Mutual Building, Cape Town

The Mutual Building, the former headquarters of the Old Mutual company in Cape Town, is a huge skyscraper in downtown Cape Town. Dating from 1939, it was designed by F M Glennie and Louw & Louw.

The building features many decorative features including elephants and baboons heads on the upper levels and an amazing frieze around the whole building just above street level showing the history of the colonisation of South Africa. The interior is also richly decorated.

Today though, I want to concentrate on the series of nine reliefs on the side of the building depicting the black tribal groups of southern Africa.

The carvings are exquisite and have been executed in great detail.

Each one is named although several are somewhat out of date.

If you want to know more about the peoples of southern Africa, particularily the black tribal groups, the South African Tourism website has an excellent write-up.

The tribal groups shown from left to right are :-

Xosa

Pedi

Masai

Matabele

Basuto

Barotse

Kikuyu

Zulu

Bushman