Randburg Toastmasters Club celebrated its 40-year anniversary.
The club officially came into existence on 15 September 1973, when it received its charter document from the world headquarters of Toastmasters International in Santa Ana, California.
Ken Lord, who is associated with the South African Guide Dogs Association for the Blind, formed the club together with a number of members of the Old Edwardians Toastmasters Club, which had membership problems at the time. In that period Lord was in his second year as president of the club, which was open only to past pupils of King Edward School. As a result of this restriction, membership had dropped to about eight with an attendance of three or four people at meetings. Therefore Lord, as he puts it, “unilaterally decided to allow outsiders to join”. This caused difficulties constitutionally that resulted in Lord and others who lived in Randburg deciding to form a new club.
They found a venue, the Randburg Club in Hendrik Verwoerd Drive (now Bram Fischer Drive), which was a social, drinking, darts and snooker club. They then set about trying to get the required 20 members which they managed to do fairly quickly. At one stage almost half the membership comprised of staff of South African Associated Newspapers (now Times Media Limited) thanks to the efforts of the late Ian Good, a past-president of the club.
Randburg has been known for its excellent standard of speaking and many members have won competitions at area and division level with John Boshell, winning the District 74 competition and then competing with acclaim in the section finals in America.
In 1977 Peter Maxwell, a founder member and twice president of the club, was appointed National Chairman of the South African Toastmasters Council, which involved travelling to all the major centres of the country to address Toastmasters functions.
This early history of the club leaves the narrative a long way short of the present day. Subsequent notable events and achievements have included:
•Boshell winning the District 74 Best Prepared Speech, and competing in the USA at international level.
•Maggie Northam progressing through the various levels of District 74 to become the District Governor of D74.
Details: Randburg Toastmasters Club 011 4659554.
