Travel Guide

Places To See

Six

They haven't pulled out many stops decorating this place - the generous might call it 'industrial chic' - but it stays open later than most during the week, there are some decent cocktails on show, and punters come for the vibrant, unpretentious atmosphere.

Trance Sky

The pun itself deserves a few brownie points, but the whirly decor and trance-style tunes set the pace at this lively, late-night restaurant-cum-club. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays draw the crowds, packing the dancefloor to its seams.

Roxy's

This clubbing stalwart is one of the oldest and best-known venues in Jo'burg for pop and hard rock on the weekends. It's the local clubbing multiplex, in fact, with multiple bars and dancefloors that fill up with a younger crowd of mostly university students. During the week, nights vary from comedy to theme parties to karaoke.

Cranks

Still going after almost 20 years, Cranks was one of the first Thai-Vietnamese places in Jo'burg. Among the tried-and-tested favourites is fish fillet with lemongrass (R45).

Moyo's

Oozing chi-chi African charm, this busy chain offers a wide range of contemporary African eats. Each has a stylish cigar bar and fresh, herb-packed cooking forms the backbone of the innovative menu. There's also a top-notch wine list for vinophiles. Thanks to its waterside setting, our favourite is the Zoo Lake branch.

SAB Centenary Centre

The SAB Centenary Centre delves into that other great South African pursuit: beer drinking. It unlocks the secrets of the country's brewing industries and there is a re-creation of a 1965 Soweto shebeen (unlicensed bar), which is all heavenly for appreciators of liquid amber.

Sorghum brewing is covered in the Ukhamba exhibition and there is a recreation of a 1965 Soweto shebeen (illegal drinking establishment) - all heavenly for appreciators of the amber fluid. The guided tour takes about 90 minutes.

Museum Africa

At the heart of the cultural precinct, Museum Africa is housed in the impressive old Bree St fruit market, next to the Market Theatre complex. The superb exhibition on the Treason Trials (1956-61), which featured most of the important figures in the 'new' South Africa, is a must-see for anyone looking for a better understanding of the country's more recent history.

The 'Transformations' exhibition details the evolution of Jo'burg and includes a simulated descent into one of the gold mines. The Sophiatown display is outstanding. There's also a large collection of rock art, a geological museum, a display on Gandhi's time in Jo'burg and the Bensusan Museum of Photography, which charts the history of photography and has regular exhibitions by famous South African snappers.

Gold Reef City

Gold Reef City has one foot in the past, providing a light-hearted and reasonably rip-roaring take on gold-rush Jo'burg. Ninety per cent Disneyland clone, this theme park only offers a token nod to historical authenticity, but provides ample means for filling a spare afternoon, especially if you have kids in tow.

It features scary rides, a Victorian fun fair and various reconstructions, including a bank, brewery, pub and newspaper office. Visitors can go 220m down a shaft to see a gold mine from the inside (an extra around 50), watch a gold pour and see an entertaining programme of 'gumboot' dancing, a traditional miners' choreographed dance. There are numerous places to eat and drink, plus the Gold Reef City Arts & Crafts Centre and an expensive craft/souvenir shop. There are often special programmes on the weekend, sometimes with live music performed in an open-sided amphitheatre, and fireworks. Check the entertainment section in the Star.

If you want to stay over, there's the rock-solid Protea Hotel Gold Reef City and a casino. The attached Gold Reef City Casino Hotel also has rooms.

Constitution Hill

Inspiring, impressive Constitution Hill is slowly becoming one of the city's - if not the country's - chief tourist attractions. Built within the ramparts of the Old Fort, which dates from 1892 and was once a notorious prison, the development focuses on South Africa's new Constitutional Court. Ruling on constitutional and human-rights matters, the court itself is a very real symbol of the changing South Africa.

A lekgotla (place of gathering) rising from the ashes of one of the city's most poignant apartheid-system monuments, the court hears cases in all 11 official languages.

The modern structure incorporates sections of the old prison walls, plus large windows that allow visitors to watch proceedings. Not unlike the symbolism of Sir Norman Foster's glass Reichstag dome in Berlin, it underlines the sense of transparency at the heart of the country's political ethos.

As well as gaining access to the court, visitors will also be able to take tours of the Old Fort's various sections, including the Awaiting Trial Block, which held the 156 treason triallists - led by Nelson Mandela - of 1956; the notorious Number Four section, which held black male prisoners; and the Women's Gaol, where female offenders (their offence was often simply failing to produce an identity card) were incarcerated. In addition to seeing the court, it's also possible to tour parts of the Old Fort, including the Awaiting Trial Block, which held the 156 treason trialists - led by Nelson Mandela - of 1956.

Apartheid Museum

The Apartheid Museum details South Africa's era of segregation with chilling accuracy. With plenty of attention to detail and an unsparing emphasis on the inhuman philosophy of apartheid - visitors are handed a card stating their race when they arrive and are required to enter the exhibit through their allotted gate - this remains one of South Africa's most evocative museums.

Charting the course of several South Africans through the apartheid era, the museum uses film, text, audio and live accounts to provide a colourful insight into the architecture, implementation and eventual unravelling of the apartheid system. It's an overwhelming experience; sensibly there's a garden at the exit for you to feel the value of freedom. If you are on your way to Soweto, where the excellent Hector Pieterson Museum pads out the story, this is an absolute must. It is 8km south of the city centre, just off the M1 freeway.

Soulsa

Funky décor, differing day and night menus featuring fusion South African cooking, and outdoor sofas have made Soulsa a Melville favourite among media types. Breakfast is served on weekends.

Events

A major drawcard on Jo'burg's events calendar is the massive Arts Alive Festival, held throughout September and October. Since South Africa's liberation, the arts have been going through an exciting time, with an explosion of optimism and mainstream acceptance of long-suppressed talents. A strong element in the festival is the workshops that reveal the continent's rich cultures, denigrated for so long by the Eurocentrism of the apartheid years. The festival is a particularly good time to hear excellent music, on and off the official program.

Other festivals include the Rand Easter Show at the National Exhibition Centre in April; Chinese New Year at Wemmer Pan south of the centre; the Jo'burg Jazz Festival in late September; and the annual Gay Pride March held on the last Saturday of September.

Public holidays underwent a dramatic shake-up after the 1994 elections. For example, the Day of the Vow, an Afrikaner religious holiday remembering the Voortrekker victory over the Zulus at Blood River in 1838, has become the Day of Reconciliation (16 December).The officially ignored but widely observed Soweto Day, marking the student uprisings that eventually led to liberation, is now celebrated as Youth Day (16 June). Human Rights Day is held on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre (21 March).

Pre-Departure Information

Electricity

220/230V

50Hz

Electrical Plugs

South African/Indian-style plug with two circular metal pins above a large circular grounding pin

Weather Information

Situated largely on the highveld, the big cities of Gauteng benefit from the cooling effects of altitude. Both Johannesburg and Pretoria can become baking hot in summer, but a fresh breeze can often be relied on to take the sting out of a Jo'burg January. At this time of year, cloudless days and plenty of sunshine are common. Winters can get chilly, with freezing temperatures not unknown. It has even been known for Johannesburg to occasionally get a dusting of snow. Early summer (September-October) and autumn (March-April) offer the best weather for a visit.

History and Culture

Pre-20th Centure History

The history of the region around Johannesburg is so ancient that it stretches the boundaries of evolutionary science. The 1998 discovery of a 3½-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus in a cave near Sterkfontein, northwest of Johannesburg, has left scientists wondering: Is it human? Who are we? Where did we come from? And all of those big ol' questions.

Several aeons later, in around 100,000 BC, South Africa became the home of the nomadic San people. The first home-in-a-bag backpackers, model conservationists and Old Masters of the cave canvas, the San were the consummate survivalists until the onslaught of disease-ridden, gun-toting white men who reduced them to their measly current population of 10,000.

Long before the arrival of genocidal Europeans, the San were joined by another tribe of nomads, the Khoikhoi, and then by successive migrations of Bantu-speaking peoples, who arrived in South Africa in around AD 500. The Bantu tribes were Iron-Age peoples who domesticated animals, farmed crops (particularly maize) worked metal and pottery and lived in settled villages. Modern South African descendents of the Bantu include the Basotho, Swazi, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulu, but calling these groups 'Bantu' now is insulting, since the term (like many others) was badly misused during the apartheid era.

European settlement in South Africa started modestly, with a supply station established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company. It quickly evolved into an ambitious colonial settlement (based in Kaapstad or Cape Town), with its own dialect (Afrikaans), puritan religion (the Dutch Reformed Church), and slaves imported from as far afield as Indonesia. When the colonists spread east over the next 150 years, they were violently resisted by the Bantu tribes. In 1779, the eastward expansion of the Boers (Dutch-Afrikaner farmers) was temporarily halted by the Xhosa in the first Bantu War. The Boers also came into conflict with the British colonialists who gained control of Cape Town in 1806. The British abolition of slavery in 1834 was regarded by the Boers as an intolerable interference in their affairs, and led to their migration (known as the Great Trek) across the Orange River two years later.

The history of the town of Johannesburg began in 1886 when four sleepy farms on the Transvaal highland were rudely awakened by some fool yelling 'Gold!' The call prompted thousands of digging hordes (amongst them Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato) to descend on what turned out to be the richest gold-bearing reef ever discovered. Three years later Jo'burg had become the largest town in Southern Africa - a rowdy place full of bars, brothels and fortune-hunters of all creeds and kinds.

This motley crew of whites and blacks were regarded with deep distrust by the Boers, by the Transvaal government and especially by the president, Paul Kruger. Kruger introduced electoral laws restricting voting rights to the Boers, and laws aimed at controlling the movement of blacks. The tension between the Randlords and uitlanders (outsiders) on one side and the Transvaal government on the other got so hot it all boiled over into the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War.

Modern History

Although gold-mining remained the backbone of the city's 20th-century economy, the huff and puff of manufacturing soon turned industrial Johannesburg into a forest of smokestacks that really fired up during WWII. Under increasing pressure in the countryside, thousands of blacks moved to the city in search of jobs. Racial segregation had become entrenched during the interwar years, and from the 1930s onwards vast squatter camps had sprung up around Jo'burg. Under black leadership these camps became well-organised cities, despite their gross overcrowding and negligible services. But in the late 1940s many were destroyed by the authorities, and the people were moved to new suburbs known as the South-Western townships, now shortened to Soweto.

The official development of apartheid during the 1960s did nothing to slow the expansion of the city or the arrival of black squatters. Large-scale violence finally broke out in 1976 when the Soweto Students' Representative Council organised protests against the use of Afrikaans (regarded as the language of the oppressor) in black schools. Police opened fire on a student march and over the next 12 months more than 1000 would die fighting the apartheid system. The regulations of apartheid were finally abandoned in February 1990 and since the 1994 elections the city has, in theory, been free of discriminatory laws. The black townships have been integrated into the municipal government system, the city centre is vibrant with hawkers and street stalls and inner suburbs have become multiracial.

Recent History

Unfortunately, serious problems remain in post-apartheid Johannesburg. Crime is rampant and middle-class whites are retreating to the north, where new shopping malls and satellite business centres are mushrooming. Gold-mining is no longer undertaken in the city area, and the old, pale-yellow mine dumps that created such a surreal landscape on the edge of the city are being reprocessed. The classic view of Jo'burg - a mine dump in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background - will be retained, however, as some dumps are being preserved as historical monuments.