Photograph: Rand Club
It was the one building in South Africa where the name Nelson was more likely to conjure images of warships at Trafalgar than black people lining up to vote. The Rand Club, an outpost of the British empire founded by the mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes, has closed its doors after years of dwindling membership and a struggle to remain relevant.
Officials at the club insist the move is only temporary – anywhere from three to nine months – but admit that the institution could disappear for good if a commercial partner is not found.
At 128 years of age, the Rand Club is just a year younger than its home, Johannesburg, the commercial capital that came into existence in a big bang after the discovery of gold. Legend has it that Rhodes took a walk, halted and said: “This corner will do for the club.” And so a gentleman’s club of pipe-smoking members perusing broadsheet newspapers, deferential waiters in spotless uniforms and starchy atmosphere typical of those on London’s Pall Mall rose on the dusty highveld.
Early patrons included the poet Rudyard Kipling, whose poem If is said to have been inspired by a Rand Club member. The club’s library, snooker room and bar – reputedly the longest in Africa – remained popular for decades among wealthy white men (women were not admitted until 1993). But the end of racial apartheid a year later threatened to turn it into a colonial relic, and its location in downtown Johannesburg became deeply unfashionable as businesses fled and crime soared.
The club is now seeking a partnership with a hospitality operator to run its catering. David Williams, the club’s chairman, said: “It’s important to say we’re not closing: we’re going into hibernation. It’s a big building and expensive to run. It’s perfect for conferences and residential conferences, where people can stay overnight, so the idea is to get a big operator with marketing muscle.”
There had been talks with two or three operators, he said. Another option might be pooling resources with another club. In a third and worst-case scenario, Williams said, “we’d have to close the club and the building would be put up for sale. But that’s the last resort. It would be terrible. We don’t want that to happen and I don’t think it’s going to. We should have done this 10 or 15 years ago but we struggled on.”
To some the club appears an anachronism in today’s multiracial South African democracy. There are pictures of the battle of Trafalgar, British royals and, in a “Rhodes room”, the colonialist explorer himself, accompanied by a caption that says: “Cecil Rhodes is remembered for his enormous contribution to the development of southern Africa.” This year a protest movement known as #RhodesMustFall led to a statue of him being removed from the campus of the University of Cape Town.
Williams, 60, said: “You don’t necessarily approve of Rhodes just because you have a picture of him on the wall. The Carlton Club has pictures of all the Tory prime ministers on the wall, even though someone might say a few of them were duds. I don’t think anyone here seriously thinks Rhodes was a wonderful chap – although some might.”
Club membership now stands at around 1,200, of whom 500 are active, paying an annual fee of 10,000 rand (£478). Williams estimates black people make up only 5-10%, but added: “We arrested the decline and there are now a lot of young and enthusiastic members. It’s not just a lot of old men sitting in front of the fire dozing off.”
Should the Rand Club go the way of Rhodes’s statue, however, there are likely to be mixed reactions. Njabulo Ndebele, chairman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said: “My reaction could not be one of sadness. It is a recognition that there are fundamental transformations in the country and certain kinds of embeddedness are being shaken.”
