Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS
The traffic on Jan Smuts Avenue is crawling at a snail’s pace on Friday morning. Oxford Road is no better. So what else is new?
To the traffic chaos on its doorstep, the Park Hyatt hotel at the corner of Oxford and Biermann Avenue in Rosebank presents an inscrutable face of brick that the tiny squares of windows do nothing to open up.
Beyond the drawbridge-like portico, however, a certain energy pulses inside the hotel. Guests enjoy tea and continental breakfast in the lounge. One of the conspicuous groups in the lounge is from Guerlain cosmetics. Presently they are joined by Leigh Tosselli, Elle magazine’s beauty editor. She will depart an hour later with a paper bag full of freebies, just as will a procession of beauty editors from other women’s magazines.
But the lounge is not the most interesting part of the Hyatt at this time of day. For a hint of what’s cooking in the business world, and who is making deals with whom, bear left and go inside the Hyatt’s signature restaurant, No 191.
In this room, with its steel beams and more relentless face brick, many a seed of the deals that are constantly being lauded are planted here. Just check the members of the new black elite sprinkled around the room.
There is Mzi Khumalo, looking not the least bit worse for wear after his bruising time at the helm of Johannesburg Consolidated Investments. Everyone else in his party of six is white.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s economic advisor Moss Ngoasheng joins Vulindlela Cuba, the executive chair of Safika, a black-owned investment consortium, and another. In no time at all, they are having what looks to be a meaningful conversation. There is hardly any cheer at this table. A pity, for both Ngoasheng and Cuba have really fantastic smiles.
The Thebe stable is represented by Litha Nyhonyha – head of its merchant banking division, Msele – at a table with another visitor, while Kaya FM radio station manager Pat Dambe is having a good time with David Selvin, a member of Thebe’s legal team.
These two have been inseparable in the past two years as they pursued first a radio licence successfully, and just recently failed to secure a television licence for Station for the Nation. Thebe’s chair Vusi Khanyile prefers the Rosebank hotel and The Michelangelo.
Ensconced at a window table is Minister of Post, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Jay Naidoo, his media liaison officer Mandy-Jean Woods, and the editor and two journalists from a Johannesburg-based newspaper.
At the table next to Naidoo’s is a gathering of a dozen people, mostly white, who must be celebrating some feat with several bottles of sparkling wine. Maybe they are not as highbrow as the rest of the patrons. From the restaurant’s impressive wine cellar the group’s choice is JC le Roux Le Domaine!
Just as that grand dame of South African hotels The Carlton has given up the ghost, a flock of new hotels, in Rosebank and Sandton, the new centres of Johannesburg, has picked up the mantle.
The Carlton, with its old-fashioned elegance of gilt, dark woods and chandeliers, was very much at home on Main Street, a few hops east of the headquarters of the owners, Anglo American. It was a very potent symbol of old South Africa’s wealth.
The hotels of the new South Africa, as represented by the Westcliff, The Michelangelo, the Sandton Hilton and of course Park Hyatt, speak a different language.
Glass makes up the wall in the Hyatt’s lounge overlooking the central sanctuary. Light is reflected in the whole reception area, which echoes the underlying theme of the hotel, the look and feel of Africa. Bronze and copper, black and ochre, in abstract representations, are a perfect background for the new South African establishment, many of whose roots are not gold but political activism. But they have proven to be quick studies and do business very much like their predecessors. They play a lot of golf, and meet clients over breakfast.
“The brain is awake at that time,” laughs Pat Dambe.
But seriously, “It’s the one hour of the day that I have the luxury of taking care of business without the interruptions that begin the minute I get to work at 8.30am,”she says.
“Lunch is too tight. Most people have to drive from somewhere, and get back. You hardly have time to relax before 45 minutes is over and you have to drive back to make a 2.30 appointment.
“If I start my breakfast meeting early enough, I find that I manage to drag a 24-hour day into a 28-hour one.”
At one time the place to have these power breakfasts was Sandton Sun, says Dambe. Right now, it is the Park Hyatt.
“Everyone who is anyone has breakfast here,” confirms Heidi Ellis, No 191’s manager. “Top business executives in Johannesburg, even Pretoria, come here for breakfast.”
This has been so since the hotel opened at the end of 1995, but more evident in the last year. The restaurant has a lovely, relaxed atmosphere, says Ellis. The buffet style allows patrons to set their own pace and order when ready.
“The tables are not on top of one another. Patrons are assured that their discussions are confidential and won’t be overheard. The important people come, and they attract others. Word of mouth, you know.”
The location is very convenient, says Connie Molusi, the general manager for support functions in the Department of Communications, and from Naidoo through Director General Andile Ngcaba, the Hyatt is popular with this department.
“[Naidoo] lives three blocks away from the Hyatt” explains Molusi. “He can take care of Johannesburg commitments over breakfast before driving to the office in Pretoria.
“Often I set up a series of meetings from 6.30am until 9.30am, each one taking about 45 minutes to an hour,” he adds.
So, that can only happen at the Hyatt?
“Well, I can mention that the service is good,” says Molusi. “Another good thing, it is very easy to get a meeting room here. You can call them anytime and they will get one ready for you. That’s very convenient when meeting people who come from outside the country, because many stay here anyway.”
And the food?
“I cannot tell you about the food,” laughs Molusi. “My diet only allows two pieces of cheese and a yoghurt.” Indeed he is a shadow of his former self.
Dambe, who is a vegetarian, can only vouch for the muesli cereal and toast.
“You’re obviously not there for the food,” she laughs. “You know who serves the best breakfast? It’s the Rosebank hotel. I have recently discovered The Grace – quite good. But they can take down those portraits of colonial men. I find them insulting. And the Hilton does a very nice brunch at the weekend.
“But for a power meeting – that is if you are trying to impress your client – then it has to be the Hyatt.”
The Hyatt is so popular most people make reservations to book a table.
It’s another Friday morning, and there is presidential spokesperson Parks Mankahlana having tea with a couple of Coca-Cola bigwigs in the lounge. Could this be where the answer lies to the question: “What is Parks going to do when President Mandela steps down?”
Vulindlela Cuba is present again. So is Tommy Olifant, who is soon joined by Moss Leoka. Now that the television licence race is over, these bigshots from New Channel TV and Community Television Network are up to something.
Yusuf Asmal, he of beauty pageants, is with a Middle Eastern-looking man. When are they going to eat or talk? As soon as one gets off the cellular phone, the other picks his up. At some stage they are both speaking on their cellular phones.
Also in evidence are some real foreigners who must be guests at the hotel. Like the African American-looking beefcake – wearing army fatigue pants and a vest. In this autumn weather! His partner has a similar build but is wearing a shirt, and a smile for the sistahs as he passes their table on his way to the buffet.
Melons, fruit salad, stewed fruit, cereals, yoghurt and cheese surround a wonderful floral arrangement in a giant flower pot. On the hot table are eggs, potatoes, stir-fried vegetables, steak, bacon, mushrooms, sausages and grilled tomatoes with pesto, which are just yum.
The continental breakfast costs R39, and the hot breakfast R54.
It’s priced just right, insists Heidi Ellis. “If we charged R18 we would attract the wrong kind of person, don’t you think?”
The waiter brings the coffee and the bill. It is the rule that patrons get bills as soon as possible, he says. It turns out that once the deal is made, or not, these captains of industry, these well-to-do people, often just get up and go after gorging themselves, without bothering to pay. Must be absentmindedness.