Durban - Following in the footsteps of his brother Mikail the year before him, Durban High School matriculant Daniel Kreuzer cracked nine distinctions.
But unlike Mikail, 20, Daniel, 18, will be studying engineering at the University of Cape Town and not medicine.
Raised by their single mother, Razina Meer, the competitive two encouraged one another, with the elder one teasing: “Bro, I walked so you could run.”
Their accomplishments have been “shared”.
Daniel was dux at DHS and Mikail was not. At the Deutsche Schule Durban (their primary school), it was the other way around.
“I am particularly proud of Daniel because he has a learning challenge,” said Meer. “He was diagnosed with dysgraphia (a neurological disorder characterised by writing disabilities) at the age of five, in Germany.”
When she and her boys returned to South Africa during their early school years, she opted not to continue the medical route and Daniel was treated with physiotherapy.
He was offered the opportunity to learn to type instead of writing but chose not to be the odd person out, she added.
“So he persisted with his bad writing. The teachers eventually got used to Daniel, writing ‘out of the block’.”
He was allowed 10 minutes per hour extra during exams for his writing.
Daniel himself said he had found his own coping mechanisms.
“Writing big kind of helps because if you write bigger the letters are a bit clearer, so I am actually glad that I write a bit bigger because it is still legible even if it’s not neat. I might be a bit slower as well but that’s what I got extra time for and it helped a lot.”
He also managed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by “filling in the gaps when I wasn’t paying attention”.
Neither of the brothers ever had extra lessons, said Meer.
“For me it has always been important that they work at their own pace and they work for themselves.”
Daniel said that during his first couple of years at DHS he had been “pretty lazy” and only started being in the top three in his grade in the last two years when he wanted to keep up with his brother’s achievements.
“There are a lot of good teachers at DHS who helped me a lot. I also had help from my family. There are a lot of top achievers in my family – all in medicine – so I often got advice from them.”
Daniel said he was not expect to get nine As but was hopeful having done well in trials.
Load shedding, he said, has been “a pain”, having to plan and download things in advance.
“Covid was a problem for me. I got very lazy during lockdown and I wasn’t doing very well and I had to get out of that slump.”
He said he hoped to be a good engineer “and come up with some cool solutions to problems”.
“I am looking to do mechatronics engineering, which is more robotics and automation.”
Deutsche Schule head Peter Deppe remembers Daniel as a very gifted boy who was quite playful but who, when he put mind to things, had everything kicking into gear.
Two of his former classmates were also the top matriculants at their respective high schools this year, Deppe added, naming Rich Kruse at St Henry’s Marist and Jessica Meier at Waterfall College.
Other KZN matriculants who achieved nine As were Lindelani Mbonambi, 17, from Mevamhlophe High School in Empangeni, and Darshan Naidu, 18, from Palmview Secondary School in Phoenix. Neither school could be reached for further details.
The Independent on Saturday