Cape haunt of colonial leaders is sold for just R1
SELLING HISTORY: The Cape Town Club in Queen Victoria Street It marks the end of an era for the 158-year-old private club, whose past members included Cecil John Rhodes and prime minister General Jan Smuts. It is reported to be deep in debt. The club’s ailing finances and dwindling membership have been under the spotlight amid speculation that “gentlemen’s clubs” are outdated. But there is unlikely to be much outdated about the new-look club. It is to be taken over by Cape Town businessman Steve Straker, whose design style is more psychedelic than diplomatic.
Crusty club members, who have for years exchanged solemn handshakes in the dark, wood-panelled interior of the Rhodes Room, should prepare for a few changes: Straker’s contemporary club in the CBD, The Stack, invites patrons to meet in “the cuddle room” or in “the huddle room”.
Coincidentally, that establishment is housed in the Cape Town Club’s previous home, the historic Leinster Hall.
The changes may be a radical departure for a club that houses colonial artefacts such as Rhodes’s death mask and the table around which Smuts and some other cabinet ministers met in September 1939 to plan the strategy ahead of a parliamentary vote that took South Africa into World War 2.
Club board chairman James Sedgwick said he hoped the sale of the club’s name and assets to Straker, which was still being finalised, would revive the culture of club membership.
“For 20 years we have been trying to perpetuate club life in an environment where clubs of this nature are fading,” he said.
Former chairman Donwald Pressley said the sale could have been avoided if management had heeded warnings about the club’s financial affairs, in particular the 2013 sale of its main asset, Leinster Hall.
While the sale raised cash to settle debts, it meant the club had to pay rent on new premises — and was soon in debt once again.
“The management board . . . have failed horribly in their fiduciary duties to members of this esteemed institution,” said Pressley.
“They have effectively sold its members down the river.”
Straker, who moved to South Africa from the UK in 2012, declined to discuss details but said there would be big changes.
He would strive to continue the heritage of the club “but not operating as a traditional club, purely because it is unsustainable in today’s climate”.
“My approach is to be more pragmatic in respect of commercial activity,” he said.
He said the Cape Town Club had evolved way beyond the “male-dominated environments with specific profiles on who should be in there”.
“We want to take full cognisance of the history of the club, but at the same time make new history.”
One of Straker’s first tasks will be to find the Rhodes death mask, which is on the asset list.
“Most certainly it exists. It will be a fun thing for us to find.”
They have effectively sold its members down the river