On Wednesday 7 February, we hosted our Junior Academic Awards Ceremony for Academic Achievements in 2017 for Grades 8 to 11. The event was attended parents, invited guests, staff and boys, as well as Guest Speaker, Mr Colwyn Thomas.
Colwyn Thomas is a South African Film-maker and together with his colleague Greg Lomas, produced “To Skin a Cat”, which was awarded “Best Direction in a Feature Documentary” in the South African Film and Television Awards for 2017, as well as “Best Wildlife Crime Documentary” at the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in New York in 2017. Both men are DHS Old Boys.
“To Skin a Cat” is a documentary film about one man’s mission to halt the alarming decline in southern Africa’s leopard populations due to a widespread skin trade. Colwyn’s credentials include writing duties for the National Geographic film, Secrets of the Mangroves and camera and director roles on the ETV documentary Downtown Hunters. He is also one of the Directors of Scholars & Gentlemen, a South Africa production team based in Durban.
His message to the learners, parents and other guests, was to always strive to be the hero in your own story and told a captivating story of his most challenging moment in his career.
“For me, to be successful, you need to be asking yourself, what stories you believe in, who the hero is in the story and how to become that hero”. He also explained three principles to telling a great story, that of moving people, surprising people and thinking differently about something and referred to this when describing his own success through the making of his award-wining film.
Mr Thomas was invited to present the awards to the deserving learners that achieved over the past year.
The main awards for the day were the Top 3 pupils in each grade. They were as follows:
Grade 8, 2017 – Mikail Kreuzer (1st), Sharik Ramjee (2nd), and Tusani Mthembu (3rd)
Grade 9, 2017 – Adam Mohamed (1st), Mas’ood Bassa (2nd), and Fuzail Khalil (3rd)
Grade 10, 2017 – Rashae Govender (1st), Vidhan Singh and Thirushan Pather (Tied for 2nd) and Mohammed Shaikjee (3rd)
The top three in Grade 11 in 2017 were as follows:
Shay Naidoo (3rd), Neeven Naidoo (2nd), and Mahil Dessai who took first place and was presented a Certificate of Merit, the award for Engineering Graphics and Design, Life Orientation, Life Sciences, The PricewaterhouseCoopers Award for Mathematics, as well as the UKZN Outstanding Achievement Award for Mathematics and Physical Sciences.
Durban High School congratulates all the prize winners and thanks Mr Thomas for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his story with the guests.
