Four groups of schoolchildren beat the adults hands-down in the Battle of the Wits general knowledge quiz, held at the V&A Waterfront amphitheatre, on Saturday November 19.
The pupils from SACS in Newlands, Grove Primary, in Claremont; Rustenburg Girls’ Junior School in Rondebosch; and the beneficiaries, the Rainbow Centre, went head-to-head with South African celebrity teams, including Zolani Mahola, Danilo Acquisto, Michael Mol and Africa Melani, in a knowledge battle to determine who is smarter.
The event was hosted by Katlego Maboe of Strictly Come Dancing and Expresso fame, and was organised by the Fuel2Grow campaign, a local child-focused fund-raising initiative by Ikamva Labantu, to raise funds for vulnerable children in Cape Town’s townships.
Fuel2Grow is helping the Rainbow Centre after-school programme in Gugulethu. This includes meals, school uniforms, stationery, additional support at home and at their schools and in their communities, an after-care that includes meals, sports, art activities and equipment, primary health screenings and academic support.
They aim to raise the R 1.5 million by the end of the year.
An hour into the event, they had already raised R16 780. By the end of the day, they had raised R64 667, bringing the total so far to R230 145.
Nyasha Manjengenja, Fuel2Grow’s programme manager, said she was excited by the support for the event.
Mr Aquisto expressed his nervousness about going up against SACS in the first round: “I didn’t do natural sciences at school, so I’m hoping I can rely on the rest of the team. But everyone seems to be having fun, so we are good to go.”
And it seemed that Mr Aquisto was right to be nervous, as the SACS team beat them with a score of 105 to the adults’ 70 points. SACS set the mood for the rest of the competition, with the pupils winning every round thereafter. Each child won a paintball game voucher, a set of Hamley’s train tickets and a stationery set.
