Iconic Cape Town mayor and arts patron taken by COVID-19

It’s not often that one individual becomes iconic across a range of spheres, but David Bloomberg was one such person. A pioneer of the arts, a leader in law, business, and politics, and the author of seven books, he is most well-known for being the youngest mayor of the City of Cape Town. He tragically passed away on 26 October after a short battle with COVID-19.

“I last saw David in September. He was healthy and well,” says theatre veteran Percy Tucker, who knew Bloomberg for more than 60 years.

Bloomberg was born in Sea Point in 1932, and educated at Christian Brother’s College and the University of Cape Town. His father, Abe, was a leading lawyer and the mayor of Cape Town from 1945 to 1947, and his mother, Miriam, was a ballerina and ballet teacher. Bloomberg would eventually also become mayor of the Mother City and marry a ballerina, the late Toby Fine.

Len Anstey grew up with Bloomberg, and remembers playing tennis with him when they were youngsters. Anstey’s brother joined Bloomberg as a doubles partner in the Western Province Open Tennis Championships, where they were up against Springbok Davis Cup doubles pair Ian Vermaak and Eustace Fannin.

“As the game went on and it was clear what they were going to lose, my brother went up to Vermaak and said, ‘Please let us win one set, we have girlfriends and family watching in the audience’,” remembers Anstey.

Although the Springbok team didn’t grant that request, Bloomberg’s love of tennis remained. “He would watch Wimbledon every year, in the same two seats,” says his life-long friend Brian Van Rheede. “Last year, he brought back a tennis ball signed by Roger Federer for me because he knew I love Federer. That’s the kind of person he was.”

Bloomberg made his name as a lawyer in his father’s firm, Bloomberg, Baigel & Co. At the same time, he was passionate about the arts. “He created the Barn Theatre in the garden of his family’s home in Constantia, and gave Cape Town audiences access to some of the best plays ever written,” says Tucker. “He travelled around the world many times, seeing anything and everything.”

He is credited with kickstarting the careers of a number of actors and mentoring leaders of the industry, including Pieter Toerien.

“He brought out plays like Porgy and Bess and South Pacific, an incredible musical with racial undertones,” says Van Rheede. “The apartheid government tried to stop the play, but he did everything he could to allow it to run. He even showed it at theatres where people of all races could see it. He was a great activist. He never spoke about it, he just did it.”

“He did more for Cape Town than most mayors,” says Tucker. Bloomberg served on the Cape Town City Council for 20 years. He was deputy mayor for two years before holding the office of mayor from 1973 to 1975, beginning when he was only 41 years old.

“He had such vision,” says Van Rheede. “The city was going through its most difficult period of apartheid, and he was leading it through. He did so much – roads, theatre, upliftment. And he dealt with a constant backlash from the nationalist government.

“He played an integral role in the creation of what would become the Artscape Theatre. He planned the whole thing, visiting opera houses overseas to get inspiration. But when he was told that it was going to be called the Nico Malan, he fought desperately against it. He was so adamant about that name that he ever attended opening night.”

Debbie Turner, the chief executive of the Cape Town City Ballet, agrees that Bloomberg couldn’t tolerate the idea that it wouldn’t be a “theatre for all”. She shares extracts from a letter that Bloomberg wrote to her in June as the two were discussing the institution’s 50th anniversary.

“Those wishing to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the Nico Malan Centre have a choice of dates: 19 May 1971, when Sylvia was staged amidst great controversy before a whites only audience in a venue with a racial policy that excluded non-whites; or 21 February 1975, when Who Saw Him Die opened before a fully integrated audience in a theatre with a completely multiracial policy,” he wrote.

Turner says that after a chance meeting with Bloomberg shortly after she took up her post two years ago, he invited her to lunch and, in the space of an hour, offered his support for a project that enabled the ballet company to restore a Balanchine work that his first wife had performed.

“He didn’t know me, yet with incredible generosity of spirit, he offered to assist,” she says. “In the following months, he again lent his resources for another project, enabling the staging of two treasured works that an independent company could never usually afford to do.”

Bloomberg and his first wife had two children, and moved to London and then Switzerland seeking treatment when Fine became ill, but she passed away at a young age.

“David was the visionary who privatised the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra (CPO),” says Louis Heyneman, the chief executive of the CPO. “In the late sixties, when the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra became too much of a financial drain for city coffers, David’s clever footwork saved Cape Town’s orchestra.”

He also wrote an important chapter about the sixties and seventies in Heyneman’s book Century of Symphony, The Story of Cape Town’s Orchestra. “After many years abroad, he returned to Cape Town a few years ago, and joined the CPO’s advisory board,” says Heyneman.

“He loved people and life. He was a so self-effacing, a quality you don’t find much in people today,” says Van Rheede. “His generosity of human spirit was defined in the moments before they put him on a ventilator. He called everyone he loved. He was dying, but giving comfort to the living.”