Hoërskool Waterkloof (colloquially known as Klofies) is a public Afrikaans medium co-educational high school situated in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria in the Gauteng province of South Africa.
In 1980, the first permanent principal was appointed, P. van der Merwe Martins, a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond who was previously a teacher in Volksrust.
Becker and three pupils of the school, the "Waterkloof Four", displayed defiance and arrogance in court and received 12-year prison sentences for assault and murder.
[10] In 2008, the deputy headmaster Louis Dey (45) sued three of the school's pupils for an amount of R600,000 after an incident in 2006 where they circulated a manipulated picture of him and the principal, L. Christo Becker, which depicted them naked and engaged in a seemingly homosexual act.
[11] The three teenagers were ordered to pay R45,000 in damages for sending the image to hundreds of pupils via MMS and Bluetooth, an amount which Dey described as "shockingly inappropriate".
[13] In 2009, following a forensic audit requested in December 2008, the governing body committee stepped in to manage the school after uncovering alleged financial irregularities spanning the years 2004 to 2008, which ran into millions of rand.
Some irate parents claimed the money was used to bankroll the protracted legal battle to keep the principal's son Christoff out of prison,[4] while the upmarket lifestyle of his deputy was also singled out.
[15] The governing body chaired by Lukas Coetsee requested an audit of the Aviation Academy[16] and considered legal steps against it,[15] but was informed that it was an independent entity with Becker as director, and consequently not obligated to answer to them.
[16] Onno Ubbink, subsequent chairman of the governing body said they were "not in a position to comment" on the department's sacking[17][18] of Becker, Eloff and Van der Merwe, their financial administrator.
The same source alleged that the school's many poor pupils were not lent support, but some parents were indeed sued for outstanding fees, who had to pay legal costs as well.
Early 2017, a married male teacher who was appointed less than a year earlier had to quit the school after his alleged intimate encounter with a grade ten pupil came to light.
The hostel also introduced a new "koshuisvader", Cobus van Dyk, who was the forwards coach of the SA Schools Rugby team.
[24] In a press release headmaster Chris H. Denysschen labelled the breach as a cyber crime,[25] but his deputy, Cobus van Dyk, claimed that the school suffered no damage to its reputation.
[26] In February 2021 a spokesperson for the Gauteng Education Department expressed his disappointment with the disregard for social distancing at the school, even after completing COVID-19 operating procedures and regulations training.
[32] The headmasters (up of 2024) were: Sports practiced or coached at the school are: List of the final years of Hoërskool Waterkloof are in alphabetical order: