Gauteng
Hotels in Gauteng- Code:GP
- Type:province
- Population:15.1M (2022)
- Area:18,178 km²
- Elevation:1,652 m
- Capital:Johannesburg
Introduction
Gauteng is South Africa's smallest province by area yet its largest by population and economy — barely two percent of the country's land carries roughly a quarter of its people, some 15 million residents, and generates close to a third of national output. Its name means “place of gold” in Sotho-Tswana, a direct nod to the 1886 discovery of the Witwatersrand gold reef that turned a stretch of open Highveld grassland into Johannesburg within a single generation. The province sits high on the interior plateau at around 1,700 metres, cool and dry for its latitude, and is built around three linked metropolitan governments — the City of Johannesburg, the City of Tshwane (which contains Pretoria, the country's administrative capital) and Ekurhuleni on the East Rand — with the Sedibeng and West Rand districts reaching south to the Vaal River. It is the most urban, most densely populated and most cosmopolitan corner of the country, home to the national mint, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, most corporate head offices, and the largest concentration of universities, hospitals and foreign missions in Southern Africa.
Overview
Most visitors first meet Gauteng at OR Tambo International — the busiest airport in Africa and the standard gateway to Kruger, Cape Town and the region beyond — and then fly onward without pausing, which is the mistake the province quietly punishes. This is South Africa's engine room: a high, dry plateau city-region where much of the country's modern history was made and is still argued over in public, where the money and the museums and the migrants all concentrate, and where a fossil landscape older than humanity itself sits forty minutes from the corporate towers. Johannesburg and Pretoria — an hour apart and utterly unalike — anchor a stay that rewards curiosity far more than a stopover ever suggests. The Gautrain and a hired car make the whole region easy to work through in a few days.
Discover Gauteng
Johannesburg is a fast, restless, endlessly reinventing city, and its museums are among the finest in Africa. The Apartheid Museum at Gold Reef City is a world-class history museum that walks visitors through the twentieth century with documentary rigour and enormous emotional weight; Constitution Hill, on the site of the notorious Old Fort prison complex, now houses the Constitutional Court and offers tours of the Number Four and Women's Jail sections alongside changing exhibitions on rights and democracy. The inner city and its fringes have been reclaimed by a cultural revival worth planning around — the Maboneng precinct east of the centre, the warehouse galleries and Sunday Neighbourgoods Market of Braamfontein, and Newtown's jazz heritage and Museum of African Design. Add the Origins Centre at Wits University for southern African rock art, and central Johannesburg becomes a full and serious day rather than a place to hurry past.
Ways to Experience This Destination
The Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill's Old Fort and Constitutional Court, the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto and Pretoria's paired Freedom Park and Voortrekker Monument make Gauteng the country's richest concentration of serious, well-curated history museums.
A UNESCO World Heritage fossil landscape forty-five minutes from the city — guided tours of the Sterkfontein Caves and the immersive Maropeng visitor centre tell the story of human origins where “Mrs Ples” and “Little Foot” were found.
Soweto's Vilakazi Street, the Hector Pieterson memorial and the Orlando Towers, best explored on a local guided cycling, tuk-tuk or walking tour that folds in shisa-nyama grills, kotas and the township's weekend social life.
Maboneng, Braamfontein, Melville and Parkhurst for galleries, weekend food markets, live jazz and the walkable eating-and-drinking strips where Johannesburg's creative scene actually plays out.
Botanical gardens beneath the Witpoortjie Falls, the Suikerbosrand and Rietvlei reserves, the Magaliesberg and Hartbeespoort Dam, and the guesthouse-and-watersports belt along the Vaal River south of the city — green weekends within an hour of the towers.
Sandton City and Nelson Mandela Square, the Mall of Africa in Midrand and Rosebank's rooftop craft market — the continent's densest cluster of malls, hotels and corporate towers, all threaded together by the Gautrain.
Frequently asked questions
Cities in Gauteng
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