The similarities between Peekay and Bryce Courtenay

It is quite interesting how many direct similarities exist between Peekay and Courtenay.  Below are just a few I gathered by reading a interview on Courtenay:

• Both were born illegitimately, or so it seems
• mother was/became a dressmaker
• both were the smallest kid, a English kid in a African school
• both learned to box, to over come the big African people
• both were educated in Afrikaans
• Both were coached by a teacher who taught them so that they became good enough for a scholarship
• Both won a scholar ship, to a posh private school
• both used winning everything as their camouflage
• their mothers suffered a nervous breakdown
• father was completely absent
• relationship with mother was strained
• always small
• Apartheid was just gaining a grip on the country
• both worked in the copper mines as a grizzly man