A brief history of Cape Town Toastmasters Club

by Nick Wilkins and Craig Strachan

When he arrived in Cape Town in 1984, Taffy Roberts was told he was crazy to want to start a new Toastmasters club – there were already too many in the Peninsula area (five at that time – today there are more than 20). Undaunted, Taffy and Martin Louw chartered the club as IMM Toastmasters, due to the involvement of several of its members with the Institute of Marketing Management. A business focus is strongly evident in the occupations of the Club’s early presidents, who apart from Taffy Roberts, Martin Louw and Peter Zellerhoff, included Ray Murray (a director of Pick ’n Pay), Mel Erasmus (now manager of Rondebosch Pick ’n Pay), Ian Scott and Kevin van den Bergh (both active in the furniture trade), Avril Trollop (sportswear designer), Geoff Morgan (owner of Cape Cookies), and John Cross (documentation storage maestro). And the IMM Toastmasters family carried on growing - several other satellite clubs were founded by members, including Winelands and The Republic of Hout Bay.

Today the Club’s association with the Institute of Marketing Management is long defunct, so the Club recently changed its name to Cape Town Toastmasters. But the keen dedication, commitment to excellence and famous (if not notorious) sense of humour of its members remain the same. For example, one of the club’s members once gave a talk comparing the giving of a speech to the making of a hamburger, using a cooking demonstration with a methylated spirits burner as a prop. Unfortunately he managed to set the bottle of meths alight in the process, and with quick thinking tried to kick the burning bottle outside through an open doorway. The result was a club carpet on fire in several places. One of the patches of burnt carpet was preserved by club members as an annual trophy – the Lloyd Purdy Burnt Carpet Award for Original and Creative Public Speaking. Who says public speaking can’t be fun?

back to articles