left Margaret far behind. He would stop long enough for her to catch up before setting off again into the distance!’ (J Wallace, pers. comm., 2017).

  ‘William remembers that no day passed without extensive walks, so much so that he hates exercise to this day’ (J Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  The intervention of the Second World War gave JLB Smith some breathing space to consider his future. He continued to meet his teaching obligations in the Chemistry Department but found that his research on fishes was occupying more and more of his time and attention. His mind was also strongly focused on his project of finding another coelacanth with all the soft anatomy intact while, at the same time, surveying the little-known fishes of East Africa, where he predicted the coelacanth lived.

  As he was unable to travel beyond the borders of South Africa during the war, he focused on making fish collections along the Eastern Cape and Transkei coasts. He continued to produce publications on chemistry, mainly on the essential oils of South African indigenous plants, and he produced three textbooks on chemistry: Numerical and Constitutional Exercises in Chemistry with M Rindl (1941, second edition in 1943), which was also published in Spanish (1955); A Simplified System of Organic Identification, with an American edition in 1943; and A System of Qualitative Inorganic Analysis (1941), with second (1943), third (1944) and fourth editions (1949).

  At that time his colleagues’ opinions of him differed. He was described by many as very determined and single-minded, and only prepared to tolerate the inefficiencies of others if they served his own needs. Many regarded him as aloof and arrogant; yet others, as cold and austere, even frightening; but, to his close friends, he was kind and generous. One colleague commented that, to be a fisherman, you have to be a romantic, but scientists are not romantics. In JLB Smith, however, he found someone who managed to combine the romanticism of an angler with the realism of a scientist. Many agreed that JLB didn’t, in general, like people and that, with his penetrating blue eyes and piercing stare, he would often intimidate them.

  Shirley Bell experienced the kind and generous side of JLB’s personality, and his ability to inspire others to reach their full potential:

  ‘… I researched material for articles when I became editor of Field and Tide, and JLB showed interest
and wrote to me about them, and that’s how my friendship with the Smiths began. He would write to me while they were away on trips. It was so interesting for me and such a privilege. So it was quite strange for me to hear later how autocratic he could be … I just saw this endlessly helpful, concerned, generous-spirited man who had a huge reputation, but had somehow noticed me and my little efforts and decided I should now go back to studying and find out who I was, and who had a scientist wife who was also generous-spirited and supportive’ (S Bell, pers. comm., 2017).

  JLB Smith had no enthusiasm for wars. ‘As a scientist I can never view with any pleasure the apparent ease with which some politicians appear to contemplate war, and the spending of countless millions on destruction and death, while they will in peace-time hedge and jib at a few thousand pounds for a scientific endeavour.’ The aftermath of the Second World War did, however, benefit his research, as South Africa (like other countries) realised that there was a strong need to invest in science and technology to promote future economic growth. Scientific research had become a national priority and science a matter of international prestige. Soon after the war ended, Prime Minister Jan Smuts appointed Basil Schonland as his Scientific Adviser with a mandate to advise the government on research development and co-ordination. Following his recommendations, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was formally established on 5th October 1945 (Kingwill, 1990). This was the funding agency that would soon make it possible for Smith to devote himself full-time to ichthyology.

  Immediately after the war the burden on JLB Smith became almost unbearable. Like any scientific discipline, chemistry is a demanding subject, especially if one chooses to combine teaching and research. The rapid development of organic chemistry, shortages of staff, escalating teaching loads to returning servicemen, and Smith’s burgeoning career in ichthyology, eventually forced him to make a decision on his future. He chose fish research, realising that this was a wide-open field with many opportunities. His ambition to capture an intact coelacanth also influenced his decision, as he was convinced that research up the east coast of Africa would reap rich rewards.