55 Fun Facts About Johannesburg

What is Johannesburg's Zulu name, which refers to its founding mineral?

iGoli means 'place of gold' in Zulu: the city sprang from the 1886 gold rush and grew from a mining camp to 100,000 people within a decade.

Johannesburg is the capital of which South African province?

Gauteng is the smallest of South Africa's nine provinces by area, yet it holds the largest share of the country's people.

Which of South Africa's highest institutions sits in Johannesburg?

The Constitutional Court sits on Constitution Hill, on the site of the notorious Old Fort prison, and bricks from a demolished cell block were built into its new building.

Which restaurant chain began in 1987 at a small Portuguese eatery in Rosettenville, Johannesburg?

Nando's began when two friends had lunch at a modest Portuguese eatery in Rosettenville in 1987 and decided its peri-peri chicken deserved a far wider audience.

The name Soweto is an abbreviation of what?

South Western Townships was a plain map label for the scattered Black townships set aside on that side of Johannesburg, which together grew into the country's largest Black urban complex.

Which decommissioned power station left Soweto a pair of cooling towers that now serve as a bungee-jumping site?

Orlando Power Station shut in 1998, and jumpers now leap from a platform slung between the tops of its two cooling towers.

What did prospector George Harrison do with the 1886 gold claim that gave rise to Johannesburg?

Sold it for £10: Harrison is said to have let his Langlaagte claim go for that sum and left for the eastern Transvaal goldfields, never sharing in the fortune his find unleashed.

Which World Heritage Site near Johannesburg includes the Sterkfontein Caves?

The Cradle of Humankind is a belt of limestone caves whose fossils include early human ancestors and evidence that fire was being tamed there more than a million years ago.

Johann Rissik and Christiaan Joubert, credited as the source of the city's name, were involved in what?

Surveying the site for the settlement brought the Transvaal's vice president and its deputy surveyor-general to the diggings in 1886, and the new town apparently took the 'Johannes' both men had in their names.

Gold mines near Johannesburg hold which world record?

The deepest mines on Earth grew out of geology: the gold-bearing layer dips away underground, so miners chased it down more than two miles, and Mponeng now reaches about four kilometres below the surface.

What are the towering pale-yellow hills that dot the landscape around Johannesburg?

Mine waste dumps: the ore was so poor that tons of rock were crushed for every ounce of gold, and the leftovers were piled into pale hills that still line the old goldfields.

What does 'Witwatersrand' mean in English?

Ridge of white waters is the literal reading; shortened to 'the Rand', the gold-bearing ridge later gave its name to South Africa's currency, adopted in 1961.

What does 'fontein', ending many farm names around the city, mean in the local Dutch-derived language?

Spring: in dry country any water was worth putting in a farm's name, so the ending marks where a natural spring once rose, as at Braamfontein and Doornfontein.

Rain north of Johannesburg's main ridge drains to the Indian Ocean; where does rain falling south of it end up?

The Atlantic Ocean: the ridge is a continental divide, so rain on its south side joins the Vaal and then the Orange River, and crosses the whole country to the far west coast.

What nickname was given to the mining magnates, such as Alfred Beit and Barney Barnato, who controlled Johannesburg's early gold industry?

Randlords was the label for men like Beit and Barnato, who had already made fortunes on the Kimberley diamond fields and by the mid-1890s ran the whole gold industry through half a dozen mining houses.

Which weather event, rare for Johannesburg, reached the city in August 2012 and again in July 2023?

A snowfall is rare enough here that residents photographed it both times, and the 2023 flurries were the city's first in over a decade.

Which two-time NBA Most Valuable Player was born in Johannesburg in 1974?

Steve Nash left South Africa as a toddler and was raised in Victoria, British Columbia; only one American college recruited him, yet he won back-to-back MVP awards in 2005 and 2006.

What covered the site of Johannesburg before the 1886 gold rush?

Open grassland with hardly a tree in sight greeted the first diggers; the trees came later, among them Australian blue gums that the mines planted for tunnel props.

Which 2009 science-fiction film leaves an alien mothership hovering over Johannesburg and its passengers fenced into a slum?

District 9 was shot in director Neill Blomkamp's home town; its aliens, nicknamed 'prawns', are hated, penned in and then evicted to a camp, a plain echo of apartheid's forced removals.

Which botched plot for a Johannesburg rising cost Cecil Rhodes his premiership?

The Jameson Raid was a fiasco: the rising in Johannesburg never came, the raiders were rounded up within days, and Rhodes had to resign as premier of the Cape Colony.

Which Transvaal president, pictured on South Africa's gold bullion coin, went into exile after the British took Johannesburg in 1900?

Paul Kruger was sent to Europe to seek help for the Boers, found none, and died in Switzerland in 1904; since 1967 his bearded profile has been stamped on the Krugerrand.

After the South African War, Johannesburg's gold mines shipped in more than 60,000 indentured labourers from which country?

China supplied the stopgap labour; the scheme caused an outcry in the Transvaal and in Britain, and the miners had gone home again by about 1910.

Which corporation, founded by Ernest Oppenheimer, made Johannesburg its headquarters in 1917?

It grew into one of the world's largest companies, dominating South African gold and diamond mining.

Which singer, born in a Johannesburg township, was barred from returning home in 1960?

Miriam Makeba, the 'Pata Pata' singer known as Mama Africa, spent three decades in exile with her records banned at home, and came back only in 1990.

Which document did a mass gathering at Kliptown, Soweto, adopt in 1955?

The Freedom Charter was compiled from demands sent in by thousands of ordinary South Africans, and some 3,000 delegates of all races met at Kliptown over two days to adopt it.

Police raided Liliesleaf Farm, the secret base of the ANC's armed wing, in July 1963 in which Johannesburg suburb?

Rivonia gave its name to the trial that followed, whose most famous accused was not even there: Nelson Mandela was already in prison when the farm was raided, and was sentenced to life in 1964.

What happens to each visitor at the entrance to Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum?

Randomly classed by race: each visitor is labelled 'white' or 'non-white' and may enter only through the gate for that group, a first taste of the sorting on which every apartheid law rested.

The 1976 Soweto uprising began as a protest against schooling black children in which language?

Afrikaans was a language Soweto pupils used only with police and officials, so a 1974 order to teach mathematics and social studies in it sent thousands marching out of class on 16 June 1976.

Which public holiday marks the 1976 Soweto uprising?

Youth Day, 16 June, honours the school pupils who marched through Soweto that morning and were met with police tear gas and live bullets.

Which schoolboy killed on the first day of the 1976 Soweto uprising became its symbol, with a museum in his name?

Hector Pieterson was among the first pupils shot when police opened fire; Sam Nzima's photograph of the dying boy being carried by a fellow student was published around the world.

Soweto's Vilakazi Street was home to which two Nobel Peace Prize laureates?

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu lived a short walk apart; Mandela moved into No. 8115 in 1946, called it the centre point of his world, and the little house is now a museum.

Which suburb is known as 'Africa's richest square mile'?

Sandton is often given that label; many corporate offices left the decaying city centre for it in the 1990s, and in 2000 the Johannesburg Stock Exchange itself followed.

Which shopping centre opened in 1973, part of the suburban mall wave that drained the CBD?

Rosebank Mall followed in 1976 and Eastgate in 1979.

The May 2008 xenophobic riots that spread across South Africa began in which Johannesburg township?

Alexandra saw the first attacks on migrants that May; the violence spread to other townships and then to Durban and Cape Town, and 62 people were killed in all.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup final was played at which Johannesburg venue, the largest in Africa?

FNB Stadium was rebuilt for the tournament in the shape of a calabash, an African pot, and although it seats about 95,000, capacity was cut to roughly 85,000 for the World Cup itself.

Which venue hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, in which the Springboks beat the All Blacks?

Ellis Park saw South Africa, shut out of the first two World Cups over apartheid, win at the first attempt, when Joel Stransky's extra-time drop goal beat New Zealand 15–12.

At which ground did South Africa chase down 434 in 2006, in what many call the greatest one-day international ever?

The Wanderers saw the visitors post the first total over 400 in one-day internationals, and lose: South Africa reached 438 for 9 when Mark Boucher hit a boundary with one ball to spare.

Which Johannesburg football club is nicknamed Amakhosi?

Kaizer Chiefs took both halves of their name from founder Kaizer Motaung, who came home from a spell with the Atlanta Chiefs in the United States and started the club in 1970; Amakhosi is Zulu for chiefs.

O. R. Tambo International Airport was originally named after which South African statesman?

Jan Smuts, twice prime minister, gave the airport its first name; after apartheid it was plain Johannesburg International until 27 October 2006, Oliver Tambo's birthday.

What is the name of the rapid rail link connecting Johannesburg with Pretoria and O. R. Tambo airport?

Gautrain's first section, the airport link, opened on 8 June 2010, days before the World Cup; the full line was planned to relieve the choked road to Pretoria.

Rea Vaya, which began running between Soweto and central Johannesburg in 2009, is what kind of commuter system?

Bus rapid transit: Rea Vaya launched at the end of August 2009 over the objections of minibus-taxi operators, and former taxi drivers were retrained to drive its buses.

Which Johannesburg skyline landmark held a revolving restaurant until it was closed to visitors in 1981 for security reasons?

Hillbrow Tower was finished in 1971 to carry telephone calls by microwave above the city's skyscrapers, and its six public floors drew crowds for a decade before security fears shut them.

UJ, formed in 2005, merged Technikon Witwatersrand, Vista campuses and which older institution?

It teaches mainly in English and Afrikaans, while Wits remains famous as a centre of resistance to apartheid.

Which Soweto hospital, among the largest in the world, was built during the Second World War for British and Commonwealth troops?

Chris Hani Baragwanath opened in 1942 as the Imperial Military Hospital, and King George VI presented medals to recovering soldiers there in 1947, shortly before it became a civilian hospital for Black patients.

Johannesburg's City Deep container terminal is classed as what kind of port?

Dry port: Johannesburg lies far inland, so its sea-going containers are handled at City Deep and hauled to and from coastal harbours such as Durban by road and rail.

The biggest scheme diverting water to the thirsty Witwatersrand draws on the highlands of which country?

Lesotho sends mountain water through a chain of dams and tunnels into the Vaal river system that supplies the Witwatersrand, and the same scheme generates hydro-electricity for the kingdom itself.

Which 2005 film, about a Johannesburg gangster who finds a baby in a stolen car, won the foreign-language Oscar?

Tsotsi means thug in township slang; director Gavin Hood took the story from a novel by playwright Athol Fugard and moved it from the apartheid years to the present day.

In 2025 Johannesburg hosted which leaders' summit, the first of its kind ever held in an African country?

G20 leaders met in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 November 2025, at the close of South Africa's year in the chair, although the United States boycotted the meeting.

Which 50-storey Johannesburg tower, its top floor billed as the Top of Africa, was the continent's tallest building for decades?

Carlton Centre opened in 1973, but as business fled the inner city in the 1990s its luxury hotel closed, and the tower was sold to the state transport firm Transnet in 1999.

Which Johannesburg theatre, founded in 1976, defied apartheid law by opening its stage and seats to all races?

The Market Theatre was built into the city's old Indian fruit market by Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, and anti-apartheid plays such as Woza Albert! carried its name to stages abroad.

Which future independence leader ran a law office in central Johannesburg in the 1900s, near a square now named after him?

Mahatma Gandhi kept his law offices around the corner from the old courts, and at a Johannesburg mass meeting in September 1906 he led the vow of passive resistance that launched his satyagraha campaigns.

Which Australian university opened a South African campus in Johannesburg in 2001?

Monash opened its South African campus at Roodepoort in 2001, but by 2013 it held only a quarter of the venture, and in 2019 the campus was sold to South Africa's Independent Institute of Education.

Which team retained the Cricket World Cup by beating India in the 2003 final in Johannesburg?

Australia were sent in to bat after India's Sourav Ganguly won the toss, then piled up 359 for 2, with captain Ricky Ponting hitting 140 not out, and won by 125 runs.

Which Johannesburg suburb, famed for its jazz scene, was bulldozed under apartheid and rebuilt for whites as Triomf?

Sophiatown's clearance began in February 1955, when 2,000 armed police moved the first families out to Meadowlands in Soweto; the white suburb built over it was named Triomf, or Triumph, until 2006.

Johannesburg has what type of climate under the Köppen classification?

Subtropical highland (Cwb) means altitude takes the edge off the heat: Highveld summer days end in afternoon thunderstorms, while winters are dry and sunny with cold nights.