Southern African Hotels

Quote from Steve on June 23, 2025, 1:13 pm

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Circa 1960. 'Rhodesia By-The-Sea` Hotel, Simonstown. (Photo. Springbok Studios).

Hotels have had a huge influence on my life as a boy growing up in South Africa. As a child just sentient I was taken to a hotel in Somerset West where we sat outside on a raised terrace, a first for me. The air was warm and infused with the smell of the surrounding countryside's rich earth. Here I saw balls of butter scooped off a block for the first time. That moment lingers still.

One summer my Rhodesian cousins and their parents visited us in Pineland and invited us to lunch at 'Rhodesia By-The-Sea' in Simonstown. I was young and callow. The place took my breath away. I was transported to an imaginary Africa. A spiral staircase decorated with flame lilies ascended from the foyer to the heavens one floor above.  It was exotic and enchanting, a cunningly crafted illusion, 'The African Queen' transporting 'Sammy going South'. Whatever it was it defined central African chic to me. In that overwhelmingly cool moment I wanted more than anything to live in Rhodesia. Fortunately my father did not!

The postcard shows Rhodesia by the Sea in the 1960s. Looking at this postcard it is difficult to understand just what it impressed me so much back then. The floor with large windows and pillars is the upstairs dining hall. The roof supposedly represents the sports deck of a ship. This building has many quality features as it was originally built for Royal Navy officers and their families stationed in Simonstown. The protruding section of this building has been demolished and the flats sold off to private buyers. My Rhodesian cousin bought a flat as a holiday home in 2000. He sold it before emigrating to Australia having correctly predicted the paralysing rot that the ANC  and their cronies would inflict on the economy with their ideological delusions of liberation and black empowerment.

1963. 'Sammy Going South' was retitled 'A Boy Ten Feet Tall'.
After Sammy's parents are killed in Egypyt in 1956 he flees overland to an aunt in South Africa.
Chorus: 'Sammy going south, keep a going south till you reach the Land of Happiness.'
This did not chime well with the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
At the time I thought it a cracking movie despite Sammy wearing socks with sandals!

Hotels hold a special place in the hearts of many South Africans who did not spend their holidays camping. The most important hotel in my development was the unpretentious Farmhouse Hotel in Ceres which was owned by my two Afrikaans aunts, Tilla Conradie and Anne Nel. I have wonderful memories of growing up in that gracious old-style South African hotel. Indeed its huge copper kettle is still in my possession. I spent most of my summer school holidays in its swimming pool. As my parents were not paricularly well-off and my father was not a spendthrift we only visited a restaurant once a year and never stayed in a hotel that was not the Farm House. Those happy days in my aunts' hotel were ended by the earthquake of 29 September 1969 which struck Tulbagh, Wolseley and Ceres, even shattering plate glass windows in central Cape Town 80 miles away. By this time I was beginning to frequent the Coral Lounge in the Grand Hotel on Saturday mornings in central Cape Town, the Metropol Hotel on Long Street less so. Both these hotels had balconies which overlooked teeming streets from which you could watch Cape Town's beautiful people pass by. I also watched recorded English football at the White House Hotel on Strand Street on Tuesday nights. It had a seedy reputation. A drop-out friend of mine who drove a taxi and told hair-raising tales of Cape Town's night life called it the 'Whore House' but I never saw any of that!

So, my memories are the spur to this thread, one made possible by the tens of 1000s of overseas visitors who came to 'Sunny South Africa' and left us a trove of their postcards telling family and friends how wonderful the country and the experience was! Being the political prick that I am I usually search their PCs for references to Apartheid. Sadly, most tourists were seduced by the sunshine, the abundant food and the friendliness of the South Africans they met. If they they thought much about it they kept it to themselves.

I thought I would start with this cover  to Scotland showing the Marine Hotel in Durban in 1913. Having never spent a night in Natal I am unfamiliar with this hotel which was demolished in 1972. It was popular with overseas visitors and rich Transvalers, not the "Agh, pleez Daddy won't you take us down to Durban" southern suburbs okes. In its seventy year history, the Marine Hotel came to dominate Durban's Victoria embankment, the seafront promenade. This beautiful building was a long-standing Victorian and Edwardian structure that was to Durban what the Mount Nelson was to Cape Town. Many eminent people, including royalty, stayed there. Ultimately it was overtaken by modern developments and swamped by Durban's high-rise architecture. It had served the purposes of a bygone age and its day had come, as has much of our once wonderful eurocentric inner city architecture.

1913. Printed cover Grand Hotel Durban. DURBAN '4 MAY 13' to SCOTLAND.

This printed cover, an item of Marine Hotel stationery, was posted in Durban on '4 MAY 13'. As such it is an example of 'Interprovincial' use ie. a stamp of one colony or state used in another, in this case a Transvaal stamp used in Natal after Union and before the King's Head defintives of 1st September 1913. Previously, it was said that this period ran from 19th August 1910 to the 31st August 1913 when the first twelve stamps of the King’s Head definitives issue bought the Interprovincials to an end. However, as no covers have been found taxed between 1st June 1910 and 18th August 1912 for using colonial stamps outside of their province of origin, it appears that the Interprovincial period began on 1st June 1910. Further, the stamps of the Orange River Colony, Transvaal, Cape and Natal, (except those that had been demonetized), were valid in the Union from 31st May 1910 to 31st December 1937.

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