GEORGE NEWS - The murder of a well-known and respected former York High School teacher has sent shock waves through George and the entire Southern Cape.

Formidable former York High School accounting teacher Ron Wiggett (76) was found murdered in his home in Great Brak River on Monday morning. Wiggett's battered body was discovered in the entrance hall of his house around 08:00 by his wife, Dorothy, who lives in the adjacent house on their property.

A 57-year-old man, who was allegedly known to Wiggett, is due to appear in the Mossel Bay Magistrate's Court today on a charge of murder. He was arrested in Great Brak on Monday night.

Captain Malcolm Pojie, the Southern Cape Police spokesperson, said Wiggett's house was ransacked and that robbery seems to be the motive behind the murder.

"Good work by the detectives working the case led to the suspect's arrest at a house in Great Brak between 23:00 and midnight on Monday night. We have confiscated clothing belonging to the suspect that possibly contains blood, which will be sent away for analysis," said Pojie.

Mrs Wiggett, known by friends as Dee, this week told Nickey le Roux, of the Mossel Bay Advertiser, that her husband loved life. "He appreciated life, had a strong personality and took no nonsense. He loved teaching. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but he deliberately failed Latin to be able to become a teacher."

The couple's daughter, Janys, said her dad was mad about sports; his diary is full of notes of every sports game he watched. When he was younger he participated in rugby, tennis, gymnastics and hockey. He was an ardent coach during his teaching years."

Mr Wiggett received his B Ed post graduate degree at Stellenbosch University before completing his Master's degree in Illinois in the US. He worked at Rondebosch before becoming the deputy principal at Queen's College in Queenstown. From there he transferred to the deputy principal's position at York High School in George, where he taught business economics and accountancy. During most of his years as a teacher, he was also a house school master.

A former pupil of Wiggett's, Robert Moolman, who lives in Australia, this week wrote a moving yet humorous tribute to his accounting mentor stating that Wiggett scared the crap out of him. "Imagine my surprise when years later I was a qualified accounting teacher! I used his system of incentives ('money') to encourage the students in my care to do better, to work harder and to believe that if they just kept working hard, they would not have to 'buy' better marks at the end of a semester (I even wrote them all out exactly the same way he did). After years of being a teacher, being head of a commerce department and of seeing 'new ways' of teaching come and go, I have yet to ever see anything come close to the brilliance of this technique as a way of teaching accounting.

"I saw Ron only once after leaving York - walking on the beach at Great Brak. I greeted him, he took a second to place me and then we made some small talk and I left. I don’t think I ever told him that I was an accounting teacher or that I used his way of teaching accounting or that I would refer to him in my classes regularly or that I never took my eyes off my own shiny new Answer Book. Most importantly, I don't think I mentioned that I finally understood and appreciated his expectation of excellence from his students and how that has stood me in great stead in all my work.

"If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, I think that Ron would be surprised and I hope pleased, that the kid who dreaded his classes, modelled his teaching strategy on him."

Click here to read Robert Moolman's full tribute to Ron Wiggett.

ARTICLE: LIZETTE DA SILVA, GEORGE HERALD JOURNALIST

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