/ 26 March 1999

RAND CLUB MAY LEAVE JO’BURG

ONE of the last bastions of Johannesburg’s business elite, the Rand Club, is considering joining the exodus of business to the suburbs. The club has been in Loveday Street in central Johannesburg since its founding in 1887. Since then it has been the favoured watering hole of the city’s captains of industry. However, in a letter circulated to the club’s remaining 969 members, chairman David Thompson wrote: ”The unavoidable truth is that the wholesale flight of businesses from the Johannesburg city centre to the new business hub in the northern suburbs has deprived the club of the patronage, and in a growing number of cases, the membership of many of our loyal and long-standing supporters.” Members will meet on April 14 to vote.