To Jan van Riebeeck goes the credit for having made the first attempt to provide services like taverns for the traveling public in South Africa. Barely two years after the establishment of the settlement at Table Bay, in 1654, he submitted for the consideration of Geraert Hulst, Director-General of the Dutch East India Company, whose ship Parel was lying in the bay, a request that he (Van Riebeeck) provide, for those visitors for whom facilities could not be furnished at the Fort, ‘a boardinghouse (ordinaris), the keeper to be supplied from the Company’s stores and gardens .
Within another two years the Council of Policy, presided over by Van Riebeeck himself, approved a request from ‘the housewife Annetje de Boerin, wife of the Company’s gardener, Hendrick Boom, on account of her eight children, to take out the family income by opening an inn for the feeding and accommodation of men going and coming in passing ships’. The principal condition attached was that she must buy all her liquor from the Company’s own store – the first instance in South Africa of what is today called a ‘tied house’.
On 20 Sept. 1656 Annetje’s establishment met with its first competition when Jannetje Boddijs, of Doesburg, wife of the garrison sergeant, was permitted to open another tavern on similar terms. A fine was to be imposed on any member of the community who, during his working hours, indulged in ‘debauches’. From that date the liquor trade has played a major part in the South African hotel industry.
On a visit to the Cape in Oct. 1657, the Commissioner Rijckloff van Goens sr. confirmed the grant of an innkeeper’s licence to Sergeant Jan van Harwarden, to whom was allocated `part of an old sheepfold’ at the Fort as accommodation for travellers. From then on, the number of inns increased, most of them being of a primitive type. Among them may be mentioned De Gouden Anker, De Witte Swaen, De Laatste Penning.
As a rule the lodgers were sailors or soldiers whose demands were modest and who expected shelter for a few slivers a night. Drunkenness and violence were so frequent that the more law-abiding and prosperous strangers, unwilling to use these facilities, usually found lodging in private homes. Not only were the standards higher there, but a steady increase in the demand frequently led to the conversion of such homes into boardinghouses. Describing conditions during the 1730’s, O. F. Mentzel wrote: ‘Board and lodging can be obtained at these small hostelries for 34 slivers a day; wine is extra, unless it is supplied as part of the meal . . . What has been said above of humble townsmen applies even more forcibly to prominent wealthy burghers, at whose houses captains, superior officers and distinguished visitors sojourn temporarily. The charges and consequently the profits are higher, but the methods are very much the same. At these fashionable houses, board and lodging costs one rix-dollar per diem, with the style of accommodation and the quality of the table of a high standard. Here again extras make the bill mount up.’
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the famous French novelist, visiting the Cape in 1768, describes the efforts of rival hosts to secure lodgers from passing ships by sending representatives in boats out into the roadstead. Few records survive of these early hostelries, but we know that the Abbe De la Caille patronised a boarding-house in Strand Street, the site of which is today marked by a memorial tablet. Captain James Cook, the explorer, when he visited the Cape in yes, procured quarters for himself and members of his staff with one Brand, at the rate of half-a-crown a day, `for which we were provided with victuals, drink and lodging’.
Hotels in the modern sense made their appearance at the Cape soon after the first British occupation in 1795, the earliest being the Old Thatched Tavern, facing Greenmarket Square, which, despite the disappearance of the original straw roof early in the 19th century, survived, at any rate in name, until 1970. The oldest existing hotel in South Africa seems to be the Houw Hoek Inn in the Houhoek Pass (between Sir Lowry’s Pass and Caledon), which, according to tradition, was founded about 1834.
Very well known in those days in Cape Town was the London Hotel in Hout Street, as well as Morison’s.
Hotel at No. 6 Keizersgracht (now Darling Street), established about 1800 by a Scot of that name. William Wilberforce Bird, in his ‘Notes on the Cape of Good Hope’, described his stay at Morison’s in 1820: ‘We are moderately comfortable, and at a somewhat reduced cost. The charge is six rix-dollars a day, including all expenses. The house is upon the plan of an English boarding-house. A public breakfast at nine; luncheon or tiffin, as it is called, after the Indian fashion (a most essential meal, consisting of meats hot and cold, fruits, wine, etc.) at one; dinner at half-past six. This method is usual at the Cape.’
Standards of comfort were raised with the opening in 1821 of the St. George’s Hotel at the foot of St. George’s Street, which lasted until the end of the century. Countless others followed, notably Poole’s Hotel in New Street (now Queen Victoria Street), particularly frequented by officials and parliamentarians; Widdow’s Masonic Hotel in Grave Street (now Parliament Street), the resort of Freemasons; and a number of others in the suburbs, notably the Vineyard (on the site of the present Vineyard Hotel in Newlands) and Rathfelder’s, on the way to Constantia. Several early hostelries even gave their names to suburbs, for instance, Drie Koppen, forerunner of Mowbray. Farmer Peck’s Inn at Muizenberg, opened in 1825, was one of the first seaside hotels. Renamed the Grand during the Second Anglo-Boer War, it survived into the 20th century. This had, of course, no connection with the Grand Hotel in Cape Town.
Improved amenities were to be noticed in Cape hotels during the course of the 19th century, especially after the introduction of railways had given a stimulus to travel. In 1893 the Union Steamship Company led the way by opening its own hotel in Cape Town the Grand in Strand Street repeatedly rebuilt and finally demolished in 1973. The establishment of the Grand Hotel led, six years later, to an even more ambitious undertaking by the Castle Steamship Company, headed by Sir Donald Currie, who established a first-rate hotel on the Mount Nelson estate in the Gardens. Designed by English architects and managed at first by a Swiss expert, Emil Cathrein, the Mount Nelson from the outset attracted an exclusive clientele and during the Second AngloBoer War was the unofficial headquarters of the British army and harboured prosperous refugees from the Witwatersrand (hence its nickname ‘The Helots’ Rest’).
Development of hotels in other parts of the country proceeded more slowly, but as early as 1808 there was already an inn beside the warm baths at Caledon. The arrival of the 1820 Settlers gave an impetus to English names and to such customs as the ‘ordinary’ (defined as a fixed-price meal in a public eatinghouse) in the Eastern Province. Among the earliest hotels in Port Elizabeth was the still existing Phoenix, dating back to 1840, while in Grahamstown the Cheshire Cheese (the hotel no longer exists) and similar names reminded the emigrants of the ‘Old Country’.
The Boer tradition of private hospitality inhibited the development of hotels in the republics and, although by degrees this factor receded, for a long time both Durban and Pietermaritzburg were in advance of Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Pretoria in this respect. The Plough Hotel was one of the earliest in the Natal capital, while, in honour of Prince Alfred, Durban’s leading hostelry was, in 1860, named the Royal, an appellation which persists with great frequency elsewhere.
Wayside hotels throughout South Africa were notoriously bad, primitive in their facilities and usually constructed of corrugated iron. Their condition became even more noticeable after the discovery of diamonds, and strangers arriving in Kimberley were frequently offered nothing but canvas. None the less, some of the earlier hotel-keepers there, such as Mrs. Jardine, acquired a reputation for good service and good food. Rough-and-ready were the conditions at early mining centres like Pilgrim’s Rest, Barberton and Johannesburg. In 1886, within a few months of the founding of Johannesburg, the Central Hotel opened in Commissioner Street. It was one of the first brick structures on the gold-fields. Height’s Hotel, one of the leading establishments on the Witwatersrand, dated from 1887, but was demolished some eighty years later. Another early Johannesburg hotel, the Great Britain, in the suburb named City and Suburban, was erected in 1888 and demolished in the 1960s.
Barnato and Rhodes helped to produce a revolution in hotel-keeping standards – the former by starting the enterprise which developed into the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, the latter by causing De Beers to put up a fine hotel on the outskirts of Kimberley and the Chartered Company to sponsor the Grand Hotel at Bulawayo. Equipped in 1906 by the famous London firm of blaring & Gillow at a cost of £750 000, the Carlton’s 200 rooms set an entirely new standard. In Durban, too, there were radical changes, following the opening, about 1880, of the original Beach Hotel, forerunner of the array that today lines the Marine Parade. Here the construction of the Hotel Edward in 1909 further improved the situation, helping to attract the investment of large sums in modern buildings.
Hotel development proceeded more slowly in Bloemfontein, where the first hostelries included the Vrystaat Hotel in the 18605. At Pretoria, too, the first hostelries were almost rural in their simplicity, notably L. Taylor’s Edinburgh Hotel in the seventies. Polley’s, originally the Transvaal Hotel, was for many years the premier rendezvous in the Transvaal capital. A still existing early hotel there is the Residentie. Mention must also be made of individual enterprise in unusual places, such as the Hotel Milner, opened by J. D. Logan at Matjiesfontein in 1884, which became a resort popular with many eminent travellers. After a lapse of generations, the place underwent rejuvenation in the 1970s.
In 1882 Anders Ohlsson took over the brewery of the Chevalier Jacob Letterstedt in Newlands, Cape Town; this he modernised and greatly expanded. Ever since his time large South African breweries and liquor firms have been active in the hotel-keeping field, more especially through financial support of lessees; this was the system of ‘tied houses’. Chains of hotels have been relatively few in South Africa until comparatively recent times. Here a milestone was the founding, about 11930, of African Amalgamated Hotels Ltd., owners of leading establishments in Johannesburg and coastal cities.
Attempts to improve the standards of hotel-keeping by official action go back to the beginning of the present century, but no practical steps were taken for many years. In 1936 Prof A. J. Norval, of Pretoria, prepared an authoritative survey of the situation in South Africa, published in London under the title. The tourist industry – a national and international survey. This helped to stimulate interest, but not until 1945 was the South African Tourist Corporation established, and only in 1965 was compulsory inspection and classification of hotels introduced. This is now universally enforced, being indicated by grading with varying numbers of stars (up to five) by the Hotels Board. Largely because of this, the rising numbers of well-to-do tourists, and the general influx of capital, even from the United States of America, there has been a sudden upsurge of hotel-building throughout the country. This is still in progress and in it many large companies are involved.
