Located at Cnr Access Road and, Golf Course Rd, Mowbray, Cape Town, South Africa is the Cape Town Rondebosch Golf Club (RGC). Widely known as “Cape Town’s Golf Course of Choice” the 18 hole, par 72, 6,805-yard championship course is situated only ten minutes from Cape Town’s popular City Center. It beholds magnificent views of Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain and is a popular choice for local and international visitors.
Establishment in 1911 the membership-only course offers a warm and friendly environment. Some tight driving holes, compounded by undulating fairways and the ever-present threat of strong winds provide some interesting play. There is a well-stocked pro shop, bar and bistro with terrific food and beverage offerings superb value. The upstairs deck is perfect for enjoying beer and pizza and colorful sunsets. The parkland-type course maintains its excellent condition all year round with the oversight of its skilled management team and staff.
In October 2019, Kathryn Magett McManus of Raleigh, NC, traveled to Cape Town, South Africa on a group excursion with African American Golfer’s Digest, “I enjoyed playing at Rondebosch,” she recalled. “After a slow start, I had a great time. The country was beautiful, with so many wonderful views! And, I got my first birdie on this course!”
Kathryn Magett McManus at Rondeborch Golf Course gets her first hole-in-one.
But this course has a dark side and has been the center of recent protests. Engaged in a heated controversy between local community activists and city governments the debate surrounds its upcoming 10-year land lease extension. Objectors are calling for redeveloping the public property into affordable housing to serve some of the city’s 119,000 low-income residents of its 4.6 million population, according to the Cape News. In early 2020, protesters gathered on the land, accusing the course of “subsidizing the wealthy elite” and citing historical references of racism at the course and highlighting the support RGC received during apartheid in the 1950s.
“The renewal of this lease of City land in 2020 blatantly ignores a history of forced removals and actively legitimizes, rewards and further entrenches colonial land dispossession and racist segregation. It is for these reasons that we object to the renewal of the lease of 113 acres of land to the Rondebosch Golf Club,” the opposition said to Cape News. The Rondebosch Golf Course fell within an area that was declared “for whites only” in 1966. Between 1960 and 1983 an estimated 3.5-million people were relocated under Group Areas and Separate Development Legislation, according to the Surplus People’s Project in 1985. The social catastrophe of these forced removals devastated the Black River community in what is now Rondebosch.
Bird’s eye view of Rodebosch GC
The Black River community of 300 families lived south of the golf course from the old Duinefontein and Klipfontein roads towards Park Road in Rondebosch. Its eastern boundary was Strathallan Road and its western boundary was not far from the Rondebosch Common starting at Borden Road. These families (close to 2,000 individuals) contributed to the economy of Cape Town working as teachers, shopkeepers, painters, plumbers, plasterers, bricklayers, carpenters, tailors, nurses, gardeners and city council employees. All were forcibly relocated, becoming a part of a larger stream of removals, which, in 1971 totaled 27,985 families in the city as a whole. The city is seeking approval from the council to extend the RGC land lease.
