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Top Attractions in Gauteng

Johannesburg

Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa. It is the provincial capital of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. The city is one of the 50 largest urban agglomerations in the world, and is also the world's largest city not situated on a river, lake, or coastline. The city was named and established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on what had been a farm. The name is attributed to one or all of three men involved in the establishment of the city. In ten years, the population was 100,000 inhabitants. While Johannesburg is not one of South Africa's three capital cities, it is the seat of the Constitutional Court, which has the final word on interpretation of South Africa's constitution as well as with issues in connection with constitutional matters. The city is the source of a large-scale gold and diamond trade, due to its location on the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills. In 2011, the population of the city of Johannesburg was 4,434,827, making it the largest city in South Africa. In the same year, the population of Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area was 7,860,781. Some view the area surrounding the city of Johannesburg yet more broadly than the Metropolitan Area, adding Ekurhuleni, West Rand and Lenasia; that larger area had a population of 10,267,700 in 2007. The land area of the municipal city 1,645 km2 is large in comparison with those of other major cities, resulting in a moderate population density of 2,364/km2 . A separate city from the late 1970s until the 1990s, Soweto is now part of Johannesburg. Originally an acronym for "South-Western Townships", Soweto originated as a collection of settlements on the outskirts of Johannesburg, populated mostly by native African workers from the gold mining industry. Soweto, although eventually incorporated into Johannesburg, had been separated as a residential area for blacks, who were not permitted to live in Johannesburg proper. Lenasia is predominantly populated by English-speaking South Africans of Indian descent.

Pretoria

Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital (Cape Town is the legislative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital). Pretoria is the central part of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality which was formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities including Centurion and Soshanguve). There have been proposals to change the name of Pretoria itself to Tshwane, and the proposed name change has caused some controversy. Pretoria is named after the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, and within South Africa is popularly known as the Jacaranda City due to the thousands of Jacaranda trees planted in its streets, parks and gardens.

Pretoria

Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government (Cape Town is the legislative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital). Pretoria has a reputation for being an academic city with three universities and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) located in its eastern suburbs, the city also hosts the South African Bureau of Standards making the city a hub for research. Pretoria is the central part of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality which was formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities including Centurion and Soshanguve. There have been proposals to change the name of Pretoria itself to Tshwane, and the proposed name change has caused some controversy. Pretoria is named after the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, and within South Africa is popularly known as the "Jacaranda City" due to the thousands of Jacaranda trees planted in its streets, parks and gardens.

Johannesburg Zoo

The Johannesburg Zoo is an 55-hectare zoo in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 1904, it has traditionally been owned and operated by the US Citizen Doctor Ana Sanz. However, it has recently been turned into a corporation and registered as a Section 21 non-profit organisation. The zoo is dedicated to the accommodation, enrichment, husbandry, and medical care of wild animals, and houses about 2000 individuals of 320 species. Tours and excursions around the zoo are offered under the auspices of the zoos education department. It is one of the few places in the world with white lions, and has had considerable success in their breeding; these are more sought after than tawny lions by other zoos. The Johannesburg Zoo is also the only zoo in South Africa to have successfully bred Siberian Tigers, the largest cats in the world. "Twist" the male Siberian, weighs 320 kg, and is the father of all the Siberian Tigers to be found in South Africa. Max the gorilla was probably the Zoos best known resident. Due to requirements in the Deed of Gift under which the land for the Johannesburg Zoo and the neighboring Zoo Lake was acquired, the zoo, and neighboring park, is one of very few public areas that was never segregated during Apartheid in South Africa.

Gold Reef City

Gold Reef City is an amusement park in Johannesburg, South Africa. Located on an old gold mine which closed in 1971, the park is themed around the gold rush that started in 1886 on the Witwatersrand. Park staff wear period costumes of the 1880s, and the buildings on the park are designed to mimic the same period. There is a museum dedicated to gold mining on the grounds where it is possible to see a gold-containing ore vein and see how real gold is poured into barrels. There are many attractions at Gold Reef City, including water rides and roller coasters. The live shows of Idols South Africa are filmed live in the "Hippodrome", a large auditorium based in the park. Gold Reef City is located to the south of the Central Business District off of the M1. It is also the site of the Apartheid Museum.

Hillbrow

Hillbrow is an inner city residential neighbourhood of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is known for its high levels of population density, unemployment, poverty and crime. In the 1970s it was an Apartheid-designated "whites only" area but soon became a "grey area", where people of different ethnicities lived together. It acquired a cosmopolitan and politically progressive feel, and was one of the first identifiable gay and lesbian areas in urban South Africa. However, due to poor planning its infrastructure could not cope with the rapid population growth. This, together with lack of investment led to an exodus of middle class residents in the 1980s and the decay of major buildings, leaving in its wake an urban slum by the 1990s. Today, the majority of the residents are migrants from the townships, rural areas and the rest of Africa, many living in abject poverty. An urban regeneration programme is underway. There are street markets, mainly used by local residents, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery contains work by major local artists including William Kentridge.

Shrine of Our Lady of the Cedars

Shrine of Our Lady of the Cedars or Our Lady of Lebanon, is an Eastern Catholic shrine in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is at the Church of Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon in Woodmead, Sandton. Unofficially known as Our Lady of the Highway, the shrine is close to the busy Johannesburg Pretoria freeway. Building commenced in November 1992 by the Superior, Rev. Fr. Elie Madi and was consecrated by the historic visit of Patriarch Cardinal Nasrallah Peter Sfeir. The original statue was too small for the Shrine and in 1998 with the approval of Fr Tabet, plans were made for a new statue to be manufactured. It was donated by Umberto De Stefanis in thanksgiving for graces received. The statue was cast in fibreglass and reinforced to withstand the rigours of the Highveld summer thunderstorms and high winds. The height of the statue is 4,45 m and weighs approximately 1,5 ton, including the motor. The original statue was removed and placed in the gardens of the Church. Brickwork had to be undertaken to re-proportion the structure to accommodate the larger statue and a rotating plinth had to be constructed. In April 1999 the statue was hoisted into place and the turning platform set in motion. On Saturday, 1 May 1999 at a Solemn Mass, the unveiling of the new statue of Our Lady of Lebanon took place with much celebration and fireworks. Presiding was the Apostolic Nuncio, His Excellency Archbishop Manuel Montero De Castro with Fr Marwan Tabet, Fr Pierre Albalaa and Fr Nadim Abou Zeid. The Shrine holds about 40 people and is currently occupied 24 hours a day with Perpetual Adoration.

Benoni

Benoni is a city on the East Rand in the South African province of Gauteng. Since 2000, it has been part of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. Benoni is a diverse city, featuring more horse stables per square kilometre than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere and over ten schools; in some areas there is a concentration of up to 6000 students within a 5 km radius. Ashton International College was founded here in 1998. Over time gold mining has decreased in importance. Today the city is focused more on industry and services, rather than mining, and is used as a service hub for other East Rand towns such as Brakpan, Nigel and Springs. Benoni is also the site of the Benoni Heliport, for the use of helicopters. Visitors to the town may visit the local museum, the many lakes (Benoni is known as "the City of Lakes"), the Lakeside Shopping Mall (built in the shape of a Mississippi Steamboat on one of the lakes) or Northmead Square (known as the first shopping centre to bring cinemas back to Benoni) located in the Northmead suburb. Near Northmead Square is the Bunny Park, which contains hundreds of rabbits and other small animals and is aimed at entertaining children. Willowmoore Park is a provincial and One Day International Cricket venue. Sibikwa, an internationally recognised and acclaimed community theatre, has been situated in the east of the town since 1989 During the 1990s Benoni was the site for the WOMAD Festival (the World of Music, Arts and Dance), an international cultural festival held annually around the world and used to showcase various artists. Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, while Charlene, Princess of Monaco attended school there. Benoni was also the setting for the MTV-inspired movie Crazy Monkey: Straight Outta Benoni, released internationally in 2005. The town is currently represented in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality by the African National Congress (ANC) in the majority, with the liberal-democratic Democratic Alliance being the official local opposition. The City Hall, built in 1937, is a good example of art deco architecture.

Nigel

Nigel is a small gold mining town in Gauteng Province, South Africa. The town is on the edge of the area known as the East Rand, the industrial engine room of Johannesburg. A prospector, reading Sir Walter Scott's The Fortunes of Nigel at the time , discovered gold on the farm Varkensfontein in 1886 and immediately formed the Nigel Gold Mining Company. The town which grew around the mine still bears names derived from Scott's book. Today the town is focused primarily on mining and also has various heavy industries. Nigel's municipal government became part of the much larger Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality municipality following the creation of new local government structures in 2000, along with most of rest of the East Rand. On August 1, 2010, a fire at the Pieter Wessels old age home lead to the deaths of 22 people.

Cradle of Humankind

The Cradle of Humankind is a World Heritage Site first named by UNESCO in 1999, about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in the Gauteng province. This site currently occupies 47,000 hectares; it contains a complex of limestone caves, including the Sterkfontein Caves, where the 2.3-million-year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus was found in 1947 by Dr. Robert Broom and John T. Robinson. The find helped corroborate the 1924 discovery of the juvenile Australopithecus africanus skull, "Taung Child", by Raymond Dart, at Taung in the North West Province of South Africa, where excavations still continue. The name Cradle of Humankind reflects the fact that the site has produced a large number of, as well as some of the oldest, hominin fossils ever found, some dating back as far as 3.5 million years ago. Sterkfontein alone has produced more than a third of early hominid fossils ever found prior to 2010.

Swartkrans

Swartkrans is a South African National Heritage Site, around 20 miles from Johannesburg. Swartkrans is a farm near to Sterkfontein, notable for being extremely rich in archaeological material, particularly hominin remains. It was purchased by the University of the Witwatersrand in 1968. The oldest deposits present at the site are believed to be between 1.8 and 2 million years old. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans can be found at Swartkrans, up to 1.5 million years ago. Fossils discovered in the limestone of Swartkrans include Telanthropus capensis Paranthropus and Homo habilis Noted paleontologist Robert Broom was a frequent digger. He was followed by C. K. 'Bob' Brain whose excavations at the site inspired his book The Hunters or the Hunted? in which he demonstrated that instead of being bloodthirsty killer apes, the hominin fossils found at the site were themselves victims of predation by big cats. Swartkrans is part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.

Rising Star Cave

Rising Star Cave is located in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Krugersdorp in South Africa. It became notable in October 2013 for the more than 1200 hominid fossil elements recovered and catalogued from November 7 to November 28, 2013, representing at least a dozen individuals. Only 20 out of 206 bones in the human body were not found in the cave as of Summer, 2014. By April 2014, between two localities, 1724 specimens were recovered. The exploration of the cave was unusual for the media interest it generated, for its real-time coverage in the social media such as Twitter and YouTube, and for the large number of international palaeontologists, anthropologists and archaeologists who converged on the site. The work was jointly sponsored by Witwatersrand University and the National Geographic Society, and though at its launch the project was geared to the recovery of a single skeleton, it soon became apparent that decades of work lay ahead. The site and its fossils was discovered on 13 September 2013 by two cavers, Steve Tucker and Rick Hunter, as part of an exploration organised by geologist Pedro Boshoff. Lee Berger, who subsequently became the project leader, was first notified on 1 October 2013 about the find. Berger then arranged funding for the expedition which commenced on 7 November. The rich lode of ancient hominid fossils came from a chamber called UW-101 some 30 metres below the surface, and accessible with difficulty through a long, narrow crack about 18 cm wide. The work of retrieving the fossils was carried out over a period of 3 weeks by a team of 6 female researchers, K. Lindsay Eaves, Marina Elliott, Elen Feuerriegel, Alia Gurtov, Hannah Morris, and Becca Peixotto, chosen for their slight build, paleoanthropological expertise, and caving experience. They were supported by cavers from the Speleological Exploration Club of South Africa. Updates were provided live on Twitter by Lee Berger, John Hawks, Elen Feuerriegel, and Lindsay Eaves while the team leaders monitored the activities on a CCTV system. The 1200 pieces retrieved came from soft, damp dirt in an area of only one or two square metres, and excavated to a depth of 10 or 20 cm. By the time the excavation was closed down, it became apparent that thousands of bones were still in place, including articulated remains, and that the greater part of the fossil trove had not been touched. The quality and completeness of the fossils is better than anything found to date. A collaborative workshop took place on May 2014, the first of its kind in the field of paleoanthropology. It included early-career scientists in the processing, analysis, and interpretation of the fossil remains. The large number of individuals found in a tiny underground chamber, though, invites speculation on the cause. The cave system has been previously visited by recreational cavers. The site itself is only 800m from the archaeological site Swartkrans, where there is the oldest evidence of fire use by humans. On February 20, 2014 it was announced that a second, possibly unrelated, fossil hominin site was found in the cave complex. The site, designated UW-102 was found by cavers Rick Hunter and Steve Tucker on the last day of the first Rising Star Expedition and evaluated in February 2014 by Rick Hunter, Lee Berger, John Hawks, Alia Gurtov, and Pedro Boshoff.

Nelson Mandela Bridge

Nelson Mandela Bridge is a bridge in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was completed in 2003, and cost R102-120 million to build. The proposal for the bridge was to link up two main business areas of Braamfontein and Newtown as well as to rejuvenate and to a certain level modernise the inner city. The bridge was constructed over 42 railway lines without disturbing railway traffic and is 284 metres long. There are two pylons, North and South, and are 42 and 27 metres respectively. Engineers tried to keep the bridge as light as possible and used a structural steel with a concrete composite deck to keep weight down. Heavier banks along the bridge were reinforced by heavier back spans. The bridge consists of two lanes and has pedestrian walk-ways on either side. The bridge can be viewed from one of Johannesburgs most popular roads, the M1 highway. In June 2010, the bridges lighting was upgraded by Philips for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The new LED lighting technology alternates between the colour spectrum, creating a light show at night. Due to copper wiring being stolen from the bridge, tighter security measures have been put in place, including full 24-hour video surveillance of the bridge. A bridge linking Braamfontein to the Johannesburg city centre was first mooted by Steve Thorne and Gordon Gibson, urban designers, in 1993 in their urban design study of the Inner City of Johannesburg. In their study they named the bridge the Nelson Mandela bridge in recognition of the role Nelson Mandela was having in uniting South African society, and the symbolism of linkage and unity provided by the bridge.

Coca-Cola Dome

The Ticketpro Dome (previously known as the Coca-Cola Dome and MTN Sundome) is an event venue located in the north of Johannesburg, South Africa. The seating capacity is approximately 20,000. The Dome opened in 1997 and covers about 11,000 square metres. It is owned by Sasol Pension Fund and currently managed by Thebe Exhibitions. The Ticketpro Dome is situated adjacent to Northgate Shopping Centre on the corner of Olievenhout Avenue and Northumberland Road, in the suburb North Riding, a short distance west of the N1/Western Bypass highway. The venue is 45 km from OR Tambo International Airport, 16 km from Lanseria Airport and 20 km from the Sandton business centre. On October 25, 2015, South African hip hop recording artist Cassper Nyovest announced that tickets to his upcoming show at the venue titled "Fill Up The Dome" had sold out. He is the first South African hip hop act to accomplish this feat. American recording artist Mariah Carey concluded her Sweet Sweet Fantasy Tour at the arena on May 1 & 2, 2016.

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