Neil Fraser
April 22, 2003
I WAS invited to a "Whisky Tasting" one evening at the Rand Club. Couldn't help but reflect how the evening exemplified the huge changes in the country over the past decade as well as how perceptions of the city and its institutions haven't kept pace with reality.
Males and females, black and white - all enjoying the event in the ground floor 'Main Bar' (reputed to have the longest bar counter in Africa) - And, a late-afternoon/early evening event in the inner city nogal!
Our whisky 'guide' was not a 'Mac-anything' but an incredibly knowledgeable black gentleman from the College of Whisky no less! Mickey Baloyi took us on a trip through the distilleries of Scotland using the bouquets and tastes of various types of the liquid-gold to transport us. During the evening I'm sure that he mentioned that although he was a Shangaan, his mother or grandmother was in fact a Scot.
A Scot also featured in the Rand Club's earliest possible history. The story goes that two of the four sites on which the Rand Club is built were owned by a Scot, H.B.Marshall.
The other two belonged to a Jewish Financier Ikey Sonnenberg. (F. Addington Symonds describes Sonnenberg as a 'financier' in his book 'The Johannesburg Story'. However, other references describe Sonnenberg as "a speculator who used to run a faro table in the dining room of the first Central Hotel!" Well, a financier by any other name…! Hans Sauer in his autography - 'Ex Africa' (so I also had to look that one up in my dictionary, it means a hand-written account!) actually describes Sonnenberg as belonging "to the great Jewish race, and widely known in South Africa for his wit, generosity and kindness.")
Sauer recalls that he and Cecil Rhodes were strolling through the newly established mining camp just before Christmas 1886 when Rhodes decided to select a site for "a gentlemen's club".
The site was of course the same as that on which the current Club building now stands, the corner of Commissioner and Loveday Streets. Rhodes asked Sauer to find out who owned the sites and Symonds records that Sonnenberg, on learning of the idea behind it (i.e. the purchase of the ground) promptly and generously made the ground over as a gift. Sauer records "With Marshall, a Scotsman, it was different. I had to pay the full price of 72 pounds for his two stands."
Ironic that the Club's 'unofficial' exclusivity of that time would probably have barred the membership of Ikey Sonnenberg notwithstanding that he donated 50% of the land on which the Club buildings were to be built! The only official ban of course, by dint of being a 'gentlemen's club' was on those of the fairer sex. Some British clubs even declared medical doctors as persona non grata – "Who wants to talk to a fellow who knows what your insides look like?"
Reminds me of the Groucho Marx comment: "Any Club that would accept me as a member I wouldn't want to join!"
The first big change in the Rand Club came in 1989 when, after fierce debates and two referendums, women were allowed to become members breaking over one hundred years of male exclusivity. Our new democracy did the rest!
The first issue of the Digger's News (24 February 1887) explained why a club was needed in the mushrooming mining camp; "At present there is no central place of resort and visitors come and go before their presence is known."
Another record states; "One reason for the early establishment of a men's social club was that many of the pioneers had come to Johannesburg from the Kimberley diamond fields; among them were Rhodes, Eckstein, Robinson and Sauer, and they knew the value of such a club".
But, in truth, clubs were very much part of colonisation. They represented 'a haven and a rallying point' offering exclusivity "where all the solid virtues and proper male behaviour patterns of the times were enshrined and preserved in an atmosphere of pleasant comradeship." Certainly clubs were generally snobbish establishments – the story is told of a member of "Booth's" in England, a Duke, who chose to sit in a window seat in the club overlooking the street because he enjoyed "watching the damned people get wet."
Nmamdi Elleh ("African Architecture") says: "Except for the mansions designed for the governors of their colonial provinces and the administrative buildings, the English were obsessed with recreating their country villages abroad."
The current building is the third built on the site and was erected between 1902 and 1904. The first Club opened its doors on the 10th December 1887, exactly a year and two days after the first stand in the newly proclaimed township of Johannesburg had been knocked down for ten pounds seventeen and sixpence at a public auction! The original Club was described as containing "a bar, a billiards room and four small rooms which were used as committee rooms, reading and card rooms and a kitchen".
The third and current building was built in 1904 at a cost of £119 412 and was designed in the "French Renaissance", or Neo-Baroque style, by Frank Emley who also designed The Corner House, Commissioner Street, and First National House, Market Street. Emley's design for The Corner House is reputed to be the inspiration for Revel Fox's design of Bank City.
The Club's website records the following in regard to the building: "The Rand Club is greatly admired today as a pristine example of the elegance and gracefulness of earlier times. Although now dwarfed by far larger buildings, at the time of its erection it was an outstanding landmark.
A distinguished British astronomer, who visited Johannesburg with a delegation of the British Association in 1905, wrote in his book Through South Africa with the British Association that "this great club was filled to overflowing and all the wealth and influence of the great city was represented there. I was much struck by the magnificence of the building, the size of the rooms, the style of furniture - all rivalling our best London Clubs."
William Charles Scully, the South African author and poet from the Eastern Cape, was one of its few critics. In his Ridge of White Waters, he scathingly described the club as "an immense stone pile, many storeys high. Inside, it is a nightmare of superfluous ornamentation. Above the vestibule on the first floor is a wide landing which is reached by a double stairway - on either section of which men might walk six abreast.
The landing is flanked by soaring pillars of imitation porphyry; these are too crowded and far too big even for this Cyclopean environment. Corinthian capitals jostle each other on every side. It is a megalomaniac's dream realised; it is barbaric, Titanic; as exaggerated as the wealth of the magnates who designed it." (The entrance hall and fine sweeping staircase are said to be modelled on the design of the Reform Club in London.)
Desiree Picton Seymour writes in Historical Buildings in South Africa that "the present building has continued in the traditions of the previous two club premises and is rightly world renowned. Like its counterparts in Pall Mall, London, it is large and elaborate in the French Renaissance style with pilasters and columns and bold mouldings giving an aura of permanence.
The interior is solidly subdued with a grand hallway with Ionic columns of simulated porphyry and a sweeping staircase leading to a colonnaded gallery. The influence of Art Nouveau can be seen in the sinuous ironwork and in the design of the stained glass windows. The diningroom is impressive and the all-male preserves such as libraries and billiard rooms are period pieces of another age." (This was written in 1989 before the admission of women as members.)
The doom and gloom brigade have long forecast the death of the Rand Club – "an anachronism, a colonial icon, a monument to exclusivity, racism and male chauvinism" they say. Probably a decade ago, the Club looked to be in severe difficulty as its pale male membership moved their offices and their support out of the city.
But the Club has adapted to its changed political, social and cultural environment and in doing so is providing a facility for a broad range of business people in and of the city. A recent newsletter records eighty applications for membership including a Jane and a Sarit, a John, Nazeem, Asher and Khamane, surnames ranging from Nocton-Smith to Vermaak, Howa, Shah, Sithole and Phakati.
So, a toast to the Rand Club as it serves the city more inclusively today than probably at any other time in its long history - L'Chaim, Slainte, Cheers.
