Johannesburg

There was no city here before 1886. Gold was found that year on the farm Langlaagte on the Witwatersrand ridge, and within a decade a mining camp in the South African Republic had become the largest town in South Africa, its grid of narrow stands laid out for a settlement nobody expected to last. The gold lay in a deep, hard reef that needed capital and machinery, so mining houses formed quickly, drawing migrant labour from across the subcontinent into compounds beside the shafts and bringing the tensions that helped cause the South African War of 1899–1902.

Segregation was written into the city from early on, and hardened after 1948. Sophiatown, a freehold suburb where Black residents owned property, was demolished in the 1950s and its people moved to the South Western Townships, Soweto. The mines pushed south and west, leaving yellow tailings dumps along the old reef. Resistance grew in the same streets: the Treason Trial, the Rivonia arrests of 1963 at a farmhouse in the northern suburbs, and, on 16 June 1976, the shooting of schoolchildren protesting in Soweto against compulsory teaching in Afrikaans, which set off a nationwide revolt.

After 1990 the inner city changed fast. Companies moved north to Sandton, older office blocks filled with residents from across Africa, and parts of the centre fell into disrepair. Since the 2000s the Constitutional Court has occupied a former prison on Constitution Hill, the Apartheid Museum has opened, the Gautrain has been built, and neighbourhoods such as Maboneng and Braamfontein have been reworked — while the city's basic problems of services, policing and inequality remain unresolved.

Johannesburg is the country's cultural engine, and its inventions travel. Kwaito, the slowed-down house music of the 1990s, came out of Soweto and its sound systems; amapiano, with its log-drum bass, spread from Gauteng's townships to the world in the early 2020s; and before both, the marabi and jazz of Sophiatown produced musicians who became famous in exile, a tradition the city's Joy of Jazz festival has carried onto its stages. Dance styles, slang and fashion still move outwards from the same places.

The city is intensely mixed. People from every South African province and from across the continent live here, and residents switch languages within a sentence, blending them in tsotsitaal. That mixture shows in its food, its huge independent churches, its street trade and its art scene, which runs from the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the university museums to commercial galleries and studios in Braamfontein, Maboneng and the northern suburbs.

Football is the city's game. Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, both Soweto clubs, contest the country's biggest derby, while rugby fills Ellis Park, where the 1995 World Cup was won. Johannesburgers are direct, fast-moving and entrepreneurial, proud of a city made by newcomers, and quick to warn a visitor about where not to go — advice worth taking, and usually followed by an offer of a lift.

About 4.8 million people live in the City of Johannesburg, and around 15 million in Gauteng, the small province it anchors with Pretoria and Ekurhuleni. Soweto alone holds well over a million. The pattern of settlement still follows the apartheid map: wealthy northern suburbs behind walls and electric fences, townships to the south and east, and informal settlements on open land, with long commutes between them.

The economy is the country's largest — the stock exchange and the banks in Sandton, mining head offices, insurance, retail, media and manufacturing on the East Rand — and a vast informal economy of street traders, minibus taxis and spaza shops runs alongside it. Unemployment is high, and the gap between a professional in Sandton and a household in an informal settlement a few kilometres away is among the widest anywhere.

Days start before dawn with taxis filling at the ranks and highways clogging by six. Failing services, potholes and crime dominate local politics, and the council has changed hands repeatedly, slowing repairs to buildings and infrastructure in the inner city. The rotating blackouts known as load shedding, which disrupted life for years, last occurred in May 2025. Weekends are for shisa nyama, church, football and the parks, and for escapes to the bushveld a few hours north.

Township cooking is Johannesburg's contribution to the national table. The kota — a quarter of a white loaf hollowed out and packed with chips, polony, cheese and atchar — is the city's street food, sold across the townships. Shisa nyama, literally burn the meat, means buying meat over a butchery counter and having it grilled on the spot, eaten with pap, the stiff maize porridge, and the spiced vegetable relish chakalaka. Magwinya are deep-fried dough balls, and mogodu, tripe, is eaten with hot pap and spinach.

Immigration fills the rest of the menu. Fordsburg and Mayfair are the districts for biryani, curries and grilled meats from the communities of Indian, Pakistani and Somali descent; Yeoville is home to a pan-African community; and Portuguese and Mozambican influence gives the city its taste for peri-peri chicken. The northern suburbs have a serious restaurant scene, alongside a strong coffee and craft-beer culture in Braamfontein, Maboneng and Melville.

Old Afrikaans and settler traditions continue in biltong and droëwors, dried and spiced meat sold everywhere, in boerewors on the braai, and in milk tart and koeksisters. Weekend markets gather bakers, cheesemakers and small producers, and umqombothi, the maize and sorghum beer, is still brewed.