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Royal Cape Golf Club is Africa’s oldest championship golf course which was founded in 1885. Although it’s difficult to celebrate the tradition since the club’s past is blighted by exclusion. But like the best stories, this one ends happily, with emancipation.

Because this club has evolved into the institutional incarnation of the Springboks, and Cape Town’s most effortlessly diverse sports club, provided you can afford the membership fees, of course, and you don’t subscribe to an overtly woke definition of diversity. This is, after all, a golf club.

I played in the Lexus Wednesday Competition at Royal Cape this week. This is a neat collaboration. Since like Royal Cape, Lexus’s are sheathed in a luxurious exterior while underneath, they have the solid working reliability of a Toyota.

The club’s logo encapsulates the genius of a colonial design machine which was cunningly engineered to market the imperialist lie. Two niblicks are crossed inside an oval surrounded by a Royal Blue belt edged in gold with a crown perched above it. The words ‘Far’ and ‘Sure’ appear on either side of the niblicks and double as the club’s motto. I haven’t seen anything more aspirational. Unfortunately, my own golf displays neither characteristic.

I was pleased to read that the Royal designation was granted by a proper King like George V rather than his effete son, the Nazi-sympathising, abdicating, Edward VIII, who like the equally disappointing Prince Andrew, spent much of his trying life on a golf course.

The putting green is a cornucopia of activity at noon on a Wednesday. Dr Reddy and white-haired, octogenarian Mafia members crouch over four footers, like herons in a pond. One hopes they weren’t discussing business. Dr Reddy is a gynaecologist. Gary Player completed his thousandth sit-up in the background before manically unleashing a series of roundhouse kicks. Or perhaps that was a mirage. I have been experimenting with micro dosing so I can’t be sure.

The clubhouse has the look of a tasteful Bishops Court mansion. A grey slate roof above a wide veranda, lined with columns, is perfect for a post-round gin and tonic or a pint of fresh Windhoek lager. A simple clock is set into the roof to remind members of their obligations towards punctuality. The veranda is adjacent to the putting green and the first tee, providing drinkers the opportunity to trash talk nervous starters being chivvied along by the starters, Simon, or Griffiths. It also allows smokers the opportunity to asphyxiate themselves in designated areas while the rest of us look on, disapprovingly and from a safe distance.

The bar and adjoining dining room are tastefully decorated and lined with honours boards and trophy cabinets. The service from Mark and Nolene is understated and consistently outstanding. Sepia photos of stern ex-members and champions adorn the walls, their uniform waspiness in stark contrast to today’s field.

The members today have the look of authentic people with balance. Victor Frankel would have purred about their palpable purpose in his clipped Eastern European accent. There are the stereotypical doctors and lawyers taking a midweek break from the rigours of professionalism, but they are well mixed with artisans, trustafarians and entrepreneurs. Even some who have apprenticed.

Accountants are rare, predictably preferring the monotony of cycling or Padel. The asset managers are at Steenberg spending their share of our pensions. I have never been seized upon by an officious babyboomer here for inadvertently wearing my cap inside the bar. From of the cast of the film, ‘Caddyshack,’ the characters played by Rodney Dangerfield and Chevvy Chase would fit in comfortably, and I am sure they would find a spot for Bill Murray on the greenkeeping staff.

The change rooms are comfortable without having personalized teak lockers, a shag pile carpet, a masseuse or a sauna. Jimmy cleans golf shoes unobtrusively and meticulously in his office in the corner. One doesn’t overhear ego maniacs shouting at each other about stocks or their current NAV in dollars in the showers or endure creepy show’ers wandering around stark naked, unnecessarily.

The course is adaptable enough to have challenged professionals in five South African Opens while being manageable for amateurs with a modicum of ability. Golf is best avoided for those who are not able to hit a barn door with a banjo. Naturally, the difficulty of the course is directly correlated to the strength of the ubiquitous south easter. The greens are consistently excellent and the views of the mountain, are spectacular.

Royal Cape is the opposite of its arriviste and constantly remodelled, smug younger sister in Tokai, over the road from Pollsmoor. There is something about the Stepford Wives perfection of Steenberg’s clipped hedges and dyed hairdos which steers me towards mistrust. It reeks of unregulated capitalism. Neither does it feel like a local club, or a community. And I prefer not to play golf with noch schleppers who dress in unfeasibly tight, white Scandinavian golf slacks. Donald Trump would play here if he lived in Cape Town.

There are many stories about Steenberg. I suspect they are rooted in misplaced jealousy. But if half were true, the vibration of all the orgies would have collapsed the Steenberg Mountain.

After golf on Wednesdays, a wide range of members and their guests sit around long dining room tables, lined with loyalty, sipping wine sponsored by wine farms like Thelema, Zewenwacht and Hermanuspietersfontein, discussing their games, while awaiting the formalities. This is the antithesis of the institution which refused the Ackerman’s membership on account of their religious beliefs, forcing them to build their own course at Clovelly. Or the institution that denied its neighbours across the fence membership based on race.

Like the Springboks post-2017, this feels like the best of us in South Africa, a team revelling in its diversity and using its differences as a strength. Nelson Mandela will be smiling down from his cloud up above, revelling in the redemption of these prodigal sons.