Cornelis Esterhuyse

A bleak and violent story of delinquency and broken family ties. Christiaan MacDonald escapes from the reformatory where he has been serving a sentence for car theft and asks his sister Dina for help. When his father tells Christiaan he is adopted, and furthermore is banished from the MacDonald family, the young man responds with criminal behavior that rip the family apart.

A man inherits a piece of land in Pretoria, but when he comes to claim his inheritance, he realizes that it is where the Union Buildings are built.

We meet the hero of this musical drama, Dolf Preller, being released on parole after spending two and a half years in prison. Stipulations for his parole are to stay out of trouble with the law, continue his studies at university and to come into contact with the rector on arriving on campus . Soon after his arrival he runs into Jan van Vollenhoven - the brother of the man he killed, which caused his jail sentence. Van Vollenhoven promises to make life very difficult for him. He also attracts the unwanted attention of Briers and Schoeman, two students that have been trying to pass their third year without success and have earned bad reputations for fooling around rather than doing any studying. He meets the lovely daughter of the rector and a special relationship soon develops between them. The rector, however, makes it clear that Preller is an unacceptable partner for his daughter.