FLIPPING BOOK CHRONICLE 2024

licence. But a quiet, if illegal, operation suddenly attracted attention in December when poachers removed a gate erected by Raimondo on a road that crosses his land on the way to the sea, a road which Hawston residents claim is a public thoroughfare.” Frank responded by putting a locked chain across the road, as a temporary replacement for the gate. The chain, continued the M&G , was a “remnant of a conflict last weekend which saw special police units from Cape Town descend on the south coast fishing village and arrest 12 people on charges relating to the poaching of shellfish”. (The poachers continued undaunted and on Monday the police arrested 13 more of them.) The police had “targeted Hawston as a testing ground for ‘Operation Gloves Off’, the latest strong-arm, anti-gang initiative”.

camp on the Kafue River, Zambia, of our Michaelhouse schoolfriend Chris McBride and his wife, Charlotte. Like Frank, Chris has been an outstanding protector of wildlife. Together with Bruce Baines and Tony Goodyer, Chris had spent numerous Sundays walking in the fields and woodlands around Michaelhouse with Frank and me, among wildlife including oribi and reedbuck, not to exclude occasional puffadders. Frank’s and Ida’s son, Dr Joseph Raimondo – a senior lecturer in the department of human biology at the University of Cape Town, and a neuroscientist who investigates brain function and dysfunction – was with his father throughout his final illness. Frank faced his coming death with exceptional calm. “Brain cancer now advanced. Will be gone within a month, I am afraid,” he wrote to me, less than two

weeks before he died. Michaelhouse should be proud of him. Written by: Paul Trewhela

TODD, GRAHAME MICHAEL

Born 1935, Died 2024 Michaelhouse 1949-1952

Grahame passed away peacefully on 18 March 2024 at his home in Wimbledon, London. He was originally from Johannesburg and then Swaziland, where he ran a large and innovative farming enterprise. He was also a senator in the Swaziland government. He retired to the UK in the early 2000s to be close to his children and grandchildren. When growing up in Johannesburg, he attended The Ridge School (during the 1940s) and then moved on to Michaelhouse as a boarder. He was in East with close friends Murray Armstrong and Chris Perry.

In 2008 Frank and I visited the wildlife