History
The Bantu Men's Social Centre was started by Rev. Ray E. Phillips (1889-1967) of the American Board Mission in central Johannesburg for recreational activities by black South Africans. Phillips was a Congregational minister who in 1918 came to South Africa from the United States with Dora, his wife (1892-1967). During the forty years that the Phillipses spent in South Africa, Ray helped found a number of organizations to assist black South Africans, or to foster racial co-operation. Firmly opposed to segregation, Phillips was involved in the founding of the South African Institute for Race Relations (1929), the Johannesburg Coordinating Council for Non-European Welfare Organization, and the Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work (1941), of which he was the director. The Hofmeyr School provided training for black social workers, among whom Winnie Madikizela, before her marriage to Nelson Mandela. Political activists like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu (1912-2003) were members of the Bantu Men's Social Centre, and the African National Congress's Youth League was started on its premises in 1944.
The Social Centre was located at 1 Eloff Street at the edge of Johannesburg's central business district, among car dealerships and cheap food stores. Apart from a gymnasium, the Social Centre building featured a stage. Next door was Dorkay House, a former clothing factory and eventual home to the South African Union of Artists (later known as Union Artists).
From the 1920s Richard Victor Selope Thema served as superintendent of the Social Centre, resigning in 1932 when he was appointed editor of The Bantu World. The patrons of the Men's Social Centre included Howard Pim, after whom the Soweto suburb of Pimville was named. Pim was also involved in the Institute of Race Relations, the Bantu Sports Club, the Bridgeman Memorial Hospital (now the Garden City Clinic, Mayfair), and the South African Native College (University of Fort Hare) in Alice, in the Eastern Cape. J.R. Rathebe, the first full-time secretary of the Bantu Men's Social Centre, paid tribute to Pim at his funeral in 1934. Prior to Rathebe's appointment in 1932, the Social Centre's management committee was white (Cobley 1997:137-40).
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