November is a very important time of the year, mostly because it’s an important practice month for Dezemba, but also because a large contingent of young South Africans sit down to write their matric finals. This is arguably one of the most important moments of their young lives, drawing on a culmination of knowledge gained over some 12-plus years of formal education, showing their knowledge of 33% of the subject, hoping that the paper they bought off that fifth-year matric student was the real deal.

Realistically though, their attention shifted off matric exams long ago and was redirected to something much more likely to hold a teenager’s interest – Matric Rage. A 10-day party with no teachers, no parents, no Pythagoras, and no curfew. It’s a 10-day opportunity to completely throw away that entire future they’ve worked some 12-plus years to achieve, particularly when social media is involved.

However, it’s also a 10-day party that costs more than most first homes. Granted, there’s a lot more regulation and control, which is why they’re sticking a massive price tag to the event. These kids now have Matric Rage passports, exclusive passes, VIP, VVIP, and VVIPPPPP options. It’s actually just like high school, but with a little more booze.

Add in the cost of accommodation, travel, fast food, and even faster drugs, and this turns into quite an expensive undertaking. So much so, that organisers have very kindly implemented payment plans so you can pay for the fun well in advance (oh they’ve learnt a few lessons from Covid!).

Kids are selling family heirlooms, matric papers, and kidneys, just to afford this once-in-a-lifetime event – university tuition fees be damned! They’ve spent so long worrying about the future that no amount is too much for a bit of fun now.

Oh, how times have changed! Back in my day, matric end-of-year parties looked a little different. For starters, we called it Matric Rave. What moronic, cocaine-fuelled marketing executive decided to reinvent it as Matric Rage? And, why does everyone just go along with it? A rave is fun, a rage is decidedly less so. You go to a rave to have a good time with your friends. You go to a rage to kill all the competitors in the ring and emerge the one surviving Hunger Games hero.

Back in the early noughties, there were no organised festivals, concerts, or discotheques, we all just had a vague idea of an area where everyone was heading and so we headed there too. The whole class piled into Jane’s 1943 station wagon which required two people to remain outside to give it a push start, and hope like hell they could run fast enough to make it back into the car in time. The petrol gauge was always hovering over the red, and only money found on the ground could be used to refuel it.

Accommodation was someone’s uncle’s dodgy friend’s apartment with one microwave, bolted-down furniture, and a weird room that was inexplicably locked. There were 23 of you staying in the lounge of this windowless apartment, although you started out with 12, promising him it would only be 3.

There were no planned parties, you’d all just rock up at some open field for the pre-party drinks, car boot filled with cheap booze, Kylie Minogue blasting out of the 1943 sound system before deciding, en masse, where the next party would take place.

We did have cellphones in those days, but it was a Nokia 3310 so you had plenty of battery, limited signal, and zero data. There was no risk of your drunken image appearing on social media sites the next day, just ridiculing from your fellow ravers until the following night when the next person made an idiot of themselves on the dance floor.

Hopefully, by the time my kids reach matric they’ll start embracing the vintage Matric Rave… because I’ve got first dibs on their kidneys.