East Rand Italian Club
Events Organisers in Boksburg

East Rand Italian Club, in Boksburg, is a social club promoting Italian culture but is open to all!.
Lunch on a Wednesday & Sunday (booking essential) 3 course meal or just a plate of superb Pasta.
We also have Bocce (Italian bowls) 9am on a Sunday - novices very welcome!.
plus a bar available.
Ideal venue (1 main hall seating 150 people with space for dancing & 2 smaller halls). 5 aside soccer (run separately). Catering.
Weddings, Corporate Events, Conference & Training Venue with Function coordination services.

Our Kids play area in the garden keeps our young guests fully entertained. All meals are freshly prepared and therefore bookings are essential. Our bocce (Italian bowls) courts offer a different form of sport for all ages. Imagine a game almost anyone can play that combines the best of skee-ball, bowling, and shuffleboard. The club was founded in 1965, with the first beginnings actually arising because a group of the Italians had formed a choir and needed a place to sing. With the choir the rest of the Italians in the Benoni and surrounding area wanted a place to meet their fellow Italians. The building belonged to Del Re and as he had moved his business, Reef Chemicals, to Durban had agreed to allow the Italians to use the building as a club. There at the bottom end of Benoni, the club was formed and stayed in the building for around the first 2 years. The club was rudimentary but the ladies did what they could and made food at times, and it was a place to play cards, chat in their own language and in general meet with friends. After about 2 years, the club moved to next to the Dunswart Hotrod track. The premises was bigger in order to accommodate dances and the growing membership. But there was also the idea to purchase a property in order to settle the Club in a permanent home. The municipality offered the East Rand Italian Club the land adjacent to the rubbish dump in Benoni but it was not accepted because of the dump itself. 74 Middle Road, Bartlett became home for the club in 1978 and started with only a little house. The first president of the club was Giuseppe Salomone who came down to South Africa in 1954 to work in the mines along with Guglielmo Triani, Gabolone, Di Vitorio and others. Most Italians came to South Africa work in Italy was scarce and it was a choice of sugar plantations in Australia, building railway in Brazil or the mines in South Africa. In modern times air travel makes it easy to jump on a plane and travel the world but back in those days travel was not as abundant, and in some cases it took 3 days of flying not much higher than the tree tops to get to South Africa. One can only imagine the homesickness, the cultural change and the work environment the Italians found themselves in. One would suspect these values made the formation of the Italian Club so important in their lives, and therefore important today, to ensure those values are not lost. The initial group of miners started the Mine School in 1954 at State Mines in Springs and this initial group paved the way for other Italians to come to South Africa to work in the mines. He raced off that day to get married, with Giuseppe Salomone as his best man, and was happily married for 50 years before his beloved wife passed away in the same year as their 50th wedding anniversary. The club has different memories for different people but the importance is that those memories should be cherished and are part of the culture and value system of the club itself. May the traditions, culture and values be remembered. These are the building blocks on which we stand so that we can look forward and see from a higher step what the future actually holds.