Revival on Queen Vic Street

In the early 1990s, the editor of the Cape Argus invited my boss, the chief subeditor, to lunch at the nearby City and Civil Service Club. A jacket and tie were discovered in a dusty corner of the newsroom and the chief sub went off eagerly, only to return having been “taken off at the knees”, as he put it, by an infamously irascible editor.

Legs also featured at a more enjoyable lunch at the Herbert Baker-designed club, recalled in 2014 by former Cape Times editor John Scott. He was among those bidding farewell to a retiring colleague, and wrote: “It was a most convivial affair, as such lunches tended to be, and as we staggered out into the first-floor gallery the guest of honour’s pants dropped to his ankles. He seemed incapable of pulling them back up, so we had to do it for him.

“Apparently this was a first in the club’s long and distinguished history. Many members were observed legless after a celebration, but never before had one been seen trouserless.”

Scott was writing on the eve of the club’s relaunch at its Queen Victoria Street premises, an event which was followed relatively swiftly by its closure, and for several subsequent years the building’s Russian owner rented it out as a film set, the magnificent interiors and furnishings lending authentic Victorian grandeur to period dramas.

Even then, a dress code would have been maintained, but in its latest incarnation things are a bit different. Late last year, the Cape Town Club was reopened by two men who are anything but stuffed shirts. Steve Wardlaw is, among other things, a part-time drag artist, and after lengthy careers in music and hospitality Phil Thurston has spent the past five years overseeing the revival of the Rand Club in central Joburg.

Lawyer Wardlaw is also a successful businessman — in the UK, he owns and chairs Emerald Life, which he co-founded to tackle discrimination in financial services by focusing on the LGBT community, women, nontraditional families and single people. The relaunched club, too, will be run as a business, modest monthly membership fees of less than R1,000 (with discounts for under-30s, under-21s and spouses) playing only a supporting role in keeping the institution solvent.

It’s all part of reinventing the “gentlemen’s club” for the 21st century, and executive director Thurston says while the physical trappings of the new club might be familiar to the old guard, the culture could come as, well, a shock. “Diversity is at the heart of what we want the club to be,” he says.

“We don’t care where you come from, how old you are, what level of education you have, what colour and sex you are, or anything else. This was my approach at the Rand Club and it really worked. We think there’s a need in Cape Town for a private members’ club with the same ethos.”

Thurston and Wardlaw — both originally from the UK — met 18 years ago when Thurston was running The Glen Boutique Hotel in Sea Point and the lawyer was a regular guest on his biannual holidays in Cape Town. “We became great friends, and we’ve always wanted to do something together,” says Thurston. “Steve is a member of a couple of clubs in London, and we talked about reviving the Cape Town Club several years ago.”

The chance to do so came when property developer Riaan Roos bought the club building from its Russian owner. He now has planning permission for an 18-storey luxury apartment block on the car park, and Thurston and Wardlaw have a 10-year lease on the club. The building came with everything it contained when it last operated about seven years ago.

Where history was made

That included a fully stocked library and the table at which deputy prime minister Jan Smuts drafted the successful September 1939 parliamentary resolution proposing that South Africa enter World War 2 on the side of Britain. The vote led to the resignation of the prime minister, JBM Hertzog, who had advocated neutrality and had failed to persuade the governor-general to call a general election. Smuts became prime minister for the next nine years.

This table, which bears a commemorative brass plaque, dominates the Smuts Room, one of eight venues available for functions ranging from wine tastings, food pairings, business talks and quiz nights to dinners for up to 120 people in the first-floor ballroom. The Gallery restaurant above the pavement has space for about 60 diners.

Another boardroom has been named after Cecil John Rhodes, and the members’ bar no longer commemorates the contested legacy of the mining magnate and politician but that of Nelson Mandela.

The Victoria Room, formerly a lounge by the club’s main entrance, has become Victoria’s Café, tempting passing tourists and Capetonians keen to experience the old-world atmosphere and lavish interior.

The café, its adjoining lounge, the library, the spectacular double-volume entrance hall and eight bedrooms are among the areas that have been returned to their former glory. Not far behind is the basement, which will shortly make its debut as a jazz lounge. Singer Zakes Bantwini has agreed to endorse the lounge, where he will be a regular performer, and a club bedroom named after him will be his home away from home in Cape Town.

Negotiations are under way to name the jazz lounge after a legendary South African singer, and James Findlay, who runs an antiquarian map and bookshop from the basement of the Rand Club, has opened an outpost at the Cape Town Club.

After launch events in late November that attracted hundreds of people, the quietly spoken but passionate Thurston says membership is growing steadily, and he says his experience at the Rand Club makes him optimistic about the club’s prospects. “During my time in Joburg we saw membership grow from 220 to about 650, and black membership from 1%-2% of the total to 20%-30%,” he says. “There’s clearly an appetite for what we’re offering.”

Things are changing

But the days when private clubs can survive on membership fees alone are long gone, he says, pointing out that the closure of the previous Cape Town Club was foreshadowed by bickering among members and newspaper articles about “financial ruin”.

“We’re running the operations side as a company because that’s the only way to make the club sustainable,” says Thurston. “We’ll still have committees but management will take many of the key decisions.”

The club has launched with only 12 staff, and Thurston says the evolution of its offerings and personnel will be guided by members. “The Rand Club taught me that there’s been a change in social behaviours and if clubs want to survive they have to respond,” he says. That’s why the dress code will simply be “business casual” and interpretations of what it means will be made by him — a man who often wears jeans to work — not the custodian of a dusty rule book or a hidebound subcommittee.

“We want the club to be a place members can see as theirs,” he says. “It will be a little bit exclusive but still affordable, its diversity will make it more approachable, and it will be a place where people won’t be ostracised for who or what they are.”

After succeeding at the Rand Club, in a Joburg city centre notorious for crime, grime and potholes, Thurston says he is delighted by the environment in Queen Victoria Street.

“It’s clean, it’s safe, and while it’s not as busy as Long Street or Bree Street, it’s very accessible and you can nearly always find parking,” he says. Talks are under way to reopen a sealed back entrance to the Western Cape High Court next door, which will mean almost direct access to the club for judges and lawyers, and once the neighbouring apartment block is built club members will be able to use its pool and gym.

Tamra Capstick-Dale, the MD of communications agency Corporate Image, is one of the former members who has already signed up. “I belonged to the club for about 15 years, my late husband Kerry was a former chair, and it was a key part of our professional and social lives,” she says.

“The club’s absence was keenly felt in Cape Town’s business circles and its reopening is yet another sign of the vibrant revival of the city centre, which is growing in importance as a national and international business hub. This is thanks in no small part to the performance of the Central City Improvement District and a strongly supportive mayor and city council.”

As editor Scott pointed out a decade ago, the club is “a wonderful venue for serious fun” — and you don’t even have to be legless … or trouserless.